...The death marches that took place during the Holocaust were a cruel and unusual form of torture for the Jewish prisoners that were caused by the notorious Nazis. These marches affected Elie Wiesel, the main character and author of the book, Night, and his father. The prisoners were forced to march for over 42 miles away from the soon-to-be-invaded Auschwitz and as far from the Red Army as possible. The unbearable task presented to the Jews was, in a way, an exodus from an awful place, but an entry into something just as bad or possibly worse. At the end of the march a friend of Elie’s plays Beethoven’s 5th Symphony on his violin. This work of music represents a lot during this time. Similarly, the death marches represent the heartless actions taken against the poor victims of the Holocaust. The death marches were horrendous punishments inflicted for no reason. Near the end of World War II, death marches became a common way of...
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...Eliezer’s Character Change The Holocaust was a devastating time in history where Jews were forced into concentration camps and worked, starved, or burned to death. One of the most influential writers who lived during this time period was Elie Wiesel. Wiesel’s Night is a memoir depicting the journey of a young boy, Eliezer, who experienced the Holocaust at a very young age. The Nazis occupied Hungary in the spring of 1944, and Eliezer and his family are deported to a concentration camp. While at several different concentration camps, Eliezer faces a variety of different situations, and he learns to adapt to his circumstances. As his father becomes weaker and weaker throughout the memoir, Elie starts to develop mixed emotions for him. During...
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...Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night tells the story of the Holocaust, the mass genocide of the Jewish people and important event in WWII. The memoir Night begins in the polish town of Sighet. The story is About Elie Wiesel, a Jewish boy whose family gets deported to the concentration camp with other Jews from his town. Upon arrival his Mother and Sister, Tzipora are separated and executed by the Nazis in the Auschwitz death camp. Following that, after months of work, with the advancing allied front, the prisoners were forced to march all night to the Gleiwitz concentration camp. As Elie’s story continues, after being stuffed inside a camp barrack for 3 days without food or water, the Prisoners were let out for a selection, Elie’s Father was chosen to...
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...In today’s day, we respect the past but rarely delve into it except for certain days. Elie Wiesel’s book Night is the self-account of Wiesel’s life in the Holocaust. It reflects back to the time through the eyes of a Jewish boy living in the awful conditions. It tells the story from the first few steps that Hitler takes, to when the camps was liberated. Wiesel delivered a powerful message "of peace, atonement and human dignity" to humanity. The Final Days is a film about resistance in Nazi Germany of one woman in particular. The movie starts off showing the main character having fun and there is light and laughter. This quickly changes as it shows her with members of the White Rose, an Anti-Nazi organization. She was caught and found guilty. This movie is a true story based on an actual Sophie Scholl who lived throughout this and was a member of the White Rose. Although one is about standing up for your rights not matter the consequence, and one is about knowing when hope is but a lost phrase, barely living in your mind. While that is all true, they also have a lot of differences, for instance, they have very different main characters who come from different parts and are effected by the war in different ways, each story is told in very different ways and each has its own meaning, and they have different messages that are portrayed throughout each. In the memoir Night, Elie starts off as a regular Jewish boy in Sighet, Transylvania. He was a teenager when his family...
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...Chapter 4 Once Elie Wiesel and his father arrive at Buna, they are put to work counting electrical fittings in a warehouse. They stay in a barrack of musicians with a nice head Kapo. Here, Elie meets Juliek, a musician, and two brothers, Yosi and Tibi. A little while later, Elie is summoned to have his gold crown removed by the dentist. Wiesel is able to continuously put this off until the dentist is hanged for keeping the gold teeth for his own profit. Then Wiesel's work Kapo, Idek beats him terribly, but then a French girl helps and talks to him. Years later Wiesel sees this girl again in Paris and gets a chance to talk to her. Later Idek savagely beats Wiesel's father, but Elie Wiesel isn't concerned for his father's health or safety, and is instead mad at him for not being strong enough to defend himself. Then Franek, another head of the camp demands that Wiesel hand over his gold crown to him. He refuses, and so Franek takes out his fury on Wiesel's father until Wiesel finally gives him the tooth. In the warehouse, Elie Wiesel accidently catches Franek with a woman, and in retaliation, Franek whips Wiesel publicly until Wiesel goes unconscious. Later there is an air raid, and all the prisoners are confined to their blocks. Some days later, a man is hanged for trying to steal during the air raid when he was supposed to be in his block. There were a few more hangings following that one. One which involved a young boy accused of sabotage. When Wiesel sees how they cruelly...
