...Would you ignore if six million people were assassinated? The historical background of Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, has experienced such a significant event. Wiesel is an Auschwitz survivor and his memoir, Night, reflects the society and the beliefs of its time. A controversy about this work is that some people believe the Holocaust never happened and as a result regard the book as false. However, this novel was important at the time it was written, because it was a time when people didn‘t believe in the Holocaust. In addition, Elie Wiesel’s background is essential to the Holocaust’s memory, because it deals with the Nazi’s genocide. The author of Night, who is also the protagonist of the book, shows how delusion and rumors spread false hopes and lies throughout the camp. The author also showed how Hitler’s belief that other races were inferior and didn’t deserve to live led to Hitler’ rise to power. Wiesel’s story is crucial to that time-period since it shows his perseverance through multiple concentration camps and the loss of close family members....
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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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...In reference to his experience during the Holocaust and why he wrote night, author Elie Wiesel says without the experience he would have not become "… A witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory" (Wiesel ). The Holocaust is a memorable event that occurred in Germany and Eastern Europe in 1933 threw 1945. This tragedy was runned by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party, killing a massive amount of Jews, homosexuals, Catholics, poles, and gypsies. Hitler strongly believed that the Jews were responsible for economic struggles also known as the great depression. Many people also believed they were to blame for the loss of war. In the...
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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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...People who are religious are close with God and deny questioning His Being. Wiesel was one of the Jews who survived the Holocaust during World War ll. Wiesel’s identity of God changed during his experience in Auschwitz due to the harsh conditions faced. In the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel the major theme throughout the whole story is that people struggle to maintain any sort of faith in god when faced with extreme struggles. The greatest change to Elie Wiesel’s identity was his loss of faith in God. Before leaving with his family to the camps, Elie was very religious person he would cry after praying at night. When the German police came to take the Jews to the ghettos, they pulled Elie from his prayer. Elie thanks God when he was told he is...
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...Elie’s Faith Throughout His Life Elie Wiesel’s Night tells the haunting tale of a young man being turned into an animal because of his religion. Elie was a passionate teen boy who was devoted to Judaism living in Czechoslovakia. But soon, Nazi Germany begins the Final Solution, a meticulous plan to eradicate all Jews and any other unorthodox humans in Europe. Thus, Elie and his family is transported to the concentration camp, Auschwitz. He faces the horrors of the camp, and his faith begins to waver as he and God watch innocent lives being stripped away. Throughout the book, Elie is constantly battling his devotion to God, changing from the faithful teen in the beginning to the animalistic man who hated his god and back to a man who was able to regain his faith. Eliezer was extremely devoted in his religious studies in the beginning, almost as if all his trust and hope went into God. He had a fiery passion to pursue and study the ancient, holy texts of his people, keeping his faith close to his heart. He spent his time either studying or staying at a place of worship. Elie began at the early age of twelve, saying that “I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue...
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...mentally, and emotionally. The book titled Night by Elie Wiesel is a strong representation of this. The book details the attitude of the people running the camp, the circumstances that could make one give up on religious faith, and the growth of frustration and overall sadness. Being a prisoner at a Nazi camp was one of the worst experiences imaginable. When Elie arrives he is quickly given an obvious message that his time here will not be very pleasant. "Remember it always, let it be graven in your memories. You are in Auschwitz. And Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It is a concentration camp. Here, you must work. If you don't you will go straight to the chimney. To the crematorium. Work or crematorium—the choice is yours” (29). This quote clearly illustrates the intentions of the camp higher-ups. At this place, Mr.Wiesel and his fellow prisoners were not perceived as a people, but rather slaves and animals used for Nazi agenda development. Anyone that protested for their basic human...
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...“Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.” is one of the many influential quotes Elie Wiesel has stated. Elie Wiesel is a nobel peace prize winner and has written dozens of fiction and nonfiction, addressing and crusaded against abuse and intolerance around the world inspired by his dreadful times in the Holocaust, including “Night”. In the book, Elie was only 15 when he and his family were taken and separated in Auschwitz because they were Jews. Throughout Auschwitz Elie experiences many horrid events that forever changed and shaped him into who he is today. and In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the main character, Elie, was effected by the events in the book because he lost his faith, gave up on humanity, and was physiological changed. Throughout Elie’s experiences during his time spent at Auschwitz, he started to lose his faith in God. Elie started to rebel and question God. Elie Wiesel stated in the text “Why, but why would I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled” (Page 67). Elie clearly had lost his faith. The thought of rebelling occurred after so many people died having no power. “He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves?...Kept six crematoria working day and night… had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death?” Elie also implies on page 67. Elie had heart-provoking thoughts occuring on how people could never worship the Lord and believe...
