Figurative Death in Night

In the non fictional story Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie Wiesel tells his autobiography about when he went through concentration camps. The story takes place during World War Two, when Elie is 15 and 16 years old. He is forced to leave his home in Sighet, Transylvania. Elie goes to three concentration camps called Auschwitz, Buna Buchenwald. Throughout the story, Elie changes spiritually, physically and emotionally.

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.

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

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)

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.

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.

“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.

After that separation he never saw his sisters and mom again. He remained close to his father at all times(27). They were always hungry no food seemed to satisfy because it was never enough (21). At the camps they wore striped shirts and pants(25). They had bad conditions like not eating or drinking enough, having it too crowded and having the camp smell like “burning flesh” (30). They also had to get all of their hair shaved off of their whole bodies (33). In the morning they had coffee, noon they had some soup,then after roll call they received some bread (40).Elie lost a lot of faith during his time at Auschwitz because he had no idea why people would treat other people like this and have God watch it (42). Since they can not own gold they had dentist check them to make sure that they do not have any gold in their mouth from a tooth filling (46). Toward the end of the war they killed many of Jews on a way to another camp but Elie and his father seemed to have survived. They went to a camp called Buchenwald (98). His father at Buchenwald wanted to die because he had enough. Elie tried to show him by looking at all the corpses around begging his father to not be another one of those corpses.(100). On January 29th 1945 his dad had died from illness

Elie and his sick dad were on a train together. They were transported in overcrowded cattle cars, lasting long journeys from concentration camp to concentration camp. In the overcrowded cattle were selfish and violent hungry people ready to fight to the death for little portions of food, and Elie, a young boy having to care for his sick father, faces having to supply for his ill father despite Elie himself being hungry and other Jews telling Elie, you have to fight for

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

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

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.

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

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.