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...Night by Elie Wiesel, recounts his experiences during the holocaust. Wiesel and his family were Jews living in Nazi Germany. He and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Elie was fifteen when he was imprisoned and his goal was to keep his family together. When the Germans separated Elie and his father from his mother and sister, he then focused on staying by his father’s side. As he and his father were being transported to Buna Werke, a concentration, the fear of being separated from his father was great, “all I [Elie] could think of was not to lose him [Elie’s father],” (Wiesel 30). Realizing that he would never see his mother and sister again, the idea of being alone without his father terrified him. Elie’s devotion to his father gave him a reason to...
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...Wiesel’s Changes of Faith The Holocaust brought about many hardships and created severe adversity for its victims that may have created experiences ultimately too traumatic that transformed their lives for years to come, either through starvation and labor in the concentration camps or execution and incineration in the extermination camps. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel tells the story of himself as a young Jewish boy born in Romania, who in 1944, was forced into ghettos with the rest of the Jewish citizens and later deported, along with his father, to the Nazi’s largest killing center, Auschwitz-Birkenau. While living through this day-to-day horrifying basis, Elie begins to live with overwhelming fear and total alienation, as well as his increasing loss of faith on God and whether God is even existent or not for His lack of participation in trying to help the Jews. Although Elie manages to survive his long and frightening journey through both labor and death camps, his faith was never at the high-most air-reaching level as it dramatically changed throughout the course of the novel because of his disturbing experiences in witnessing cremated human beings, executions, and the going through the loss of his entire family. Prior to being deported to the camps, Elie’s faith was extremely high as he was well-established with his studies in mysticism and the cabbala and his great involvement with religion through prayers. Elie is finding a great interest in wanting to...
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...attempted to passionately encourage him to endure and resist the desire of death. In a beautiful villanelle dedicated to his father, Thomas told him: “do not go gentle into that good night,” but to “rage, rage against the dying of the light” (Thomas, 1 and 3). Thomas hoped that his father would find the strength to not give up in his fight for life. Their familial love gave his father the hope to do the seemingly impossible and defy death, for a little longer. Hope is key to surviving in any situation, but it takes a lot of emotional strength to maintain. During the Holocaust, this was truer than ever for millions of people, who faced death every day, and were tortured, starved, and violated. Their hope in religion, the goodness of humanity, and themselves were continually tested and most victims’ hope were eventually lost because of their suffering. One survivor, Elie Wiesel, wrote a memoir, Night, sharing his experiences during the Holocaust and in a concentration camp, and solemnly displaying his progression of hope. Elie's gradual loss of hope caused him to lose the emotional strength that he needs to survive, which made him desperate to cling on to the familial identity that was...
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...unity. But the continuous agony inflicted by the Holocaust stripped the prisoners of their human compassion. Apathy replaced states of sympathy and empathy, and desensitization enveloped the camps. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night shows how desensitization leads to a state of indifference towards violence enacted upon others through the use of man vs. society conflict, situational irony, and imagery. The consistent nature of the conflicts between a prisoner and the twisted society around them creates an indifference to the violence brought upon others. For instance, on the train...