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...Adolph Hitler was a German man who believed his race should rule over all other races. Blue eyes and blonde hair is what kept a person safe in the 1940’s. Hitler used the power of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis) and the strength of the paramilitary organization Schutzstaffel (SS) to establish himself as dictator of Germany. He was a very charismatic man, which was beneficial to his goal to have people support his desire to rid Germany of all “undesirable” people. Under his direction and with the aid of his followers, Hitler was successful in “exterminating” millions of non-Germans and non-Christians in a dark segment of history called the Holocaust. Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Elie Wiesel’s Night, and Gerda Weissmann’s recollections in One Survivor Remembers center around events which took place before and during World War II. These three titles observe how the human spirit is able to respond to unimaginable horrors and unspeakable situations with an indomitable inner strength, enduring hope, and creative defenses. Even in the worst circumstances, the human spirit will not surrender. In the 1940 time era, a person who was not German or Christian was tortured in many devastating and heart-wrenching ways. Slowly, everything was taken from these people, particularly the Jews. Initially, those who did not match the “perfect” identity were forced from their homes with a small amount of personal documents and other belongings and were compelled to live in overcrowded...
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... May 1, 2011 Major Works Data Sheet- Night Title: Night 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...
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...horror in his times in the death camp to shape him today. One personal insight I gained from reading the...
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...Review of “Night” Marcie Mills In 1944 Europe, Elie Weisel and his family are forced into a concentration camp because they are Jewish. When they arrive, Elie and his father are separated from his mother and sisters. As this is happening, he sees Jews that were gassed being thrown into burning mass graves. A Jew's daily ration was a small bowl of thin soup and a small piece of bread. The Jews are forced to run from camp to camp naked; being shot if they stop or slow down. Elie's father gets sick and Elie shares his ration to keep his father alive. Will Elie ever see his mother and sisters again? Will Elie get out alive? The author engages the reader by making them feel like Elie or another Jew. You, the reader, feel like you are in the story. You get mad when Elie's father gets beaten and you feel how hungry they must be. Elie piques the interest of the readers by writing about all the crazy and difficult things he did to stay alive as a Jew during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel was 15 when the Nazis came for the 15,000 Jews of his hometown of Sighet, Transylvania, in May 1944. Upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, his mother and sister were murdered within hours, while he was put to work as a slave labourer. Eight months later, the Germans evacuated the camp and forced the survivors on a death march that ended at Buchenwald. Wiesel was one of the few still alive when the Americans arrived in April 1945. This is written a style that seems to be typical of many modern Israeli novelists;...
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...million Jews by the Nazi command during World War II. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he states, “…in their early days of their accession to power, the Nazis in Germany set out to build a society in which there simply would be no room for Jews. Toward the end of their reign, their goal changed: they decided to leave behind a world in ruins in which Jews would seem never to have existed” (viii). The shock and horror does not lessen regardless of how many times a book or article is read or a movie watched about the Holocaust. Learning about the horrible, dark period from 1935 – 1945 is important in several ways. On one hand, it has been said we must learn about the past in order not to relive it. However, we are also told not to dwell in the past. When studying the Holocaust, both adages have truth. Chilling questions occur when learning about the Holocaust. They are questions that Elie Wiesel repeated in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. Wiesel says he remembers asking his father, “Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?” (118). Millions of Jews were killed by overwork, starvation, torture, and cold blooded murder just because they were a different race and religion. Wiesel urges readers not to forget. Wiesel states, “To forget would not be only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time”(xv). Wiesel later states, “What I do know is that there is ‘response’ in responsibility...
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...I remember when my Expository Writing teacher began explaining to my class the difference between sympathy and empathy. Until that moment, I had never considered the difference, and as a result, I was lacking in the empathy department. Yet, even before that lecture, I had begun to realize that empathizing with people in need is an important part of humanity. The books I had been reading were influencing my ideologies and my perception of the world. In Ray Bradbury’s book, Fahrenheit 451, Montag stated “We need not to be left alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?” An uneducated, unaware America is the most dangerous America that could exist, and I had fallen prey to it. Repeatedly authors like Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, and, more recently, Veronica Roth have warned us of the dangers of becoming indifferent. Yet, I allow myself to become indifferent. Why should I concern ourselves with someone else’s problem? As cliché as it may sound, the real world has real problems and the problems will not go away unless people, like me, to...
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...At first I was not fond of Night I usually like a book that has some kind of mystery or romance involved. With Night I already had an idea of how the book will end and I would not understand any way to pull a romantic notion from it. This book would definitely not be a first choice of mine. Even though I did enjoy reading it and believe that the events should never be forgotten, it is important for our societies to remember the victims along with the dwindling number of survivors. I was very impressed with the wording used; the word choice was very strong. It is amazing that his wife was able to translate and use words with so much power and strength. I had the same feelings and questions after reading Night as I have had after reading Ann Frank’s diary or watching Schindler’s list. How could this happen? What would drive any one to these thoughts or actions and believe it is right, good, or even acceptable. I wonder how Adolf Hitler would have felt if Jews had decided to eradicate Austrian/ Germans? What would he have done, would he have died or survived? I googled Adolf Hitler and there are several websites saying his father was ½ Jewish. There is even a video on UTube about Hitler being part Jewish. With a name like Adolf, some of his facial characteristics, and hair as dark as his why, would he want to annihilate a mass of people who are similar to him? I am not sure if Hitler truly was part Jewish, but if he was, did he know? How would he react if he was alive, the allegations...
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