Eliezer Internal Conflicts caused by the Guilt of Surviving Essays

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.

Wiesel also uses imagery, of Eliezer loosing the ability to express emotion, to show the dehumanization of Eliezer and the other Jews who are led to undergo drastic emotional changes. Unfortunately, the Jews suffer tremendous difficulties in the concentration camps. The torture that the enslaved Jews experience has obvious physical effects, but it also has mental changes on them. The events that have taken place at the concentration camps has shaken Eliezer so much, that at the sight of his stricken father, he replies, “My father had just been struck, before my eyes, and I had not flickered an eyelid. I had looked on and said nothing.” (Pg. 37 old book) After the Kapo beats his father to the ground for asking permission to use the bathroom, Elieizer is surprised at himself because he is incapable of doing so much as lifting a finger or saying anything in his father's defense. Like the other Jews, he is dehumanized with his main concern becoming self-preservation. Thus, Eliezer looses his compassion for others, including his father. When his father dies due to dysentery, Eliezer states, “I did not weep and it pained me that I could not weep.

the horrific events in the concentration camp and the ever-present risk of death does Eliezer

In the beginning he was horrified of the things he saw. On his first day at a concentration camp Elie saw babies being thrown into large pits of fire, people being taken to the crematory and Jews being hit and beaten for no reason. As time past and Wiesel was moved from camp to camp he started to only care about his survival and the horrible things done by the Nazi’s became apart of his everyday life.He saw a boy whose face he said looked like the face of an angel being hung. The little boy struggled to breathe for over thirty minutes before the life in his eyes faded away. Wiesel's own father was beaten because he was sick and not given the proper medical care from the nazi’s. Days later his father was taken to the crematory. Instead of Wiesel being sad he was relieved that he no longer had to take care of his father. Elie lost friends family and saw many more being killed. Wiesel was almost numb to the things happening around him.

Wiesel’s mind set changed greatly from the torment he withstood during this time in his life. Mr. Wiesel applies strong emotions to events that normally others would not, which, for example he stated one page one hundred that while in Aden “Our ship’s passengers amused themselves by throwing coins to the “natives,” who dove to retrieve them. An elegant Parisia lady took great pleasure in this game.” This game made two children fight fiercely, just like the prisoners did when germans threw bread pieces into the wagon they were in. This shows that certain things remind Eliezer of his experience in the holocaust and cause him to have flashbacks which overwhelm him with emotions that most others in his situation would not have. ELiezer’s view on what others do and why also changed. When Rabbi Eliahu came looking for his son, Elie remembered seeing the son abandon the Rabbi while they were running. Eliezer thought it was terrible and prayed that he would never do the same to his father. Then on page one hundred five Elie stated “I knew that I was longer arguing with him but with Death itself, with Death that he had already chosen.” right before he went inside of the block and left his father in the cold to die. When Elie left his father outside, his actions showed that he was like the Rabbi’s son. He wanted to survive and being with someone else was a burden to him and would make his life harder than it already was. These two reasons show that Elie’s mind was changed in major ways during this dark time in history but, something more important was changed

Trust among family and friends must occur for survival in the most difficult conditions. "Why do you want people to believe you so much? In your place I would not care whether they believed me or not..." "You cannot understand. I was saved miraculously.

Elie remained in Auschwitz until April 5th, when the wheel of history was turned. America finally thought the lives of Jews was just as important as the ones living in their nation; but life did not get easy for Elie, "But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt strong. I was the accuser, God the accused." Elie was placed in a hospital, very ill with death knocking on his door waiting for his arrival. "One day, 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." Coming so far and then expecting death is a thought no one should ever have cross their mind. Even when free, the battle was still being fought. Those memories are forever in his mind. The corpse standing in front of him will haunt Elie throughout life. With freedom came confinement of all thoughts, sights of deaths and smells of burning flesh through those five years in a living hell for all

When Elie first arrives at Auschwitz, he is completely overwhelmed. He meets another inmate and the three are all very optimistic about their futures. This is not the case for all inmates, though. The very next person Elie meets has adopted an indifferent attitude about his situation, and has become so tauntrimized by the hardships of life in a concentration camp that he does not care if he lives or dies. When he approaches Elie and his father, his only advice is, “You should have hanged yourselves rather than come here” (30). Because of his traumatic experiences, the inmate has become so numb even death seems better than the life he is being forced to live.

