Elie Wiesel Reflection

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

Elie experienced many changes, as a person while he was in Auschwitz. Before Elie was sent to Auschwitz, he was just a small naive child that new very little

“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.

Elie Wiesel struggles to fight through the concentration camp he must deal with many unfriendly encounters. “I had watched it all happening without moving. I kept silent. In fact, I thought of stealing away in order not to suffer the blows. What’s more, if I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo but at my father. Why couldn't he have avoided Idek’s wrath? That was what life in a concentration camp had made of me…” (pg. 54). Elie wrestles with the idea of how to respond and even if he should react he debates that if he does respond then he will get beat, but if he does not respond then he must watch his father be beat so he thinks to himself what would be more painful? By the end of the beating it is kind of ironic how Eliezer is more

The greatest change to Elie Wiesel’s identity was his loss of faith in God. Before he and his family were moved to the camps, Wiesel was a religious little boy who cried after praying at night (2). When the Hungarian police come to force the Jews to move to the ghettos, they pulled Elie from his prayers (13). Even on his way to Auschwitz, stuffed inside the cattle car with other terrified Jews, Wiesel gave thanks to God when told he would be assigned to labor camps (24). After a few days in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel heard about the crematory and the fact that the Nazis were killing the sick, weak, and young. In his first night in the camp, Wiesel experienced his first crisis of faith: Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. …Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust (32).

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.

The date is April 11, 1945. A 17 year old boy looks towards the ominous gates of the Buchenwald concentration camp after nearly two years of misery and sees his first sign of hope: an American tank standing at the entrance of the gates. This young boy was Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the gruesome events that occurred in concentration camps during WWII. Elie shares a chilling memoir about his experience in his book Night. Throughout the novel, Elie and other Jewish inmates constantly used their families as their primary motive to overcome hardships even while being challenged by tough circumstances.

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

Physically, Elie underwent several changes that left him different from what he had once been. Before the holocaust Elie was a young boy who ate meals regularly and had no need to worry about when he would be getting his next meal or how big it would be. The carefree state of mind that Elie was in did not last. When the holocaust was in full swing he would not

Night by Elie Wiesel focuses on 15 year old Elie’s experiences during the Holocaust. Elie endures circumstances which are so extreme to the point they are almost unbelievable. Elie’s account of his experiences during his life in the concentration camps has taught readers around the world about how to appreciate everything they take for granted, how desperation can make people do crazy things, and the importance of motivation in tough times.

For instance, the Nazis treat the Jews like animals, no respect is given to them, they are constantly mocked and they are punished for no reason. In particular when Elie loses his name and becomes a digit he feels extremely dehumanized, " I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name." (49). Once he lost his name he feels worthless and non-existent, he is nothing but a number to the Nazis. Furthermore, all of the Jews are tattooed with their new identity, from that point they became inferior to the Nazis, something so simple as a name forced the Jews into feeling less than human. Next, the Jews experience massive changes to their bodies due to starvation when Elie is released he is hospitalized " One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me." (115). Elie's self-esteem is so impacted that it changed him mentally, he feels as if the old Elie is dead and he is a whole new person. The struggle he faces in Auschwitz change him so much he no longer recognizes himself, when he looks at himself in the mirror he sees a corpse, not just physically but also dead inside. To sum up, Elie is traumatized by the horrendous things the Nazis make him go through, his self-esteem is so impacted that he transforms into a totally different

The murder of thousands can not only impact the universe, but the ones that live in it. For instance, victims of the Happiest had to deal with, not only losing all of their loved ones but the deaths of others around them. In “Night”, Elie is expiring death, of not only his loved ones, also other Jews who were taken by Hitler. The loss of your family is petrifying. But watching others have their lives slipped away from their fingertips, is indubitably scary. In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, Elie changes drastically throughout the book, because of the time he spent in Auschwitz, one of the most infamous concentration camps.

Humans are very social by nature, the idea of family, and friends are things that separate us from other animals. Ask anyone what important to them, and most will reply family, and friends. This is also true during the holocaust; many of the survivors lived only because of the thought of their loved ones. When he arrives at Auschwitz, Elie meets Stein, a relative from Antwerp. Stein tells them that "the only thing that keeps [him] alive is to know that Reizel and the little ones are still alive. Were it not for them, I would give up…" (45). Because of our social nature, humans become connected to one another on a much deeper level. When a person loses those that they care about the most, they also lose the will to live. For some people this happens very quickly, depression sets in and a person will become immune to their surroundings, no longer caring what happens. Elie survives through the holocaust because his father is with him. Because of his

How did Elie Wiesel change within the holocaust? He changed a lot throughout the holocaust as a person, his physical appearance, his mental stability, and his faith. First I will tell you about how his physical appearance changed, then I will tell you how his mental stability is challenges and finally I will tell you about how his faith changed. As you can guess being put into a concentration camp your physical appearance will change. The biggest change he faced was his physical appearance.

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