The Bystander Effect In Night By Elie Wiesel

He was finally free, no joy filled his heart but abandonment was drowning it. How dangerous is indifference to humankind as it pertains to suffering and the need for conscience understanding when people are faced with unjust behaviors? Elie Wiesel is an award winning author and novelist who has endured and survived hardships. One of the darkest times in history, a massacre of over six million Jews, the Holocaust and Hitler himself. After the Holocaust he went on and wrote the internationally acclaimed memoir “Night,” in which he spoke out against persecution and injustice across the world. In the compassionate yet pleading speech, ¨Perils of Indifference,¨ Elie Wiesel analyzes the injustices that himself and others endured during the twentieth century, as well as the hellish acts of the Holocaust through effective rhetorical choices.

The bystander effect is a social psychological scenario where a person who is in an urgent situation is not given any help by the people around due to the discourage from the presence of others (whatispsychology.biz, 2017). Social psychologists, John Darley and Bibb Latane, introduced the bystander effect in the 1960s after the murder of Kitty Genovese, a young woman who was stabbed to death outside her home in New York City. It took her attacker more than half an hour to kill her, and during that time, thirty-eight people saw her being murdered, and they did nothing to help her. “The responsibility for helping was diffused among the observers” (Darley & Latane, 1968).

The 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln once stated “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power” (“Too Much Power Qoutes” AZ Quotes). Under the leadership of Adolph Hitler, the Nazi Party tore away the basic rights of human beings based upon the belief of anti-semitism. People of Jewish faith were persecuted to unimaginable limits, and their normal everyday lives were changed for forever. Article Five of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” (United Nations General Assembly). Throughout Elie Wiesel’s autobiography Night, Elie and his family are violated of this right as a Jewish family during the Holocaust.

In the world during the time of the Holocaust, there was indifference towards the suffering of millions of Jews. When individuals reflect about the Holocaust, the majority of the time the responsibility of the terrible events is placed upon the perpetrators. However, bystanders and witnesses indirectly affected the victims of the Holocaust as well. The silence of these people played one of the largest roles in the Holocaust, they influenced it by avoiding any type of involvement and by becoming blinded towards the suffering of others. In his Academy Award acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel says, “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”. This exert from his speech reveals the importance of the role that bystanders played in the

Not yet exposed to the horrors of the concentration camp, Elie enters Birkenau with his innate senses of compassion and altruism intact. Soon after his arrival, Elie witnesses the burning of children, women, and men alike. In response to this horrific sight, Elie becomes doubtful of the reality of this situation and questions, "How was it possible… that the world kept silent?" (32). As seen in the creation of Night and this question, for Elie, silence is unthinkable. At this point, Elie still holds faith in the power that people hold. However, the only hope to save these people from their fates is if the silence breaks. Along with this thinking, his tone of disbelief contributes to Elie's demonstration of one of man's most primitive instinct: compassion. This compassion is still strong in Elie—for if this was false, why would he have questioned this so passionately? However, after submitting to oppression from the concentration camps' officials, Elie's

Each day,6,000 innocent lives were taken at Auschwitz-Birkenau,one of the many concentration camps in Europe. During the “Final solution” two out of every three European Jews were killed. This genocide lasted from 30 January,1933 to 8 May,1945. Elie Wiesel,a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust,shares his personal traumatic,faith breaking and experiences with inhuman treatment in his memoir, Night.

Being a bystander does not help for for the good, but it only helps the bad. In the Elie Wiesel Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, he said, “Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?” The United States waited about twelve years to stop the holocaust. We need to learn about this because we cannot just watch and do nothing if people are in danger. Many people died in those twelve years, if they never stop the holocaust it could lead to more deaths even could conquering the world. Let everyone be equal so help others who are in

First, criminals or people who hurt others on purpose shouldn’t expect to receive human rights. In the novel, Night by Elie Wiesel, the author retells stories of when he was a victim of the holocaust. In this book, he tells a story of a Jewish woman screaming that she saw a fire whilst on a train to the concentration camps. The other passengers were getting annoyed, so they tried to stop the woman.