The mental aspect of dehumanization seemed to cut as sharply as any weapon used by the Nazis. Adolescent Eliezer seemed to have a strong spiritual connection before he endured life in the concentration. This seemed to be the case as he shared that at an early age, he found a master named moishe to teach him Kabbalah. The two would meet every evening and remain in the synagogue long after the faithful had gone (pgs.4-5). Conversely, after he and his family endured the camps, he began to make statements such as, “ Why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because he caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves?( Wiesel 67). Eliezer being the faithful young man he is, never would consider words like those in his vocabulary. Along with the narrator’s religious pathing fading away in the midst of the camp. Eliezer and the rest of the Jewish civilians in the camp have to withstand the unkempt conditions of the bunks in which is the same place they sleep eat ,and release their bodily fluids. By this, I can look up to Eliezer, because knowing myself. I would not be able endure one second of being in the bunks, let alone years just as the narrator and his father had to

At the beginning of Night, Elie has a good and well-off life. He is not poor and lives comfortably with his family in Sighet, Transylvania. He may not have everything he wants, but he has what he needs. This changes overnight when Elie and the other Jews of Sighet are deported out of their ghetto and into concentration camps. The Nazis take everything from Elie, his family, name, hair, personal possessions, and confidence in his faith. Suddenly, Elie finds he is no longer the son of a well-respected Jewish community leader who has everything he needs, but rather a prisoner with no possessions or home to call his own. In minutes, he has lost everything and now finds himself in a camp where he owns just a bowl, shoes, and the clothes on his back. He doesn’t even have his own bed; that too he must share with others. “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust” (Wiesel, 32). At this point, Elie has realized that the life he knew before was gone. He also probably wished he had appreciated something as simple as his name, as once he was in the camp, “I became A-7713. After that I had no other name” (Wiesel, 39). He even wished he had appreciated his sheets before the war, saying “They put me into a bed with white sheets. I had forgotten that people slept in sheets” (Wiesel, 74). All of Elie’s realizations of how good his life had been while in Sighet didn’t come until he had lost all the things he took for granted. Prior to his deportation, Elie was just like any other teenager. While he may know that he has a good life and has everything he needs, he usually doesn’t acknowledge or appreciate it. Most teenagers and adults alike take for granted their ability to provide for their needs. They don’t think about the event that

The holocaust is one of the world's most tragic events, approximately 6 million Jews died and the concentration camp Auschwitz is the world's largest human cemetery, yet it has no graves. In Elie Wiesel's autobiographical memoir Night, he writes about his dehumanizing journey in the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Firstly, Elie experiences the loss of love and belonging when he is separated from his mother, sisters, and eventually his father. Also, the lack of respect that the Nazis showed the prisoners which lead to the men, including Elie to feel a sense of worthlessness in the camp. Finally, the lack of basic necessities in the camp leads to the men physically experiencing dehumanization. As a result, all these factors contribute to the

Page 34, “…Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” From this one quote you can most certainly tell that Elie has been living through some extremely tough times in his life right now. You can also tell that just being a part of the concentration camp and knowing that if you don’t die there is a good chance that one of your family members or friends will, it will always be permanently engraved in Elies’ memories. And this has definitely had a huge impact on his life “He was not alone in having lost faith during those days of selection,” Page 76. Elie is talking about the Rabbi losing his faith when he states that the Rabbi is not alone and Elie himself is also losing faith. The selection was when the Germans and doctors looked at how the prisoner’s were health wise and if they where unhealthy they would kill them and put them in the crematoria’s. This, however, was tough for many of the prisoners because most of them where starving and unhealthy, a lot of the people didn’t pass the selections, but those who did

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

When one is ripped away from their life and is denied the right to have and be able to do what others can, living can be similar to death. At Auschwitz, Elie is stripped of everything, even his name. He experiences horrific events that no one should ever have to witness or

In the book, Day by Elie Wiesel, the author talks about a man name Eliezer who is faced with issues weather if he can embrace his holocaust survival. Eliezer is a survivor from the holocaust who faces emotional struggle with life or death. This will begin his journey in which he will embark challenges he shall face. A challenge that’s a major part in this novel is having to deal with physical and metal issues which were conflicted by the world he once lived thru that causes suicidal thoughts and an end to his life.