Survivors Of Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, And Benjamin Meed

According to the texts and eyewitness accounts, the Holocaust had horrendous effects on the people who lived through it. During this time Jews were being rounded up and put into concentration camps by order of the German government. Writings and testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust are around even to this day. According to these sources, Holocaust survivors suffered tremendously since they were treated as less than human , they lost loved ones, and were constantly abused.

The holocaust took its toll on the lives of innumerable people. One particular survivor Elie Wiesel had his entire outlook on life changed not to mention his beliefs feeling and his innocence. His life was once a pleasant and comfort filled life, one with family and friends. A life worth living and a life that was filled with innocence and freedom of religion. He loved his religion as if it was life itself. He wanted to push himself to be more close to God but, that would soon change. As a result during Elie’s experience during the holocaust he changed from a religious, sensitive little boy to a spiritually dead , unemotional man.

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.

At the age of 15, Elie Wiesel and his family were sent to Auschwitz as a part of the Holocaust. He was sent to many labor camps with his father where they were forced to work under inhumane conditions. However, his mother and younger sister were killed upon entering the camps. Wiesel recalled, “I didn’t know that this was the moment in the time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever.” (Wiesel, 29) After this, Wiesel and his father witnessed many atrocities. One of the first horrible sights Elie shared in his story was where he saw babies being

The Holocaust changed Elie Wiesel in more ways than one. Before the Holocaust Elie was a very religious person. Wiesel and Moshe the Beadle would talk for hours about the secrets of Jewish mysticism. However, as time past and more Jews were killed Wiesel started to doubt God. Wiesel said on his first night in camp after he saw the people being burned in fire pits, "Never

Many thoughts went through my mind while reading about Wiesel’s final experiences as a German prisoner. I felt pity and sadness for him. His last few days as a German prisoner were his most difficult. He lost his father, he went days without food and passed days out in the freezing cold. I was also impressed on how he fought through these events. Despite his exhaustion or hunger, he never surrendered his life. He found strength that he never knew he had and showed the readers how strong humans can be when their lives depend on it. If I could meet Elie Wiesel and discuss with him about his time during the war, I would want to tell him many things. I would tell him that the time he spent at the concentration camps made him the man he is today

The greatest change to Elie Wiesel’s identity was his loss of faith in God. Before he and his family were moved to the camps, Wiesel was a religious little boy who cried after praying at night (2). When the Hungarian police come to force the Jews to move to the ghettos, they pulled Elie from his prayers (13). Even on his way to Auschwitz, stuffed inside the cattle car with other terrified Jews, Wiesel gave thanks to God when told he would be assigned to labor camps (24). After a few days in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel heard about the crematory and the fact that the Nazis were killing the sick, weak, and young. In his first night in the camp, Wiesel experienced his first crisis of faith: Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. …Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust (32).

Elie Wiesel experienced 2 years of events that nothing will be able to amount to. After the deportation of his village, he survived through 4 concentration camps in a year. The camps were Auschwitz, Buna, Buchenwald, and Gleiwitz. His father died in Buchenwald in January 1945 and Wiesel had to survive through the rest of the Holocaust with no motivation. After the Holocaust, he spent a couple of years in a French orphanage.

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

During the holocaust, many Jews were persecuted, killed and tortured because of their religion and it kept happening for years, but sadly no one ever did anything about it and millions of lives were lost. Mr. Elie Wiesel was one of the brave survivors of such a horrid event. He had hope that someone, anyone would come with help and him and his family would get to go home safely. However, during this period of time, believes were different and the people had less rights, therefore they couldn't

Within the pages of his memoir, Wiesel takes the reader through some of his experiences when he was a prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buna, and Buchenwald. During his experiences, Elie Wiesel loses his faith similarly to the majority of the Jews. While all the prisoners are forced to watch the hanging of a small pipel boy that everyone loved, Elie recalls his thoughts to someone questioning “Where is God?” , “Where is He? Here He is - He is hanging here on this gallows . . .”

Wiesel had a typical childhood until 1939, the year when Germany invaded Poland and Jews were forced under Nazi rule. Elie Wiesel was born on September thirtieth 1928, in Sighet, Romania. He wanted to grow in his relationship with God as a young man and even had a spiritual mentor. However, during this time Jews were being prosecuted. His family was forced into Jewish Ghettos under the Nazi regime. The ghettos were a part of a city, especially a slum area occupied by a minority group. The family was not able to escape in time and had to deal with the loss of their home and possessions. Elie and his father were prisoners at Auschwitz, the main concentration camp, here, Wiesel witnessed the death of newly born babies and the killing of hundreds

Elie Wiesel was a boy that had a religious, and normal jewish life up until the Holocaust. His whole childhood up until the Holocaust, Elie studied the Kabbalah. When he was only thirteen Elie would study the Talmud in the day and at night he would go to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the temple. Elie had a very nice and wise friend when he was a kid called Moishe the Beadle. Moishe helped guide Elie at a young age, especially in the studies of Kabbalah. At the age of 15 Elie was taken to his first concentration camp, and soon his whole life will be changed and flipped upside down. They were brought to Birkenau. When they got to the first camp a veteran told Elie

Holocaust: Survivors The Holocaust was a very tragic and memorable experience for Jewish people and others around them. However, between 1945 and 1952 more than 80,000 survivors from the Holocaust managed to immigrate into the United States (Life After The Holocaust, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). A few people include Thomas Buergenthal and Blanka Rothschild. These people were to live each one of their lives successfully even after experiencing the torture of the Holocaust which was like experiencing the pain of death for eternity.

Elie Wiesel is a survivor of the Holocaust, World War II, and life’s brutalities. In his lifetime Elie Wiesel experiences discrimination over being Jewish. He was sent to labor camps because he practiced a different religion. However, many people in the world today that are discriminated against because they