Evil is like a roaring fire in the woods: the longer it's left roaming free, the more damage it causes. In Night by Elie Wiesel, he tells the true evils he faced during the Holocaust. The events that occurred at the time not only showed the sickening hearts of the Nazi's but also unveiled the dark part of the human mind. If one senses evil assembling around them, intervening is a task they must face. When immorality is taking place, there are two sides: the cause and the effect.

A quote from Albert Einstein states “the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything”. As difficult as it is to describe the terrible deeds of those who were part of the Holocaust, it is true that those who did nothing are at fault just as much as those who carried out the actions. When one thinks of the Holocaust today it is difficult to picture that such events were done by human beings. Societies have advanced but it is important to acknowledge the reason as to why many bystanders refused to help or why they were so indifferent to the pain felt by the Jews. “The psychological mechanisms used to come to terms with the suffering of another appear to be very similar, whether the person is standing right before us or is 2,000 miles away. (Barnet:118) Barnett explains that ideological and moral principles also come into play, as do self-interest and the weighing of the possible consequences of our actions. We try to establish what is or is not possible. In the end, our decision will be determined not so much by whether we actually have the power to change a situation, but whether we have the will to do so. (Barnett, 118). In the case of many of the individuals who chose to become bystanders rather than change the situation they were not willing to get involved. Although not every German was a bystander, those who

The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel showed me that people will use self-preservation in drastic times. Jews were friendly people who helped each other out before they went through the traumatic experience. Once in camp they became more reserved and started to think about themselves and only their survival, not caring who they had to pass through. In camp there were no friends and no

This ties into the holocaust because as the victims were being mistreated they got used to watching others get hurt and they were to weak and scared to respond they felt guilt and shame for not doing anything but there was nothing they could do without the strength and sleep they needed they could not stand up for themselves or each other. Another quote to support that silence encourages evil is from the passage the wrong side of the fence, it says, “he turned and walked away and Bruno noticed again how small and skinny this new friend was.” This relates to how the victims of the holocaust kept quiet about what was going on inside the camps they became silent and did not talk about the things that hurt them the most. They kept their pain from showing too much although deep down they knew they were in a lot of pain knowing that they are losing everything including faith. To agree with these statements there is silence and with silence, there is

Cynthia Ozick, a strong powerful writer, wrote a wonderful essay called Of Christian Heroism. In this essay, Ozick expressed her feelings towards the classification of participants involved in the Holocaust, the victim, the murder, the bystander, and the hero. She explained that most humans find it easy to be a bystander in events like the Holocaust, so most of us choose to be a bystander rather than a hero. That explained why the category of the hero is so minuscule. She feels that human nature influences our decisions to avoid getting mixed up in these events. In this essay, I strongly agree with Ozick 's opinion due to her in depth description of the participant categories, her examples of what heroism is, and her thought process of interpreting others statements. In my life, I 've felt I have been a bystander because I have been taught to only care about situations that will effect my life, so I agree with Ozick when she states that most peoples natural state is to be a bystander.

Would one help some random person on the street in need? What if they were out in the frigid cold with no home or warm clothes? How about if the person was a woman getting physically harassed by her boyfriend? Most people would say “yes” to these questions, but would they actually help if any of these situations occurred in their lives? “The bystander effect is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases in which individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present.” (Bystander Effect). Why is it that people do not help those in need? Isn’t that our duty as good citizens to help those in need? “The reason why people do not help those in need is because they believe somebody else will do something first.” (Heroic Imagination Project). This paper will cover the freezing child exercise, the New York City stabbing incident, and the physical abuse between a guy to a girl observation. All three different experiments will display the bystander effect in action with real people. These procedure will present the true faces of our society and expose the real heroes who would actually help those in need. The Bystander Effect causes people to stand by a misbehavior or a person in need presented by the procedure of the experiments, the results of the incident, and the reasoning for their actions.

The bystander effect is when people choose to stand by when they could help or provide assistance for those in need. It is usually link with the amount of people, the more people, the less likely they are to help. The people often believe that someone else will help and they should not get involved.