...The Belief and Denial of the Holocaust Between 1933 and 1945, an event took place that would greatly affect the world forever. Jews, homosexuals, and even Jehovah’s Witnesses were stripped of their rights, mistreated continuously, and forced to complete hard manual labor. This horrendous event led by Adolf Hitler is known as the Holocaust. The Holocaust was an event in which “Jews were separated from their communities and persecuted; and finally they were treated as less than human beings and murdered” (What Was The Holocaust?). Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany and the soldiers who were set out to annihilate anyone who did not follow social normalities. Even though there are various pictures and documents in existence showing proof...
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...Challenged by Evil Historic Event Can a person maintain a stronger growing faith and untouched humanity ideas during an evil historic event like the Holocaust? Elie Wiesel’s book, Night, will answer this question. Throughout history humanity has faced numerous tragic event caused either by nature or human beings, both of God’s creations. The Holocaust, which means “sacrifice by fire”, began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. During the Holocaust the Jews were the most affected. The Nazis killed eleven million Jews, almost two-thirds of all the Jewish population living in Europe. Jews were not the only ones the Holocaust targeted; Gypsies, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were also victims of Hitler’s plan. In recent years, events like The Twin Towers terrorist attack in 2001 and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami have brought enormous suffering to the world, suffering that can somehow be compared to the one lived during the Holocaust. Continuing is the analysis of Elie Wiesel’s horrific experiences during the Holocaust. Did these experiences affect his faith? Was his perception of humanity ideas impacted? The book Night starts describing Elie’s faith as one indestructible. As young as he was he had deep knowledge of Jewish mysticism studies. Elie believed in God; a God of love and unlimited power. He was told that God is the master creator of all world’s wonders and that these wonders where the emanation of the divine world. Elie concluded that if God was the...
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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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...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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...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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...one word with so many meanings and simple and nothing can change it. Loss, of a loved one, faith, trust, happiness, your own life; and once it is gone, it is lost, and good luck trying to find it. Sayonara, au revoir, adios, bye. Elie Wiesel’s Night deals with his loss of faith in his God. Wiesel’s problem can be root all the way back to 1942, the beginning of Elie’s awakening, his first insight into the real world, his first insight into the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a horrid event, of ruthless killing, of senseless slaughter, destroying families, and a whirlwind of destruction. Under strain, ones happiness and ones faith is slowly whittled under the knife of opposition and pressure. Elie has lost so much through out his life, losing his family, his friends, but most importantly his faith. The first example of Elie loosing his faith is when he arrived at Auschwitz, Elie and his father are directed to go to the left; a prisoner then informs them that they are on their way to the crematory, Elie’s father recites the Kaddish or prayer for the dead, revolt rises up inside of Elie and he questions God, “Why should I bless His name? The Eternal, lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for? (Wiesel 31)”. Elie is hopeless, his situation rendering him of his beliefs unable to believe that a holy being could cause such grief. He was stricken with terror that even after his prayers, his deep devotion to the great “lord” that God has thrust...
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...Historical Background on Night and Eliezer Wiesel In Sighet, Transylvania on September 30,1928 a Holocaust survivor was born. Eliezer Wiesel who is 85 years old, grew up with three siblings, all girls. Shlomo, Elie’s father was a shopkeeper. When he was 15 Elie and his family were forced to a concentration camp. Wiesel's parents died and so did one of his sisters. When Elie was freed from camp Buchenwald in 1945, he went and studied in France three years later. His friend, Francois mauriac, later convinced him to write about the events and his story about what all happened in those camps. Wiesel is a writer and a world activist. He has written plenty of books including: The Oath, The Gates of the forest, and Town of Luck. Eliezer is also...
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...1 Symbolic Interaction, Functional Analysis, and Conflict Theory of Elie Wiesels’s Night Introduction 2 Symbolic Interaction, Functional Analysis, and Conflict Theory of Elie Wiesels’s “Night” Elie Wiesel’s Night begins in Sighet, Transylvania, 1941 when he was a teenager. He begins talking about a life before his world, along with his family, was torn apart. His family was Jewish, and he wanted to study Cabbala. He was very much involved in his faith and wanted to further pursue it by studying Cabbala, but his father would not let him. “There are no Cabbalists in Sighet.” (pg 4). He was very close with his shtibl, Moishe the Beadle, who later was taken by Hungarian Police and expelled from Sighet because he was a foreign Jew. Once they were taken over by the Gestapo, the babies were used as target practice and the adults were shot. Moishe managed to escape because he was shot in his leg and was able to get back to Sighet to tell Elie what happened. He also tried to tell everyone in town what had happened to him and the rest of the foreign Jews, but no one believed him and he was branded insane. 1944 was when the town of Sighet was split into two ghettos, and no one could leave the town. Shortly after that, the Hungarian police told everyone in town to turn in their valuables (gold, jewelry, etc.) because they were going to the first concentration camp, Auschwitz. This is where Elie and his father were separated from his mother and sisters, and never heard from or...
