Elie Wiesel Dialectical Journal

Elie’s father loses his strength quickly, “his eyes [grew] dim” (46) almost immediately after arriving. The horrors which he had seen were easily enough to crush the spirit of a former community leader. His disbelief of the horrors he saw questioned the very basis of his soul, and he began to despair. His father’s eyes soon become, “veiled with despair” (81), as he loses hope for survival. The despair of camp life shrouds the human within, showing only another cowed prisoner. Elie’s father no longer can see hope, having his vision clouded by cruelty and hate. Elie’s father is eventually overwhelmed by despair; he, “would not get up. He knew that it was useless” (113). The Nazis crushed his soul, killed his family, stole his home, and eventually took his life; this treatment destroyed the person inside the body. He could no longer summon the strength to stay alive, so he gave up, and collapsed.

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

After 3 weeks at Auschwitz, they get deported to Buna, which is a turning point for the relationship between Elie and Chlomo. The camps influence Elie and give him a crooked mind focused on staying alive and nothing else. This leads to him disregarding his father. This twisted way of thinking, due to the camps, is making Elie cheer during bomb raids at Buna. He states his thoughts “But we were no longer afraid of death, at any rate, not of that death” (57). This shows that he is willing to die to see the camps destroyed. The most horrifying event that demonstrates his twisted mind is when Eliezer pays no heed to his father while he was being repeatedly beat with an iron bar. Eliezer, rather than acting indifferent and showing nothing, actually feels angry with his father. “I was angry at him for not knowing how to avoid Idek’s outbreak” (52). The new lifestyle of the camps affected Elie and his relationship with his father for the worse.

In Elie Wiesel's memoire, instincts of self-preservation overwhelm all other human emotion. While at Auschwitz Elie and his father were transferred to new barracks were Elie's father was beaten by a gypsy inmate who was in charge for politely asking were the bathroom was. Elie describes his reaction of standing petrified and thinking "What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal's flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast? Remorse began to gnaw at me. All I could think was: I shall never forgive them for this. My father must have guessed my thoughts, because he whispered in my ear: 'It doesn’t hurt.' His cheek still bore the red mark of the hand." (3.117-120)Elie's lack of reaction showcases how the environment of the concentration camp was already conditioning Elie to put his needs of survival ahead of his human identity. Weasels description of the events show how the brutality of the camps have changed Elie's actions and thoughts because Elie knows that interfering in the encounter would mean sacrificing basic survival; love and human emotions are no longer a priority.

Elie first recalls Dr. Mengele’s “eight short, simple words” (Wiesel 27) when he enters the camps: “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Wiesel 27) In this part of the book, Elie and his father are separated by his mother and sisters. This metaphorically kills Elie because he is very attached to his family as are they to him. A piece of Elie has been taken away from him forever. Later in his memoir, he mentions the cruel hanging of the Pipel. Previous hangings that day did not phase Elie, but when the young, angelic Pipel was hanged, Elie said his once flavorful soup “tasted of corpses.” A man near Elie was saying “Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer him: “Where is He? Here He is- He is hanging here on this gallows…”(Wiesel 62) This is a powerful quote that shows how Elie has also began to question his faith. This brings about the mindset of the death of God in Elie. Elie begins to show distrust and rebellion in his God. This is a sharp contrast to Elie’s former beliefs. When Elie’s father dies, Elie emotionally shuts his mind off. He says “After my father’s death, nothing could touch me anymore.” He had finally given up. His father was his rock tied to the balloon, his reason to keep going. Without his father, Elie gave up and became zombified like the rest of the broken souls. Elie fully turned into the emotionless man that he was set to become as a result of surviving

The quote “First they came for the Jews” means that people will ignore trouble and if they don’t speak out for other people it will be too late. Also, I think that we should not ignore injustice against specific groups just because we are not a member of that group and because one day we might become the victims and then nobody will defend us. For example, if people see a problem that is happening why not speak out, so that the problem could stop. One related example that we see in the book Night by Elie Wiesel is when Elie says that “How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and the world kept Silent?”. This is related because all the people were treated badly like slaves in a place where no one could

An interesting passage is, “I have nothing to say of my life during this period. It no longer mattered. After my father’s death, nothing could touch me anymore” (Wiesel 82).

During his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s outlook on life shifted to a very pessimistic attitude, showing emotions and actions including rebellion, forgetfulness of humane treatment, and selfishness. Elie shows rebellion early in the Holocaust at the Solemn Service, a jewish ceremony, by thinking, “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled” (Wiesel 67). Elie had already shifted his view on his religion and faith in God. After witnessing some of the traumas of the concentration camps, Elie questioned what he did to deserve such treatment. Therefore, he began to rebel against what he had grown up learning and believing. Not only had Elie’s beliefs changed, his lifestyle changed as well. When Elie’s foot swelled, he was sent to the doctor, where they put him “...in a bed with white sheets. I [he] had forgotten that people slept in sheets” (Wiesel 78). Many of the luxuries that Elie may have taken for granted have been stripped of their lives, leaving Elie and the other victims on a thin line between survival and death. By explaining that he forgot about many of these common luxuries, Elie emphasizes the inhumane treatment the victims of the Holocaust were put through on a daily basis.

Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of the concentration camps and their mental tool. Over the course of Night, Wiesel demonstrates, that exposure to an uncaring, hostile world leads to destruction of faith and identity.

Elie reflects on the first night at the camps, he says “Never shall I forget the night at that camp that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed...Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the natural silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live…” (pg.34). Elie was explaining that was the night it all changed for him, how it will always be apart of him. After seeing what this camp had to offer, to still even be alive was a privilege. He knew then, Auschwitz was just a Jews death sentence waiting to happen. He will never forget because it will always be stuck with him, that it was so horribly traumatizing that one could be so evil to innocent people. Think about Elie’s motivation it seems to go up and down, there were different things that would build his hope up but at the same time deprive him from it. The author illustrates this point when he states “The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me” (pg.86) When Elie and all the other men were told to march on, the SS officers told them to increase their pace more and more and soon found themselves running at full pace for hours and hours. The SS officers had orders to shoot anyone who could not sustain the pace. Elie was explaining how his foot was aching and he was so exhausted and desperate for it all to be over, but never seemed to end. He was so reckless at this point, but he remembers his father. Elie tells us “My father's presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running next to me out of strength, desperate. I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his soul support?” (pg.86-87). This simply proves that this was the only reason that Elie was to go on was because he wanted his father to go on.

Elie says he not only would have helped his father after he was slapped but that he would have “dug his nails into this criminal’s flesh.” Showing that his father’s relationship was strong and they would have fought for each other before Auschwitz. But now, Elie is frozen in survival mode, cluing into the attitude of Auschwitz’ instilling philosophy of every man for himself.

While Elie Wiesel, a Jewish boy subjugated to the violence of the Holocaust in Night, embarks on his atrocious journey in struggling to survive the brutality perpetrated on him, he loses his innocence in the traumatic circumstances. Wiesel’s main aspiration of writing about his development from childhood to adulthood is to showcase how cruelty within society can darken innocents’ souls. As Elie grows throughout the story, he starts to understand that he has changed from a pure, little child to a young man filled with distress and thoughts of danger. He reflects over what kind of individual he has evolved into because of the all the killings and torture he has witnessed: “I too had become a different

When Elie arrived at the first concentration camp, he was a child, but when left he was no longer human. Elie’s character changed through his encounter of the Holocaust. Elie idolized his religion, Judaism, one relevant identification for him. Elie spent hours praying and learning about Judaism, but it was the reason he and his family were tormented for. Elie was so intrigued by Judaism, that he wanted someone a “master” to guide in his studies of Kabbalah, an ancient spiritual wisdom that teaches how to improve the lives (Wiesel 8). Furthermore, he loses hope in God and in life. Elie only had a few items when he arrived in the camp, one being his family, but that would soon be taken from him. When Elie and his family arrived at the camp in Auschwitz, he was kept by his father. He always gazed after his father, caring for him until his death.

How can one survive through hell, through starvation, over exertion, forced labor, torture and watching other people, maybe even close friends or relatives, suffer terrible consequences? How can one survive through absolute cruelty and live to tell the tale of his pain and loss? Welcome to Night, a memoir that introduces the reality of a true survivor, Elie Wiesel, of the Holocaust. This irreproachable chapter consist of many conversations, descriptions and added details that not only affected my understanding, but also helped me to effectively connect my life to this chapter. In addition, there are four important moments or sectors of the chapter where I found that descriptions, details and conversations played a major role in my understanding and connections. At the beginning of the chapter, there were a few descriptions that set my understanding of the Nazi concentration camps in a new way. Elie and his father are just arriving in the new camp, Buna, when they meet an astonishing figure, that turns out to be the head of the camp, “He was a stocky man with big shoulders, the neck of a bull, thick lips, and curly hair. He gave an impression of kindness. From time to time, a smile would linger in his gray-blue eyes. Our convoy consisted of a few ten- and twelve-year-olds” (pg.47). Now, before I read this description of the Buna camp leader and his personal interests, I thought that the concentration camp leaders showed a complete brutality and hatred towards the enslaved

After a long journey spent in cattle cars, Elie Wiesel and his family arrived in Birkenau, part of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Upon entering, Elie’s mother and sisters were forced to the right (with the other women and children). Meanwhile, Elie and his father were moved to the left (with the men). Elie was soon convinced that both himself and his father would be thrown into the crematoriums, where he saw adults, children, and even babies being burned to death. At this point, Elie pinched himself and thought, “Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?” (Wiesel 32). Not only did Elie experience all of this so suddenly, but he did not know that the rest of his family would experience similar fates to those being thrown into the flames. After minutes of being in Birkenau, the author already witnessed events he