Reflection On Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel is one of the few to survive the Holocaust. At the age of 15, young Elie Wiesel and his family were deported to Auschwitz, where the lives of millions of Jews were taken. The years Elie spent at the camp, he witnessed many deaths and also the lives of innocent children being taken. These memories will forever stay with him as he expresses in the seven books he has written. The Holocaust had an environment that was crucial to live in and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, wants the history of the Holocaust to live on because he doesn’t want anyone to live through the living hell he had to go through.

When responding to situations in life people must consider if doing so will benefit themselves or the people around them. In circumstances that demand quick thinking people often can not form a concrete decision based on how little information and time they have. In life people frequently must try to do so through their daily battles with the people around them as well as themselves.

In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.

Elie Wiesel’s purpose of this text was to discuss the parallels of the experiences he survived through during the Holocaust and the events in Kosovo that were going through ethnic cleansing. Wiesel has intended this speech to an audience of President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton. Throughout this speech, Wiesel also expressed his gratitude towards President Clinton for the “...justified intervention in Kosovo...a lasting warning that never again will the deportation, the terrorization of children and their parents, be allowed anywhere in the world.” The author feels that this message is important because “We are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium” and the injustice lessons of the past must be remembered. This shows that Wiesel cares for the

Elie Wiesel was a Jewish American born in Romania. His principles were influenced by being raised in a heavily religious and liberal family. In the 1940s, his own country forced his family to flee to the ghettos, and not long after, Wiesel, “a young Jewish boy from a small town,” was captured by Nazis, waking up to the perilous realization of “eternal infamy”(Wiesel). In April 1945, after enduring through starvation and punishment, he was finally liberated.

The date is April 11, 1945. A 17 year old boy looks towards the ominous gates of the Buchenwald concentration camp after nearly two years of misery and sees his first sign of hope: an American tank standing at the entrance of the gates. This young boy was Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the gruesome events that occurred in concentration camps during WWII. Elie shares a chilling memoir about his experience in his book Night. Throughout the novel, Elie and other Jewish inmates constantly used their families as their primary motive to overcome hardships even while being challenged by tough circumstances.

The Holocaust began around 1933 when Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany and leader of the Nazi Party. During that time, the first concentration camp, Dachau, was established to torture and kill Jewish people. Soon after, in 1935, Nuremberg Race Laws against Jews were decreed and depriving Jews of German citizenship. Germany then invaded Poland, starting World War II in Europe. With the start of World War II came many more concentration camps, and millions of deaths. Six million European Jews lost their lives during this horrific time. Many survivors shared their stories after they were freed, so that the world would know of the horrors they experienced. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, told his story in his book, Night. Elie Wiesel was a teenager during the Holocaust, but lived on into his eighties and continued to speak out against what the Nazi’s did to his family.

Torture and suffering is a thing happening all around the world that should be stopped. The time of the Holocaust was a taunting, and dark times in the world, where torture and suffering seemed the right thing to do to people. Elie wiesel was a victim of the torture and suffering by the Germans, in his book Night, and spoke up when he survived. In the book ¨Night¨ by Elie Wiesel, the main character, Elie, changes due to the time in the infamous death camp Auschwitz.

A time where people were forced to leave their homes and everything they had in possession. This is something that happens to Elie Wiesel author and main character of NIGHT. Elie and his family are from jewish descent and are dehumanized by the Germans and forced into labour camps to work. They never knew what dangers they had ahead of them always having ignorance only to face the consequences. To lose and to have everything only to be gone in a second never to be returned. Throughout his journey he finds himself powerless but only to find he stills has his dignity. He even finds his humanity for his father for the last person that was there to support him and care for him.

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

Night is a brutally honest memoir of much of Elie Wiesel’s childhood. When Wiesel was young he was very devoted to his Religion, asking questions and reading scripture. When the trains were loaded Wiesel no longer had the words to express his disdain. After setting foot in Auschwitz Wiesel felt abandoned by god and no longer believed God was not righteous. Rightful decision he watched children burn, men get shot, women disappear to never return. Despite all this Wiesel never truly lost his religion explaining “I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.”(45,Wiesel). As time passes faith was restored and like many Holocaust survivors Wiesel is still Jewish and was proud to tell the world about it to the day he died.

Amel shook his head, sighing. He looked disappointed. I had finally quelled the happiness in him. Or, so I thought, until he gave me a small smile. "I'm sure living here for as long as you have has been taxing. The people here are so sad and violent, but they don't want to listen, Cerin. Hope, joy, and love... they don't have to hide very well here. There are so many distractions, so many fake things they tell themselves, that any virtue is easily covered up. God could give us so much food, we'd never ever starve, or so enough money for absolutely everyone to live in a nice house, or even heal all the sick and raise our dead loved ones, and we still wouldn't believe in Him. But He shouldn't even have to do any of that, He already made us, and

As humans, we require basic necessities, such as food, water, and shelter to survive. But we also need a reason to live. The reason could be the thought of a person, achieving some goal, or a connection with a higher being. Humans need something that drives them to stay alive. This becomes more evident when people are placed in horrific situations. In Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, he reminisces about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. There the men witness horrific scenes of violence and death. As time goes on they begin to lose hope in the very things that keep them alive: their faith in God, each other, and above all, themselves.

Imagine yourself in a situation similar to the concentration camps during the holocaust. Would you remain strong, courageous, and wise? It’s hard to know how you would act during this circumstance, nevertheless to imagine this situation at all. However, Elie Wiesel was one to not only experience this horrible situation but survive it. Through his journey he stayed strong and courageous, even if he didn’t realize that is what he was doing at the time. In my opinion, Elie Wiesel was a resilient, compassionate, wise, and an intelligent human being. Of course, no one would have realized that they were being strong or smart at this time; they were focusing on staying alive, doing exactly what the SS men said, and wondering what was happening to their other family members. Yet, as I read Elie’s experience and watched as he returned to Auschwitz I saw him as resilient for his ability to do everything he was told to, to fight for his life while in the camp, and for being able to go back and visit the place that once caused him so much pain. Not only was he strong for being able to go back and visit but he was thoughtful. He wanted to go back to the camps to pay respects to all of the people that met their fate there and to make sure they are never forgotten. Another way he strives to keep the memory of those who lost their lives is through his books. He uses his intelligence to share his memories as well as the truth of all that happened to him and all the others.

1.If you were stripped of your freedom and individuality to be held in a camp waiting to die would you feel indifferent. Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Boston University Professor, presented a speech as part of the Millennium Lecture Series at the White House on April 12, 1999 2.(Wiesel 221). President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton hosted the formal event. Numerous government officials from a wide order of public, private and foreign office attended the event 2.(Wiesel 221). Although Elie Wiesel designed his speech to persuade, it actually felt somewhat outside from its original intended purpose, as being more different.