Figurative Death in Night

Elie’s father loses his strength quickly, “his eyes [grew] dim” (46) almost immediately after arriving. The horrors which he had seen were easily enough to crush the spirit of a former community leader. His disbelief of the horrors he saw questioned the very basis of his soul, and he began to despair. His father’s eyes soon become, “veiled with despair” (81), as he loses hope for survival. The despair of camp life shrouds the human within, showing only another cowed prisoner. Elie’s father no longer can see hope, having his vision clouded by cruelty and hate. Elie’s father is eventually overwhelmed by despair; he, “would not get up. He knew that it was useless” (113). The Nazis crushed his soul, killed his family, stole his home, and eventually took his life; this treatment destroyed the person inside the body. He could no longer summon the strength to stay alive, so he gave up, and collapsed.

Concentration camps are similar to the things people see their nightmares. The creation of a twisted government that spread hatred and suffering throughout the world. Night is an in depth account of the atrocities committed in these horrible places. The story of dehumanization of an entire group of people through the eyes of a young boy,Elie Wiesel. In Night Wiesel portrays the dehumanization of the jewish people as unnatural and undeserved. The difficulties Wiesel went through are all collected in one small book

In the text Night, written by Elie Wiesel, it is a horrific story about how the Nazi’s invaded Wiesel’s hometown of Sighet, Hungry and where taken under German control and sent to many concentration camps. During his time at the concentration camps, Elie and fallow Jews were in harsh and unforgettable conditions and treated severe from the Germans that no one could imagine. There is plenty of evidence which supports that even through many people turned and began to do dreadful things to one another; there were the very few people who stayed calm and gentle within all of the commotion.

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

“In a few seconds, we had ceased to be men” (PG.36). Elie is a jewish boy from Transylvania and is taken to Auschwitz where he is separated from his mother and sister. His father and Elie are moved the the concentration camp called “Buna” and spend most of their time there. They then had to be evacuated to Gleiwitz, where they ran about 42 miles to get there. They spent about 3 days there and then they were transported to Buchenwald by train. There they are rescued by Americans and a resistance part that attacked the camp. Sadly Elie’s father dies in Buchenwald due to a sickness and being sent to the crematory. Dehumanization of the Jewish people in “Night” ,by Elie Wiesel, happened in a variety of ways and helped Hitler achieve his ideas about Jewish people.

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.

Elie’s father died of dysentery, starvation, and exhaustion in Buchenwald, only weeks before the liberating army came to the gates of the camp. After the liberation, Elie described how their first act as free men was to throw themselves upon the provisions for such were the inhumane savages they had become.

Then, throughout the middle of the novel, the strength of family bonds of the Jews is tested. After the run, a Rabbi asks Elie if he had seen his son, Elie tells him that he had not. Then Elie realizes that he had seen his son on the run, but he does not tell the Rabbi because his son left him behind on purpose. The text states, “He had felt his father growing weaker… by this separation to free himself of a burden that could diminish his own chance for survival” (Wiesel 91). This is where the reader begins to see the toll that the concentration camps are having on the families. Elie includes this to show, that now, family members see each other as burdens rather than a blessing. Later in the novel, family members go as far as taking a life. One old man

While in the camp, the Jews were abused physically and mentally. Before the end of the book, Wiesel has adopted an indifferent attitude toward his own life. He thinks of, "It no longer mattered. After my father's death, nothing could touch me anymore" (107). Before his father's death, there were times when Elie watched the Nazis abuse his father and, however he didn't react, he felt regret, anger, and a craving to "sink my nails into criminal's flesh" (37) to guard his father. Sadly, before his father died, he began to care less and less about himself and his father. And when his father passed away, he no longer could imagine a reason to continue living. This did not make him sad, because his exclusive belief was to survive: “I had no more tears. And in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like—free at last!” (106) Wiesel lost his ability to care about his life, and he felt free from caring about anything after his father had passed. Elie's absence of worry shows the amount he changed while in the concentration camp. Elie Wiesel survived the concentration camps for nearly two years. Despite the fact that he frequently claims that he wanted to surrender, that he wished he would just die, regardless he battled against death. He was still alive and well when the first American tanks arrive at Buchenwald (109). He composes: “Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. We thought only of that. Not of revenge, not of our families. Nothing but bread” (109). This quote demonstrates that; however, Elie has lost his personality so much that he is almost similar to a wild animal, he has still managed to keep the impulse to survive. This endurance demonstrated that he never was able to completely abandon life. He by one means or

