Elie Wiesel : A Resilient, Compassionate, Wise, And Intelligent Human Being Essay

Elie Wiesel is one of the few to survive the Holocaust. At the age of 15, young Elie Wiesel and his family were deported to Auschwitz, where the lives of millions of Jews were taken. The years Elie spent at the camp, he witnessed many deaths and also the lives of innocent children being taken. These memories will forever stay with him as he expresses in the seven books he has written. The Holocaust had an environment that was crucial to live in and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, wants the history of the Holocaust to live on because he doesn’t want anyone to live through the living hell he had to go through.

From the time where Elie had to decide to fight for his father’s life, to the time where he questioned his beliefs, Elie has had to make many life-changing decisions. As some of his decisions left negative consequences, some were left a positive outcome. In the end, all the decisions Elie had made in the camps has made his life miserable or at its best. For better or for worse, the events that Elie encountered makes his life unforgettable as realizes there was more to life than he had thought of

many times during the book it talks about Wiesel’s problems. Elie’s first problem would be when he was in Buna, a concentration camp. This was a problem for Wiesel because he didn't have food, water, and at sometimes air. In the book Elie says “ At ten o’clock we were given our daily ration of bread” (Wiesel 34 ). This quote shows how that they only got bread once a day from their SS Officers, and that they didn't have food. Another problem Wiesel had is the loss of family. Elie got taken away from his mom and sister when they were deported on the train but got to stay with his father. Elie says “ I certainly do. But on one condition: I want to stay with my father” (Wiesel 35). With Elie being taken away from his mom and sister, he wanted to stay with his father through the whole thing. Wiesel’s father was his strength to stay alive. Elie had tough adversities he had to go through in his life and he was strong and overcame them.

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” - George Bernard Shaw. George Shaw’s famous quote describes that to achieve, you must change yourself. On May 1944, Elie Wiesel and his family were forced out from his home in Sighet, Romania to live in Auschwitz, Germany. He and his two older sisters survived the holocaust, Elie then wrote his experience in 1960. During the span of the book, “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the novel demonstrates that traumatic events can change a person drastically. In the beginning, Elie lived with his family in Germany, his mother, his father, and his three siblings. The Germans forced the Jews to hand over their valuables, live in ghettos and finally moving them to concentration camps, including Elie’s family. He was disunited from his mother and three siblings, but managed to stay with his father. At first when he entered the camp he was pessimistic and discouraged when he saw the townspeople crying including his father. After, Elie then learned to take care of himself and his father during tragic events, he stuck to his ambitions and values which led him to go through many obstacles , despite the limitations, and be free of the camp of Auschwitz. As he set out Eliezer was an immature and carefree 15 year old who developed into a responsible young adult.

In the book, our narrator, Elie, is constantly going through changes, and almost all of them are due to his time spent in Auschwitz. Prior to the horrors of Auschwitz, Elie was a very different boy, he had a more optimistic outlook on life. During the first few pages of the book, Elie tells us a bit about how he viewed the world before deportation, “ I was almost thirteen and deeply observant. By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the temple.” ( 3). Elie was, as he says himself, deeply observant and devoted most of his time to his faith. He spent almost all of his time studying and worshiping. At this point, Elie’s faith is the center of his life. Elie is also shown to do a few other things and has a few more early character traits aside from being dedicated to what he believes in. Elie also sees the best of people, a few pages later he says, “The news is terrible,’ he said at last. And then one word: ‘transports’ The ghetto was to be liquidated entirely… ‘Where will they take us?” (Wiesel 14). This is one of the only time we hear about Elie being worried or scared because of the Germans before Auschwitz, and still, despite the warnings that were given and the rumors circulating, Elie doesn’t think that the Germans are actually going to do all of those terrible things. Around this time in the book, Wiesel starts to become more emotionally weighted, but none of what has happened takes full effect until much later. There are multiple instances in the book where Elie is given reason to distrust or even hate the Germans, he talks about how the Gestapo treated him and his family on page 19 “‘Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings!’ the Hungarian police were screaming.”. Yet he then goes on to say, on that very same page, that “Still our first

I honestly agree to what Elie Wiesel has to say, “when human lives are endangered when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Where ever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views, that pace must at the moment become the center of the universe.”

The 20th century was a time of brutal wars and eradication of joy. On April 12, 1999, Elie Wiesel stepped up to the podium, reflecting the violent times as they were months before entering a new century. Wiesel knew very well that the uncountable tragedies had to change, and each individual must exercise his or her own contributions in the face of justice and humanity. His devastating experiences and tragic realizations produced a voice that carried around the world, revealing the fundamental structure of humanity.

