Essay on History and Memory

Baker’s memoir portrays the value of memory in humanising the objectiveness of historical truth and its role in developing an individual’s ability to understand how past events shape their cultural identity. Throughout The Fiftieth Gate, Baker’s position as a historian colours his perspective in understanding the past events of the Holocaust; in his use of polyphonous voices, the multiple voices are able to provide insight into different perspectives and their memories. He finds that his parents’ memories are valuable in deepening his understanding of the past and his Jewish culture, as

Over 5 million people died between 1933 and 1945. Additionally, around half of these deaths happened in a concentration camp. This point in time is commonly referred to as the Holocaust. In Elie Wiesel’s book "Night” that documents Elie Wiesel’s struggles in a ghetto and then being transported throughout Germany to these awful places that are made for death. However, in the novel “Night,” Elie Wiesel uses dialog, ellipses, and symbolism to show the bond he has with his father. (73)

The Jews were later made to stand outside for hours in preparation to be taken to the camps. Leaving the ghetto, Elie, seeing Chief Rabbi hunched over, “His very presence in the procession was enough to make the scene seem surreal. It was a page torn from a book, a historical novel, perhaps, dealing with the captivity in Babylon or the Spanish Inquisition,” (Wiesel, 17). Wiesel encourages readers to make connections to the Holocaust, by drawing a comparison between the scene he is witnessing and a page torn from a historical novel. The mention of the Spanish Inquisition and the Babylonian captivity are brought up, in which memories of the persecution and forced relocation of Jewish communities arise.

In Night, the author uses negative, descriptive vocabulary, in the form of similes and metaphors, to convey the fear and the pain the prisoners of the holocaust experienced. At the time of the holocaust, people lived in constant fear of the Nazis plan, the jews and gypsies were fearful for their families. People cried, “ tears, like drops of wax flowed from [their] eyes.” (page 7); tears expressed the inmates grief. Tear typically

The holocaust was a tragic time which involved the killing of Jews to create a ‘pure race’ in Germany. Jacob Boas analyzes the stories of five young Jewish children through the book “We Are Witnesses,” who were forced through the hardships of war. Through the perspectives of David Rubinowicz, Yitzhak Rudashevski, Moshe Flinker, Éva Heyman, and Anne Frank, the struggles of the five children are clear as they try to hold on to their ideals while still fighting for their lives. “We Are Witnesses,” by Jacob Boas adopts repetition and diction through the eyes of David Rubinowicz, imagery using Yitzhak Rudashevski, repetition and imagery via Moshe Flinker, repetition with Éva Heyman, and repetition and syntax by Anne Frank to brandish how Jewish

Many outsiders strive but fail to truly comprehend the haunting incident of World War II’s Holocaust. None but survivors and witnesses succeed to sense and live the timeless pain of the event which repossesses the core of human psyche. Elie Wiesel and Corrie Ten Boom are two of these survivors who, through their personal accounts, allow the reader to glimpse empathy within the soul and the heart. Elie Wiesel (1928- ), a journalist and Professor of Humanities at Boston University, is an author of 21 books. The first of his collection, entitled Night, is a terrifying account of Wiesel’s boyhood experience as a WWII Jewish prisoner of Hitler’s dominant and secretive Nazi party.

In literature as in life people experience tragedy and suffering. Survivors of the Holocaust can relate to this in more ways than one. In the memoir, “Night”, by Elie Wiesel, it shows how humans can be cruel and kind. During the memoir, it also shows how courage and hope assist survival. Throughout the memoir, there are situations of dehumanization, cruelty, and suffering. This affects people in a such a way that causes intense diseases that they live with for the rest of their life. In contrast, kindness and compassion can positively affect people in their lives even while suffering through the worst of times. In the memoir, many people are faced with different challenges showing how their courage and faith can help them endure the toughest