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...happened between 1933-1945. During that time, Jews were known as an inferior race. They were thought to be a threat to the German community. After years of having the Nazis rule in Germany, Hitler decided his “final solution”. This solution included mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of Poland. In the article “Elie Wiesel Biography” by The Biography.com, the author’s main thesis is that the Holocaust was a very traumatic event that caused an eye-opener for humans about how cruel humans can be. This article talks about Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor who is now a Nobel-Prize winning writer, teacher and activist known for the memoir Night. In his books he discusses his experiences of surviving the Holocaust. At the age of 15, Wiesel and his entire family were sent to Auschwitz as part of the Holocaust (Eliezer Wiesel, 2014). Elie and his father were separated from his mother and younger sister and taken to Auschwitz. They were forced to work under appalling conditions and shuffled between concentration camps. On January 29, 1945, Wiesel's father died after suffering from dysentery, and starvation (Eliezer Wiesel, 2014). Wiesel lived in the camps under...
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...Author: Elie Wiesel Date of Publication: 1958 Genre: autobiography, memoir Historical information about period of publication: World War II, and the Holocaust, ended in April 1945 when the liberating Allied armies came through the conquered territories in Nazi Europe. Night describes 16 year old Elie’s loss of faith in God, humanity, family and morality in general. Elie, therefore, vowed to not speak of his experience in Auschwitz, Buna or Buchenwald (or any event between 1943 and 1945, from the beginning of the occupation of Hungary to Germany’s liberation in 1945) for ten years, until he had time to internalize this dramatic loss, and regain his faith and possession of his memory and life. In 1954, after realizing that even less than ten years after the end of the Holocaust, the world was already forgetting and Jews were abandoning their roots, the time had come to testify and justify to the world that Hitler had not succeeded. Biographical Information about the author: Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet Romania, where his memoir Night begins. In his childhood (up to the Nazi occupation of Romania) his father encouraged his study of the Torah, other Judaic texts and other literary works. As described in the beginning of Night, Elie was also curious about the realm of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. From 1944 to 1945, Elie and his family were subjected to the Nazi terror (will be described in the plot summary section). Elie and two of...
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...Countless victims of the Holocaust gradually lost the desire to live due to the cruel acts of Hitler’s regime. Even after WWII, victims still would cling to the fear of enduring the abuse of the Nazis. Several victims wish these memories would vanish from their subconscious, but instead Elie Wiesel took the liberty of writing Night, which is a memoir that valiantly recounts his experience as a Holocaust survivor. His autobiographical account of the concentration camps grimly illustrates the agony felt by the victims and exposes to the public how the actions of the Nazi regime would mentally, physically, and emotionally affect the...
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...Night Essay Prompt 1 Why did Elie Wiesel choose to rename the book “Night” rather than keep the previous title “The World Remained Silent” for his story of his Holocaust experience? The both fit the book well but Night has a more figurative meaning compared to “The World Remained Silent” which is very literal and you don’t have to really think about why the title is what it is. I think Night is a much better choice of a title because it has multiple meanings of what it could be and the reader can decide and choose their own interpretation on it rather than having a set meaning which removes a lot of the effect of having a title that the reader can create their own meaning for and have it mean something to them rather than it being just a title....
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...die and more suffer. He survived one of the worst events in human history and is now sharing his unbelievable journey with millions across the world. In his Holocaust memoir Night, Elie Wiesel discusses the theme of Race. Through his use of diction, imagery, and dialogue Wiesel powerfully expresses to the reader that the Holocaust was an extremely painful journey with many struggles along the way. Wiesel’s use of diction specifically demonstrates the dehumanization and racist effects shown toward the Jews everyday. In chapter 6, one of the SS officers addresses the Jews as “Filthy dogs!” (Wiesel 63). This use of diction shows that the SS officers did not even view the Jews as Jew or as any race at all. Instead they viewed them as dogs, filthy dogs. The word filthy implies the meaning of disgust or unsanitary. As if it is their own fault that they are dirty. Another use of diction was in chapter 5, “I had ceased myself to be anything but ashes.” (Wiesel 50). “Ceased myself to be anything,” means nothing. He has become nothing but ashes. It is very straight to the point, short and brief....
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...even do anything they would still be beaten; if someone was found doing something, they would be killed on the spot. No one had any possessions in concentration camps (except for very few lucky people), everyone was equal. The SS units (which were basically Nazi police) watched over these camps. The SS made people shower in disinfectant and put on random clothes from other people after the showers. Some Nazi doctors were in concentration camps and some of them performed cruel experiments on people. The notorious Dr. Mengele was one these doctors that performed numerous experiments, especially on twins to see if there could be a way to make more “Aryans”. There were selections where people were pointed left or right to see which people were the most fit, those that didn’t pass where sent to the side that goes to the death camps (very lucky people were able to switch sides in order to live). Concentration camps were split up by gender during selections. Dr. Mengele attended as many selections as possible. Elie Wiesel actually confronted Dr. Mengele during selections. Dr. Mengele ended up being the most wanted man in the world for his crimes and the reward for catching him was millions of dollars. Unfortunately Dr. Mengele was never brought to justice and died naturally in his hideout. When Germany was forced to retreat, the people in the concentration camps were either transported by train or by marching. Mostly Jews, captured Russians, people that the Nazis saw as inferior, and...
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...The book I read for this assignment is Night by Elie Wiesel. Night is a memoir about Wiesel's horrific experiences at the German concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald. In Night, there are two main conflicts. We see Wiesel struggle with his faith in god and his faith in humanity itself. In the beginning of the book, we get to see a bit of Elie's life. Elie is a 13-year-old Jewish boy living in Sighet, Transylvania. "By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the temple" (20). Elie finds a mentor in Moshe the Beadle, a poor Hungarian immigrant that possesses a deep understanding of Jewish mysticism. Moshe and Elie pray together. Moshe the Beadle also helps Elie with his studies in...
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