Elie Wiesel: The Great Humanitarian

The Holocaust changed the lives of many. Those that survived have many terrifying stories to tell. Many survivors are too horrified to tell their story because their experiences are too shocking to express in words. Eli Wiesel overcomes this fear by publicly relaying his survival of the Holocaust. "Night", his powerful and moving story, touches the hearts of many and teaches his readers a great lesson. He teaches that in a short span of time, the ways of the world can change for the worst. He wants to make sure that if the world didn't learn anything from hearing about the atrocities of the Holocaust, maybe they'll be able to learn something from Elie's own personal experience. Usually, a person can internalize a situation better

Elie Wiesel was a Jewish American born in Romania. His principles were influenced by being raised in a heavily religious and liberal family. In the 1940s, his own country forced his family to flee to the ghettos, and not long after, Wiesel, “a young Jewish boy from a small town,” was captured by Nazis, waking up to the perilous realization of “eternal infamy”(Wiesel). In April 1945, after enduring through starvation and punishment, he was finally liberated.

Over ten million people died during the Holocaust, and over six million of them were Jewish. The book Night, is about Elie Wiesel, a Romanian child that was taken to a concentration camp. In the camp, Wiesel and his dad are separated from his mom and sister. In the book, many themes are used such as humanity. The prisoners slowly lose humanity in the camp and it is necessary for them to survive incidents such as fighting for bread, risking their lives for soup, and beating up people.

I think that Elie Wiesel left a valuable lesson behind for all of us to heed.

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

and the ghetto was to be destroyed. They did not know where they were going ,

Another theme that elie shows in the book is in a terrible or even horrible situation you always need your humanity at side. Elie meets a french girl when he was at one of his terrible times she showed that the humanity was still in her no matter what happened. “I dragged myself to my corner. I ached all over. I felt a cool hand wiping my blood-stained forehead. It was the French girl. She gave me her mournful smile and slipped a bit of bread into my hand. She looked into my eyes. I felt that she wanted to say something but was choked by fear. For a long moment she stayed like that, then her face cleared and she said to me in almost perfect german: ‘Bite your lip, little brother. . . . Don't cry. Keep your anger and hatred for another day, for later on. The day will come, but not now. . . . Wait. grit your teeth and wait. . . .’ ” (Wiesel #51). The significance of this quote is how she had the humanity to help someone and make them feel better after all of it. She put him first before anyone. Her kindness and her words showed that she still had her humanity to be there for him. She even put her life on the line for him. She never spoke so they thought she was french but as said “...In almost perfect German...” she spoke kind words that even if a kapo heard her she would have died. For they would have punished her. Later in the book elie would have been punished or even killed for what he had done to be with his father. “The SS officers were doing the selection: the weak, to the left; those who walked well, to the right. My father was sent to the left. I ran after him. An SS officer shouted at my back: "Come back!" I inched my way through the crowd. Several SS men rushed to find me, creating such confusion that a number of people were able to switch over to the right—among them my father and I. Still, there were gunshots and some dead. The importance of

During the holocaust the Nazis imprisoned millions of people, among them Elie Wiesel and his family. Elie Wiesel is the main character and author of Night and is victim to many atrocities committed by the Nazis. His journey lasts over a year in which he undergoes many hardships. He uses his father as motivation to survive the horrible things that are done to him. In the novel Night, Elie and the other prisoners experience dehumanization through poor living conditions and abusive treatment by the Nazi guards.

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." This quote was once said by a humble man whose name was, Elie Wiesel. He was a strong, but gentle man who had never thought he would undergo the pain that he endured. Elie lived humbly but happily with his family, which he adored. He had two older sisters, one younger sister, and two happily married parents. He was very religious and stuck to his Jewish beliefs and traditions. For the most part, everybody in his community treated each other with benevolence, respecting each others beliefs and traditions. Elie was just a normal kid wanting to live as much of a normal life as possible. He never looked for trouble or ways to hurt someone, he just wanted peace and love in his life. Elie also stated that "No

Elie Wiesel was a devout follower of the Jewish faith. At a young age, he developed a strong desire to grow in his faith by studying and following Jewish principles. Under the instruction of his mentor, Moishe the Beadle, Elie studied the Torah and the Cabbala. He described his first account of Jewish oppression when Moishe was deported for months and returned to Sighet to inform the remaining Jews of the deportees’ fate and to warn them of what was to come. He spoke of Jews being brutally abused and infants burned alive. No one seemed to heed Moishe’s warning. Soon after, German Nazis invaded Hungary and forced Elie and his family along with several other Jewish communities into small ghettos. This was only the beginning of the numerous accounts of brutality and suffering that he would face.

In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie Wiesel is a young boy who struggles to survive after being forced to live in the brutal concentration camp of Auschwitz. In Auschwitz, death and suffering is rampant, but due to compassionate words and actions from others, Elie is able to withstand these severe living conditions and overcome the risk of death in the unforgiving Auschwitz. As shown through the actions and words of characters in Night, compassion, the sympathetic pity for the suffering or misfortune of others is critical to the human experience because it enables humans to empathize with each other, empathizing which allows us to feel the need to assist others which can often be vital for survival.

Elie Wiesel was fifteen at the time when he was taken. When Wiesel was at the camp with his father, he experienced and saw things no human could imagine. Wiesel being at this camp caused him to grow up pretty fast. He also had to care for his elderly father, so it was harder for him to survive. Wiesel had this lingering weight, his father, always on him. In the memoir Night there’s a scene where Wiesel gets put in the hospital because he had an infected foot (74). After Wiesel went through the surgery, he had to recover for 2 weeks. Throughout those 2 weeks, Wiesel didn’t have to work and he even got to sleep in a real bed. Also the Russians were coming to liberate the camp, but only the people that were in the hospital were liberated. Wiesel had a chance to be free, but decided to escape and return to his father even though he was recovering from surgery. Elie Wiesel really showed an act of kindness, love, and affection. He sacrificed his freedom for his father. By him making that sacrifice, he lost his innocence and took responsibility for the life of his father and

Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel in his speech, “The Perils of Indifference,” stresses that becoming indifferent is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a person and their surroundings. He supports his claim by first defining and describing indifference, he then talks about how it can be described in many different ways, but ultimately indifference is the end. Wiesel’s purpose is to warn his audience against the dangers of insouciance and its effects on the world. He establishes and apprehensive tone for his audience due to the traumatizing events of his past.

What is it that separates us from animals? Is it our intelligence? Our anatomy? Or is there something more, deep inside each of us that distinguishes humanity from brute nature? To speaker Elie Wiesel, caring for others is what makes humans exhibit humanity. On April 12, 1999, Elie Wiesel delivered his speech called “The Perils of Indifference” before President Clinton and the entirety of Congress. Wiesel’s speech focuses on the atrocities that had occurred in the past century, which he claimed were products of indifference, as he attempts to explain why humanity displays apathy to such tragedies. After growing up as a young Jewish during the Holocaust, Wiesel has seen his share of inhumanity from Schutzstaffel, or SS Soldiers. Elie Wiesel’s reasoning behind delivering such an emotionally charged speech is to make his audience aware of the apathy occurring globally. Throughout his speech to Congress, Wiesel uses the persuasive elements ethos, pathos and logos to convey to his audience that it is empathy that makes us human.

Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in Transylvania, which is now Romania. He and his family were deported by the Nazi’s in 1943 to the most notorious concentration camp of all time, Auschwitz. He regained his freedom in 1945 when the camp he was at, he was transferred to Buchenwald with his father, was liberated by the allies. After the war, Elie studied writing and became a journalist in Paris. It was