Evil In Elie Wiesel's Night

In the memoir Night, the narrator Elie Wiesel recounts a moment when he was faced with inhumanity. In the story he tells us about it. “Over there. Do you see the chimney over there? Do you see it? And the flames, do you see them?(Yes, we saw the flames) Over there, that’s where they will take you. Over there will be your grave. You still don’t understand? Don’t you understand anything? You will be burned! Burned to a cinder! Turned into ashes!”(Wiesel 30). They were telling them that they were going to throw them in the fire so they could burn but they didn’t know that was going to happen. As the author describes his experience, many other examples of inhumanity are revealed. Two significant themes related to inhumanity discussed in the book

"Never shall I forget that night the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed," -Elie Wiesel, Night. This quote is one of the quotes from Elie Wiesel's book Night that refers to the title of the book. The title of the book is called Night for reasons such as the fact that the first night was what changed his life, it symbolizes the darkness that encased all of their souls, and it also symbolizes how dark and evil the world was. The title Night has a stronger meaning than what it seems.

This supreme act of selfishness, as said before, can only be accredited to the dehumanization from the Nazis, rather than the naïve young boy. Even though it is inhumane, this selfish behavior seems to be the only way to survive when confronted with such extreme conditions that the Jews were made to endure.

In the book “Night”, Wiesel describes his own private experiences with inhumanity during his time inside the camps, going into vivid detail the true nature of the SS men who guarded the camps, and the starving slaves who were worked till they fell over dead from starvation. A prime example of these personal incidents include the death march. While being evacuated from Buna, Elie and his bunkmates, or blockalteste, were marched through the snow. If the prisoners slowed their pace or fell behind the others there were killed. “ They had orders to shoot anyone who did not sustain the pace”, shows this inhumane dynamic perfectly and goes on to include that” if one of us stopped for a second, a quick shot eliminated the filthy dog” (Wiesel,85) Another example of Elie’s personal experiences on inhumanity includes him being forced to have his gold crown removed. The passage states” the dentist from Warsaw pulled my crown with the help of a rusty spoon.” (Wiesel, 56) This infers that Elie was forced to have his crown removed. It was not by choice, rather it was a way to profit off the prisoners by selling their gold teeth. However, one of the most severe personal experiences Elie had to endure was when he was beaten as

Throughout the duration of the Holocaust numerous tragedies transpired. Among these tragedies was dehumanization, the process by which Nazis gradually reduced the humanity of the Jewish population. In Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, Elie depicts the dehumanization he experienced and the devastating effect it had on his life while on the transports to Auschwitz, again in the concentration camps, then finally and perhaps worst of all, on his father’s death bed.

The Nazies were known for their ability to dehumanize their prisoners. “They took our hair off with clippers, and shaved off all the hair on our

Synopsis – Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a work that may change our understanding of the Holocaust and of Germany during the Nazi period. Daniel Goldhagen has revisited a question that history has come to treat as settled, and his researches have led him to the inescapable conclusion that none of the established answers holds true. Drawing on materials either unexplored or neglected by previous scholars, Goldhagen presents new evidence to show that many beliefs about the killers are fallacies. They were not primarily SS men or Nazi Party members, but perfectly ordinary Germans from all walks of life, men who brutalized and murdered Jews both willingly and zealously. “They acted as they did because of

The Holocaust was one of the world’s major tragedies. If you were a Jew the Nazis would take you to concentration camp and you would have to do everything they said, you would get your head shaved, and be treated awful. Millions died. They would choose Jews to take to the gas chamber, usually the weakest and most unhealthy ones because they weren’t much good to work anymore. “Yolen, Jane. The Devil's Arithmetic. New York, NY, U.S.A.: Viking Kestrel, 1988. Print.”

In the novel “Night”, by Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor suggests that when humans are faced with protecting their own mortality, they abandon their morals and values. This can be seen in both the Jewish and German people. The German’s are inhumanely cruel to protect their own jobs and safely by obeying government commands. The Jewish captives lost their morals as they fight to survive the concentration camps. Elie Wiesel encountered many obstacles that made many of his ideals changed drastically for Wiesel which was his loss in humanity throughout the book he explains the many ways he does not see people as people anymore. He also explains how all of his natural human rights were no more during the time in the Holocaust. He had to find a sense of self because he could have easily fallen apart. He could not have done anything different, he knew it was going to end poorly. Silence is a very important and prominent theme in this book as silence represents many key symbols such as. God’s silence: Eliezar questions God’s faith many times throughout this book and wonders how he could just sit there and be silent while people are mass murdering people.

"Night" by Elie Wiesel is "A slim volume of terrifying power" (The New York Time), the novel is concerning the tragic events that occurred during the Holocaust. The first section of the memoir raises an internal conflict, regarding the Jews of Sighet being ignorant about the terrifying events that are occurring outside their small town. This conflict is created when Moishe the Beadle escaped from the Gestapo and returned to Sighet to warn the Jews of the crisis, which is happening right under their noses. This is shown in the following quote, "he went from one Jewish house to the next, telling his story" (7), despite warning his community of the dangers that are progressing towards them, the Jews of Sighet ignored him and did not believe Moishe. The ignorance of the Jews is shown when

Elie Wiesel’s Night is about what the Holocaust did, not just to the Jews, but, by extension, to humanity. The disturbing disregard for human beings, or the human body itself, still to this day, exacerbates fear in the hearts of men and women. The animalistic acts by the Nazis has scarred mankind eternally with abhorrence and discrimination.

“Splendid news from the Russian Front. There could no longer be any doubt: Germany would be defeated. It was only a matter of time, months or weeks, perhaps. The trees were in bloom. It was a year like so many others, with its spring, its engagements, its weddings, and its births” (8).

Regarding to how the Nazi’s treated the Jews and changed their life politically one of the

Wiesel and his father arrive at the camp, which appeared as if it “had been through an epidemic,” because of its deathly state (47). After “settling” into the camp, the inmates are told that Buna is decent, as far as camps go, but being assigned to the construction Kommando is unpleasant. Wiesel is offered the chance to join a good Kommando in exchange for his shoes, but he denies, as “they were all [he] had left” (48). He later meets the Buna orchestra members, and is reassured that he was assigned to a good Kommando. One day, he is called to the dentist, who ironically had a “ghastly vision of yellow, rotten teeth” (51). Wiesel is told that his gold crown is going to be removed, and he immediately pretends that he is sick,

The Nazis’s were very brutal with their plan to dehumanize the Jews with their nasty and sick tactics.