Saving The Children Dbq Analysis

In night there were many times when Elie and his dad wanted to give up but they did not because they had each other. They used family to get through the terrible things that were happening to not only them but millions like them. Before the concentration

The one person in Elie’s life that means everything to him is his father. During his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s bond with his father

In his book, Night, Elie Wiesel spoke about his experience as a young Jewish boy in the Nazi concentration camps. During this turbulent time period, Elie described the horrifying events that he lived through and how that affected the relationship with his father. Throughout the book, Elie and his father’s relationship faced many obstacles. In the beginning, Elie and his father have much respect for one another and at the end of the book, that relationship became a burden and a feeling of guilt. Their relationship took a great toll on them throughout their journey in the concentration camps.

When Elie and his family are sent to a concentration camp, he is fortunate enough to not be separated from his father. At first, this is a relief, and is father is his will to survive. “The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot… My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running next to me, out of breathe, out of strength, desperate. I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his sole support.”(86)

Strong bonds built upon trust and dependability can last a lifetime, especially through strenuous moments when the integrity of a bond is the only thing that can be counted on to get through those situations. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he writes about his life spent in the concentration camps, while explaining the experiences and struggles that he went through. Although, not everything during that period was completely unbearable for Wiesel. At the time when Wiesel first arrived at the camps, the fear instilled in Wiesel and the loneliness he would have felt forced him to form a stronger attachment to his father. That dependence towards his father gave Wiesel a reason to keep on living. In turn, his

The Holocaust, yet another unpleasant time in history tainted with the blood and suffering of man. Human beings tortured, executed and starved for hatred and radical ideas. Yet with many tragedies there are survivors, those who refused to die on another man’s command. These victims showed enormous willpower, they overcame human degradation and tragedies that not only pushed their beliefs in god, but their trust in fellow people. It was people like Elie Wiesel author of “Night”, Eva Galler,Sima Gleichgevicht-Wasser, and Solomon Radasky that survived, whose’ mental and physical capabilities were pushed to limits that are difficult to conceive. Each individual experiences were different, but their survival tales not so far-reaching to where the fundamental themes of fear, family, religion and self-preservation played a part in surviving. Although some of these themes weren’t always so useful for survival.

The relationship between a father and son is one of the strongest relationships between family members. A son looking after his father might seem unusual, but in unusual circumstances, relationships are often forced to adapt. The father is the mentor and the son should look up to the father for support and guidance. This relationship plays out in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, through the concentration camps. Hitler and the Nazi’s have been deporting Jews to concentration camps and eventually killing them. Wiesel travels through the horrible circumstances. In 1944, Elie Wiesel lives in Hungary with his parents and his three sisters, but they deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and is split up, but remained with his father. Wiesel describes his experiences traveling through different concentration camps with his father, Shlomo. Wiesel tells about the different people he meets and events that happen. Wiesel meets other fathers and sons, whose relationships are not going well. Elie and his father stick together as they face many challenges. As time went on in the camps the fathers became weaker and their chances of survival decreased. The sons helped their fathers go on, but this would slow the sons down. In his Holocaust memoir Night, Elie Wiesel uses the motif of father-son relationships to show that while there are benefits to having a strong connection with someone amidst extreme circumstances, there are also disadvantages because the other person may become a burden.

Most people believe that family helps build you up and make you stronger, even through tragic events; this isn’t always true. In Elie Wiesel’s book, Night, he explains the hardships he and his father, Shlomo, experienced while in concentration camps. In the book, Elie and his dad went through many tough situations together: starvation, beatings, and health issues. As more and more horrific events occurred, Eliezer's relationship with his father began to fade. As Shlomo grew weaker physically, Eliezer grew weaker emotionally; the intense trauma numbed his heart. Because of these many difficulties, Eliezer was shaped into an independent young man who no longer relied on his family but on his own strength for survival.

During the Holocaust, about six million Jews died. Some were taken to concentration and execution camps, such as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Chelmno. Others were kept in ghettos with terrible living conditions in order to segregate them from the rest of society. Regardless of the suffering, these people miraculously managed to keep their head up and look on the bright side. To some, it may be a mystery of how they stayed strong. However, it is clear that love, nature, and humor allowed human spirit to triumph during the Holocaust.

At the camp, women and children are ordered to go to one side and men are ordered to go to the other. Elie could have gone as a child and stayed with his mother and siblings, but he decided to stick with his father instead (27). That was the last time Elie ever sees his mother. “And I did not know that in that place, at that moment, I was parting from my mother and Tzipora forever” (27). Elie now sees his father as someone he doesn’t want to lose because his father is all he has left now. Wiesel and his father care for each other more than ever now. Elie’s father was often told: “Take care of your son. He’s very weak and dried up” (42). Elie and his father start to rely on each other more and more for survival: “I said nothing. Nor did he. We had never understood each other so clearly”

Many Jewish prisoners were killed during the Holocaust, while others managed to stay alive. The Jewish prisoners’ mental will combined with their faith in God enabled them to

People can often be stronger than what they think they are when faced with harsh, bestial, and generally unpleasant conditions. Many of the people who have endured the Holocaust, or passed trying, have tolerated the absolute maximum amount of torture mentally, physically, and spiritually as well. While it may be impossible to think that people of this time could survive the savage conditions of the Holocaust, some may actually possess the willpower to push through. One would like to open with this quote from the novel, Night, by Elie Wiesel, “We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything- death, fatigue, our natural needs” (Wiesel 87).

To be resilient one must be faced with an obstacle to overcome to grow stronger. During the Holocaust everyday they came close to death with no guarantee of seeing tomorrow. They were constantly fighting to survive doing whatever they could. The Holocaust survivors showed resilience by overcoming their difficulties through their faith and hope and love of family which lead them to a better tomorrow.

Upon examination, it is clear that survival in the holocaust was not based on a single facet. One’s ability to endure the holocaust was based on a combination of factors which included luck, instinct, purpose, and particular personality traits which aided in survival.

Susan Sontag states, “The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.” (Sontag At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches) This quote, while not written to reflect the resistance of the Jews during the Holocaust, can certainly apply to their situation. There has been argument amongst scholars as to whether or not Jews actively resisted the Nazis during the Holocaust, however evidence has shown that regardless of the lack of resources, lack of knowledge, fear of collective punishment, hope for survival, and lack of support within the camps, spiritual and armed resistance occurred, and Jews fought back against the Nazi regime not to simply survive, but keep their dignity, spirituality, hope, culture, and ideological beliefs alive. Many Jews knew that resistance would not be a force strong enough to stop the Nazi regime, but it would be a force strong enough to raise spirits in the ghetto, keep their culture alive, and preserve their legacy.