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...A normal 12 year old boy would have never seen a man shot to the ground or eaten by dogs, Elie Wiesel unlike any other boy went through this, not in the comforts of his home but in the filthy concentration camps. Surrounded by death itself Elie held onto any life available, could you? Elie Wiesel the author of Night went through the horrors of inhumane treatments Through his book, Wiesel changed from an innocent boy to a mature man only at 15. Wiesel was like any other boy in the beginning. He held a stable life while living with his family in Sighet. In the beginning of the book, Night, Elie Wiesel was not immune to the nazi treatments, He doubted that what had happened to him would eventually become his reality. Wiesel lived with his two sisters and his parents, They lived in a jewish town, Everyone in the town knew of Hitler and his goals, but, they abandoned the idea of him accomplishing any of his plans.Wiesel too believed this, Moshe a friend of his, warned everyone the terror the Nazis were bringing to the jews. Everyone just pitied him. Wiesel explained, “Even I did not believe him I often sat with him after services and listened to his tales trying to understand his grief but...
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...In Wiesel's detailed and devastating book Night. Wiesel describes his horrible experience during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany when his family suffered in a concentration camp. The things he experienced are unbelievable as he describes the violence, starvation, torture, and humiliation that he endured. The part where Elie questions God’s existence and then the death march that follows was especially striking to me, because it shows the extent of his hopelessness but also his enduring love for his father. Prior to going into the infirmary , Elie is living in a state of constant fear of being selected to die or being separated from his father. He is tired of hearing that the camp was even worse two years ago because he freezing, sleeping...
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...“He was tortured, Remained behind confinement, Remained silent, Death found three gallows, Three black ravens aimed at us, Three prisoners in chains. All eyes were pale, The shadow took his place, Three chairs were tipped over, Silence on the horizon, The two men were hanging.” These are the words of a blackout poem created out of a page of text from the book ‘Night’. The book night is all about a Elie Wiesel's experience in Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust.He never forgot about his experiences because he lived through it. But we shouldn't forget the Holocaust either. It is important to remember the Holocaust so history doesn’t repeat itself and to bring awareness to current situations. The Holocaust is a major part of...
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...Can literature help us remember the past? Night, Perils of Indifference, and Acceptance Speech all have things in common. They can connect to different themes and they connect to one another. Literature has a big part in this world and it helps us remember past events, just like the Holocaust. In Elie Wiesel’s Acceptance Speech he says, “Who would allow such crime to be committed? How could the world remain silent?” This kinda ties back to theme 3 - breaking the silence on cruel acts is a way to break the cycle of repetition. He’s asking why would the world remain silent? He wanted people to break the silence when the crime was being committed. In this speech it also says “one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death.” And this kinda connects to the prompt because it’s saying that you,...
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...“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.” (34) After reading Elie Wiesel’s account of the Holocaust in his book Night and watching the movie Life is Beautiful, directed by Roberto Benigni, I determined that, the book, Night has the greatest impact on the reader. Based on the mood and tone of the two stories, the amount of details, and the main characters of the stories, I believe that Wiesel’s account of the Holocaust leaves the reader more impacted than Benigni’s story of the same event. In Elie Wiesel’s literary memoir Night, which he wrote in the nineteen-fifties, after his ten years of vowed silence in respect for those who lost their lives in the Holocaust, Wiesel...
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...Elie Wiesel’s Loss of Innocence There comes a time in one’s life where a tragic event results in the loss of innocence and an increase in knowledge. Unfortunately this is one of life’s few promises. Some experience this ablution a lot sooner than they should. In children who survived the holocaust in concentration camps, their innocence was taken as soon as their ordinary everyday life was imposed upon by the Nazis. In Elie Wiesel’s book Night, he describes himself as an innocent teenager, a child whose innocence was taken from him as the result of the nefariousness performed by the Nazis in World War Two. Elie and his family were transported to Birkenau where his family was torn apart, leaving him with his father, his sisters and his mother. Once they were separated, he began to slowly lose his innocence. Towards the end of 1941, in the small village of Sighet, Hungary, twelve-year-old Elie Wiesel spent most of his time studying the Talmud. Elie was one of four children born to his mother and father. Hilda was the eldest, then Bea, he was the third, and Tzipora was the youngest. The two eldest sisters helped the parents run the family store while Elie stayed home to study. Elie was very passionate about the theology of his religion, Judaism. He studied Talmud by day and by night he would go to the synagogue to pray. One of his main interests was Kabbalah which is an aspect of Jewish mysticism. Elie asked his father to find him a master to guide him in his...
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