Elie Wiesel Reflection

The Holocaust began around 1933 when Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany and leader of the Nazi Party. During that time, the first concentration camp, Dachau, was established to torture and kill Jewish people. Soon after, in 1935, Nuremberg Race Laws against Jews were decreed and depriving Jews of German citizenship. Germany then invaded Poland, starting World War II in Europe. With the start of World War II came many more concentration camps, and millions of deaths. Six million European Jews lost their lives during this horrific time. Many survivors shared their stories after they were freed, so that the world would know of the horrors they experienced. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, told his story in his book, Night. Elie Wiesel was a teenager during the Holocaust, but lived on into his eighties and continued to speak out against what the Nazi’s did to his family.

Many thoughts went through my mind while reading about Wiesel’s final experiences as a German prisoner. I felt pity and sadness for him. His last few days as a German prisoner were his most difficult. He lost his father, he went days without food and passed days out in the freezing cold. I was also impressed on how he fought through these events. Despite his exhaustion or hunger, he never surrendered his life. He found strength that he never knew he had and showed the readers how strong humans can be when their lives depend on it. If I could meet Elie Wiesel and discuss with him about his time during the war, I would want to tell him many things. I would tell him that the time he spent at the concentration camps made him the man he is today

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

Elie’s faith before being exposed to the concentration camps is apparent and he works hard to strengthen and grow his faith. All throughout Night, Wiesel shows the eminent effect faith has on individual’s actions and attitude. At the beginning of Night, Elie’s faith is a key feature of his lifestyle and attitude. Studying under the wisdom of Moishe the Beadle, Elie can put his faith in retrospect as he says, “In the course of those evenings I became convinced that Moishe the Beadle would help me enter eternity, into that time when question and answer would become one” (Wiesel 5). It is very clear that Elie is very emotionally and physically invested in his faith. Before camp Elie was so eager to expand and connect to his faith in which he becomes, “convinced” that he fully understands his faith proving him to be a devout Jewish boy. Thus because, Moishe the Beadle is helping him “enter eternity” and build his faith. Elie’s whole life revolves

It can be hard for someone to imagine that a person he/she loves and praises would have the potential to betray him or her. Elie feels that way every single day when God betrays him in the novel Night, he then finds himself questioning his faith very often. Through this text, the Elie Wiesel begins to lose his faith as well as many other prisoners in the camp and he believes God is just watching him suffer and not helping him or anyone else. Elie was a strong believer of God, but Elie realized God wouldn’t do this to the Jews and Elie felt is was best to stop believing in someone who isn’t helping him. He wondered if good things happened anymore. Therefore, Elie starts to lose his faith when God no longer loves him and doesn’t help him when he needs the most help.

“I learned that the hard way” it is a statement that is often used in regular everyday conversation. Situations or struggles that individuals have to deal with teach them lessons about the world and may in turn impact who they are. In Elie Wiesel’s novel, Night, Elie develops the idea that adversity in one's life can quite drastically change or shape a person's identity and mentally wear them down to the point where they are incapable of being who they truly are even after they already have developed their own ways of being. He continually develops this idea throughout the book when he talks about his relationship with God and his view of his family or more specifically his father. Additionally, he shows this with his father, Shlomo, who begins

If you ask anybody, they will know about the Holocaust, but if you ask how the prisoners felt, some wouldn’t know how to answer. Some felt an undying love for their family, others an undying hate for the Nazi regime, and many had their view of life completely changed. The latter was what had happened to Eliezer Wiesel, also known as Elie. During his memoir known as Night Elie’s tone continuously darkened throughout the book.

He witnessed people being thrown into fiery pits. He describes this change, “The student of Talmud, the child I was had been consumed by the flames” (Wiesel 37). This shows that he no longer had time to study his religious texts nor did he care about them because he thought that this was what his God wanted. Elie was once eager to dedicate his knowledge to God. Now, after spending one day in the notorious death camps he loses confidence.

Over six million Jews were killed in the brutal events of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the horrible event, has recalled his story in his memoir Night. Elie and his father are Jewish, meaning, they practice the religion of Judaism. Judaism is a monotheistic religion based off the teaching of the Torah. In Night, there is a shift in Elies religious beliefs throughout the memoir. The change in his beliefs had a lasting effect on Elie and his survival though the Holocaust. Throughout the many concentration camps Elie and his father lived in, many other prisoners faced the same dilemma of keeping their faith.

During the Holocaust, Elie’s perspective on God and his religion was extremely changed. Before the effects of the Holocaust had reached him, he was incredibly devoted to his God and other parts of his religion. When he’s describing his early life before the camps and ghetto, he said that at age 12, “by day I studied

Family first.This is what Elie Wiesel might be thinking every time he dodges being freed from the terrible Holocaust just for his father. Every single time he could be free from the pain, struggle, and atrocity of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor that sees hundreds of people killed per day and is labored vigorously, and is starved until he is only skin and bone. He survives the Holocaust but not before going through hard labor and seeing many unseeable things. Elie Wiesel survives the Holocaust and leaves a different person than before, going through physical, emotional and spiritual changes.

Family is most important.This must have been what is probably what Elie Wiesel is thinking every time he dodges being freed from the terrible Holocaust just for his father. every single time he could be free from the pain, struggle, and atrocity of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor that sees hundreds of people killed per day,

Many awful things happen in the world to innocent people. Many people who haven't done anything wrong get punished, hurt, broken, and disrespected. Like in the book Night by Elie Wiesel, the jewish people didn't do anything but have their own morals that they believe in. Yet, they were brutally and morbidly tortured in Auschwitz until they wished for death upon themselves and others. On page 32, Elie states with a strong passion, “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.¨ When Elie says this, it relates back to the message i believe is conveyed throughout the book. In life, bad things and good things will happen, but thats´s life, and that won't change. Yet,it´s what we do about those things and how we react to those things that determines how it will turn out in the future.

Not only were more than eleven million women, men and children horrifyingly executed during the Holocaust, but of those eleven-million, approximately six million were of the Jewish faith. Before they were cremated, gassed or hanged, the prisoners of the concentration camps were treated like animals. They worked all day and were fed little to no food. The Nazis never hesitated to take a life or anything else that belonged to the prisoners. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, a once young, Jewish boy, recounts his life during the Holocaust. Throughout his time in the camps, Wiesel experiences many things that make him feel less than human resulting in his eventually nonexistent faith in the god he once used to worship habitually.

Imagine living through the gruesome Holocaust, living throughout a multitude of different concentration camps for years, having to work in order to gain “freedom” something all humans should receive at birth, witnessing countless starving bodies, and even worse having to watch people slowly die before your eyes some of which could be your own family. Imagining these atrocities is one thing, but actually living through the torment that millions of Jews had to endure is another. However an author by the name of Elie Wiesel was a survivor of the Holocaust who experienced all of those matters that were listed. In his memoir Night he took the reader along with him as he reiterated his terrible experience hopping from concentration camp to concentration camp, waiting until the day where he will be free once again. The way he described his experience is seriously shocking, the readers of the memoir contemplate how humans can do this to other humans. Throughout the