Before Elie had been deported to the terrors of the Auschwitz, he was a completely different person. Some of the traits that he exhibited were hopeful, shielded, and religious. As Wiesel said in “Night” “There was joy, yes joy. People must have thought there could be no greater torment in God’s hell than that of being stranded here, on the sidewalk, among the bundles, in the middle of the street under the blazing sun.” (16) The town was not concerned about what was going on. They didn't believe that anything else would get worse. Elie and the people of his town were unable to accept the fact that anyone would do such a horrible deed. Elie and his neighbors were ecstatic because they thought nothing could get worse than it was already; what Hitler would do to them in the future, did not even seen imaginable. The victims believed that God would

The Holocaust was a time of great suffering and hopelessness for Jewish people. About two thirds of the entire Jewish population was brutally killed. One third of all Jews persevered and survived the appalling events happening in and out of the concentration camps. One boy, out of that one third that survived and pushed through was Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel, the holocaust survivor, displays stamina in his memoir physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Writer Elie Wiesel in is Critical speech “The Perils of Indifference,” sheds lights on to world we live in today has evolved into a society of indifference That stripes us form are sense of human characteristics to help others in need of assistance. He supports his claim by illustrating the affect the U.S indifferences had towards the jews led to the death of countless amount of jews perishing during the holocaust seen in paragraph 2 and 18. In addition; In paragraph 8 of “The Perils of Indifference,” it states that people who believe in indifferences become “inhuman” showing no form of sympathy towards others. Finally, In paragraph 11, the author draws the connection towards the countless amounts of death during the meinel with all

Before Wiesel traveled to this gruesome death camp, he showed an abundance of positive traits. Some of these being his love for his religion, his strong hope for his future, and his powerful, loving family. In the first few pages Elie confesses his love for his religion and his ambition to pursue it to a teacher of the Jewish religion. He says that “...I told him how unhappy I was not to be able to find in Sighet a master to teach me the Zohar…” (5). He was stating that he wanted to branch off of his current religion and learn a new form of it, but he was limited because no one in his area also studied this form of Judaism. We can also learn that he was hopeful because you can tell that he is still trying to learn this other religion. Elie also writes that “Naturally, we refused to be separated” (20). He was speaking about his family in this quote and how he and his sisters had the opportunity to leave their mom and dad so that they could get to a safer place with the family maid. The mother did not want to go, so no one went; Instead they stuck together in the ghettos. They had an immensely strong family bond and it is shown through this passage. The children chose their family over a more certain safety. The next quote came after they were all in cattle carts, and were traveling to the new place. Elie recalls “It was as though madness had infected all of us” (27). Elie was scared during this time, but also reserved. He just kept to himself on while he was in this cart that was heading somewhere that he did not know.

Before Elie went to Auschwitz, he exhibited many positive character traits. (Such as Compassion, Depressed, and Friendly. An example of compassion that Elie showed before was on page 5 that said, “And Moishe the Beadle, the poorest of the poor of Sighet, spoke to me for hours on end about the Kabbalah’s revelations and its mysteries. Thus began my initiation. Together we would read, over and over against, the same page of the Zohar. Not to learn it by heart but to discover within the very essence of divinity”(Wiesel). How he shows compassion is, Elie treats a man of lower social status with kindness, and the man repays him with studies of the Zohar. So a random act of kindness, could pay off someday, you never know. The next example of how Elie showed traits before Auschwitz was depression on page 10, “The Bible commands us to rejoice during the eight days of Passover, but our hearts were not in it. We wished the holiday would end so as not to have to pretend”(Wiesel 10). Elie was so depressed and scared, that

Forty-two years after entering the concentration camp for the first time, Elie Wiesel remarked, “Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope” (Nobel Lecture 1). This means a lot from someone who endured almost two years of the terror in the WWII concentration camps. During these two years, Elie endured the sadness of leaving his former life and faith behind, the pain of living off of scraps of bread, and the trepidation of the “selections”, where he almost lost his father. He watched the hanging of innocent people, was beat by Kapos and guards time after time, and marched in a death march right after having a foot surgery. Through all of this, he survived because he remained hopeful. Hope was all the Jewish people

The Holocaust was a very terrible time in history over six million Jews perished in concentration camps. Even though in every tragedy there are survivors. Elie Wiesel was a little boy when all of this happened. He experienced all of the terrible things that happened during this time frame. While suffering in the terrible condition of the camp Elie and his father’s relationship goes through a drastic change.

Before Elie went to the Concentration camp, he had many good character traits. On page 31 - 32 Wiesel states, “The wind of revolt died down. We continued to walk until we came to a crossroads. Standing in the middle of it was, though I didn't know it then, Dr. Mengele, the notorious Dr. Mengele. He looked like the typical SS officer: a cruel, though not unintelligent, face, complete with monocle. He was holding a conductor's baton and was surrounded by officers. The baton was moving constantly, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left”… “This conversation lasted no more than a few seconds. It seemed like an eternity.” In this part of the book Elie had just gotten to the camp and is getting sorted by the angel of death. This part of the text showed that Elie was brave because Elie had just talked to a man who had killed hundreds of people, and he never said he was scared or acted like he was frightened. Another trait he had before he changed was that he was hard working. One example of that trait is on page 50, “Sitting on the ground, we counted bolts, bulbs, and various small electrical parts.” In this part of the book after they got