Others killed their fathers just for a small ration. Even though Eliezer knew that his father was extremely weak and was aware that death would meet his father soon, Eliezer still gave his rations to his father in hopes of nursing him back to health. Eliezer himself was weak, yet he still gave up his bread and soup to his father. The Blockalteste found out and told Eliezer “Listen to me, kid. Don’t forget you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every man for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even your father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations…” When they were in the wagon, a piece of bread was thrown in by a German laborer. An old man dragged himself to the piece of bread, while hidden one lay in his chest. Eliezer witnesses the son of the old man beating his father to death for the bread. Eliezer says “A shadow had lain down beside him. And this shadow threw himself over him.” As the old man was getting beat he cried out “Meir, my little meir! Don’t you recognize me...You’re killing your father… I have bread… for you too… for you too…” This proved that people no longer thought of family, and only themselves. They succumbed to the

Torture and death within concentration camps were common and frequent. Wiesel flawlessly depicts the holocaust in his memoir “Night”. Wiesel was only 15 at the time of his capture. Soldiers took him to the infamous concentration camp known as Auschwitz. The Nazis forced Wiesel, his sisters, mother, and father to go to the camp.

When he brings his father hot coffee he thinks, “I probably brought him more satisfaction than I had done during my whole childhood.” (Wiesel and Wiesel, 101) Elie’s main goal in the concentration camp was not to be separated from his father. Anywhere his father had to go, he would have to go after. “I first wanted to see where they would send my father. Were he to have gone to the right, I would have run after him.” (Wiesel and Wiesel, 32) Each person in the camp had the choice to work or die. “The SS officers wandered through the room, looking for strong men” (Wiesel, 35) ...”Those who were selected that day were incorporated into the Sonder Kommando, the Kommando working in the crematoria” (Wiesel and Wiesel, 35) The officers would separate the weak from strong, to then have the strong work, and then ‘weak’ would be immediately killed. Elie is heavily impacted by the forces of society. Many of the crimes committed in the camps had a big effect on him, it made him become into a person who lacks emotions. The hanging of a child in Buna, made him question God’s existence. Everyone was forced to walk by the hanged child and look at him in the eyes, but Elie felt no emotions, instead a man asks “Where is God now?” as the young boy struggles with his death, and a voice within Elie responds “Where is He? Here He is-He is hanging here on this gallows....” (Wiesel and Wiesel, 62)

When Elie Wiesel, author of Night was just 15 years old, he and his family were taken by cattle car to a concentration camp in Auschwitz. From there, he endured ten months of torture and dehumanization in three different work camps before being liberated. In this lesson, we will learn more about the dehumanization experienced in Night.

“In a few seconds, we had ceased to be men” (PG.36). Elie is a jewish boy from Transylvania who is taken to Auschwitz, where he is separated from his mother and sister. Elie and his father are moved the the concentration camp called “Buna” and spend most of their time there. They then had to be evacuated to Gleiwitz, where they ran about 42 miles to get there. They spent about 3 days there and then they were transported to Buchenwald by train. There they are rescued by Americans and a resistance part that attacked the camp. Sadly Elie’s father dies in Buchenwald due to a sickness and being sent to the crematory. Dehumanization of the Jewish people in “Night” ,by Elie Wiesel, happened in a variety of ways and helped Hitler achieve his ideas about Jewish people.

The novel Night is an autobiography of Elie Wiesel of his life in a concentration camp. During World War II, anti-Semitism spread in Europe and people like Hitler and his Nazi army started targeting all sorts of Jews, believing them to be “lesser beings”. The Nazis forced the Jews from their homes and into ghettos to isolate them and then deported them to concentration camps. In these Nazi concentration camps, beatings and hangings were common as the SS officers tried to make an example out of the misbehaving prisoners.