Throughout human history, there has been many horrible and tragic moments involving famine, death and war. In that long line of history, there is however one moment that can’t be challenged to none other and that is World War 2: The rise of Nazi power and the slaughtering of many Jews. Many Jewish people suffered during those times and not many survived. Few of the people who did survive however, managed to write about their experiences and morals they had during World War 2, sharing their ideas to the world. A survivor and author of one of these books, Elie Wiesel, inscribed many of his morals and ideas in his writing using many literary terms such as tone, mood, characterization, diction, and even dialogue to portray them as themes in his

During the Holocaust, the Nazis did not stop at simply asserting their own superiority over the Jews; they stripped them of their sense of self and individuality and reduced them to the numbers they had tattooed on their arms. The theme of inhumanity is common in every story and every memory recounted in the memoir. Night makes you question the power of humanity. It makes you wonder how ordinary human beings could bring themselves to commit the kind of horror that we now deem unthinkable. But then again, people say that the most human thing of all is cruelty. And every family destroyed, every instance of torture and every life lost is

An individual's identity is built from one’s culture, family, friends and most importantly, experiences. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the author conveys personal thoughts and experiences undergone during the holocaust. During this time period, Wiesel and many other Jews were going through harsh conditions like starvation, separation from family, and extreme physical and emotional distress. The book as a whole, is about the events that makes the author question his own beliefs and faith in God. The main idea that is established throughout the novel is that traumatic experience forces an individual to reveal their true character.

A story of a young boy and his father as they are stolen from their home in Transylvania and taken through the most brutal event in human history describes the setting. This boy not only survived the tragedy, but went on to produce literature, in order to better educate society on the truth of the Holocaust. In Night, the author, Elie Wiesel, uses imagery, diction, and foreshadowing to describe and define the inhumanity he experienced during the Holocaust. First off, Imagery is one of the most effective methods Wiesel used in his biography to portray forms of inhumanity. “Not far from us, flames, huge flames were rising from a ditch.

The title of the poem makes it clear that the Jews are angry and psychologically hurt up till now because of the painful experience they suffered from. Consequently, they will never be able to forget what happened. The poem deals with many ideas to justify the choice of that title. The main idea

Through the experiences of the characters, Akiba Drumer, Moishe the Beadle, and the two executed young men, Wiesel exhibits how the oppressiveness of the concentration camps causes these victims to ultimately lose faith and self-respect in response to the injustices they face. To illustrate, Wiesel uses pathetic fallacy to unify and mimic the setting with the mood. With the migration to new settings, Eliezer is introduced to more violence, his body’s strength drastically weakens, and his hope for liberation and peace is diminished. The symbolic “Never shall I forget that night” (Wiesel 45) not only creates an earnest mood, but also depicts the use of night as a motif.

“High Holy Days” is a poem in which the author, Jane Shore, conveys the emergence of an innocent youth into a cruel and anti-Semitic world. It is told from a point of reflection on a childhood memory but as if it was presently occurring. This poem primarily focuses on Judaism along with the prejudice experienced by the Jewish community. The speaker is characterized as a child on the cusp of a transition in maturity and attitude. This plays a key role in understanding the text. While the speaker appears to be merely a child, no greater than thirteen-years-old, she is presented with feelings of great responsibility to lead her people and “defend them against the broken windows” (Shore 59) and “the spray-painted writing on the walls,” (Shore

In Anne Sexton’s poem “After Auschwitz”, the speaker uses death as a metaphor to show that onlookers were the cause of the persecution of Jews and that men are evil but capable of beauty. Anne Sexton was a confessional poet, often writing about topics that were not embraced and talked about during her time period. One topic that was a painful topic to talk about was the holocaust, which was the persecution and murder of over 6 million Jews in Europe during World War II. Sexton opens up about the Holocaust and how no one is to blame for the death of millions but ourselves. The poem, “After Auschwitz”, was written to call out those who stayed silent during the Holocaust through the use of sound devices, personification, and metaphors.