The Destructive Effects Of Silence In Elie Wiesel's Night

During World War II, the Jewish race was one of the most persecuted of all the minorities harassed by Hitler and the Third Reich, and a day to day basis, Jews across Europe lived in constant fear, wondering if today would be their last. Especially in cities close to the expanding Nazi empire, there was no telling when their last breath would come. In the memoir, the closely knitted town of Sighet is controlled by the Germans, leaving anyone of Jewish descent to obey their commands in total fear of their personal safety. Elie Wiesel describes this genuine fear when he wakes up a close friend of his father, “‘Get up sir, get up!...You're going to be expelled from here tomorrow with your whole family, and all the rest of the Jews…’ Still half asleep he stared at me with terror-stricken eyes.”

In “Night” by Elie Wiesel silence gives time for him to reflect on his life and the struggles that are going on. When Wiesel is in the concentration camp he gets him time to reflect on the hardship of life and all of the terrible things such as when he say “ Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded

"Never shall I forget that night the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed," -Elie Wiesel, Night. This quote is one of the quotes from Elie Wiesel's book Night that refers to the title of the book. The title of the book is called Night for reasons such as the fact that the first night was what changed his life, it symbolizes the darkness that encased all of their souls, and it also symbolizes how dark and evil the world was. The title Night has a stronger meaning than what it seems.

Jewish oppression occurs expeditiously. Eliezer and his family are deported to concentration camps in 1944. Eliezer’s destiny is changed by ignoring the admonishing cries he and his family receives about what is to come. “‘Jews, listen to me! That’s all I ask of you. No money. No pity. Just listen to me!’ he kept shouting in the synagogue...Even I did not believe him.” (7) Moishe the Beadle is in the first group of Jews that the Nazis deport. They take him along with many other Jews into a forest. They are deceived into digging deep trenches, lining up, and being shot, falling into the trenches they dug with their own hands. Moishe is the only one who escapes. He returns to Sighet to warn the Jews, but they refuse to listen to him. Pleading, Moishe asks someone - anyone - to believe him. He no longer wants to live, he only wants to prepare the Jews for the impending peril. Because Eliezer and his family refuse to listen to Moishe, they end up in concentration camps. If Eliezer and his family had listened to Moishe, their stories would not have ended as they did. Another example of

After nearly 2 years of misery, anguish, and despair, a young boy is finally freed to a normal life he had almost forgotten existed. Elie had started to become accustomed to the fact that indifference would be what decides if he survived in the concentration camps or not. In the novel, Wiesel employs the motif of silence to illustrate that silence from the Jews represents the fear, apathy, and the absence of God which results in them constantly feel hopeless and are mentally defeated.

In the novel “Night”, by Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor suggests that when humans are faced with protecting their own mortality, they abandon their morals and values. This can be seen in both the Jewish and German people. The German’s are inhumanely cruel to protect their own jobs and safely by obeying government commands. The Jewish captives lost their morals as they fight to survive the concentration camps. Elie Wiesel encountered many obstacles that made many of his ideals changed drastically for Wiesel which was his loss in humanity throughout the book he explains the many ways he does not see people as people anymore. He also explains how all of his natural human rights were no more during the time in the Holocaust. He had to find a sense of self because he could have easily fallen apart. He could not have done anything different, he knew it was going to end poorly. Silence is a very important and prominent theme in this book as silence represents many key symbols such as. God’s silence: Eliezar questions God’s faith many times throughout this book and wonders how he could just sit there and be silent while people are mass murdering people.

One of the reasons for why the Jews of Sighet are being so ignorant is because they think no human can commit such an inhumane act. Committing one murder is considered to be inhumane, imagine the casualties of about 11 million people... The Holocaust made people realize how inhumane people can be to gain something, which shows the importance of the theme inhumanity. This shows how the conflict relates to the theme of inhumanity. "Moishe was not the same. The joy in his eyes was gone. He no longer sang. He no longer mentioned either God or Kabbalah." (7), this shows how the conflict also relates to the theme of loss of innocence. After experiencing terrible incidents in Gestapo, Moishe the Beadle had become quieter and had lost his innocence. Moishe experienced and observed many inhumane acts that took place in the concentration camps. This is shown in the following quote, "Without passion or haste, they shot their prisoners, who were forced to approach the trench one by one and offer their necks. Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns." (6) Experiencing this could have a lot of effect to a person mentally, which could lead to the loss of

Night begins with the narrator, Elie, talking about Moishe the Beadle, who is described as the “jack-of-all-trades” in a shtibl (Weisel, 21). He then continues by talking about his family. He goes back to talk about his deep conversations with Moishe and their evenings spent together. One day, the foreign Jews of Sighet, where he lives, were expelled. This included Moishe. They were taken away in cattle cars by the Hungarian police. Months past and one day, Elie saw Moishe sitting on a bench near the synagogue. He tells Elie about what happened to him; how he and the other Jews were transported and forced to dig their own graves in the forest. Luckily, Moishe had managed to escape. He had come back to warn the Jews in Sighet of what to come.

As the famous journalist Iris Chang once said, “As the Nobel Laureate warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.” After experiencing the tragedies that occurred during the Holocaust, Eliezer Wiesel narrated “Night”. Eliezer wrote “Night” in an attempt to prevent something similar to the Holocaust from happening again, by showing the audience what the consequences are that come from becoming a bystander. Elie illustrated numerous themes by narrating the state of turmoil he was in during the Holocaust. In Night, Eliezer provided insight into what he experienced in order to teach the unaware audience about three themes; identity, silence, and faith.

At first glance, Night, by Eliezer Wiesel does not seem to be an example of deep or emotionally complex literature. It is a tiny book, one hundred pages at the most with a lot of dialogue and short choppy sentences. But in this memoir, Wiesel strings along the events that took him through the Holocaust until they form one of the most riveting, shocking, and grimly realistic tales ever told of history’s most famous horror story. In Night, Wiesel reveals the intense impact that concentration camps had on his life, not through grisly details but in correlation with his lost faith in God and the human conscience.

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.

“Why do you pray? He asked after a moment. Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (Pg.5). Moishe the Beadle asked Elie Wiesel some questions that Elies did not know how to answered, he prayed everyday, he was alive but he didn't know why, he breathe and he didn't know why neither. But the real answer only Elie could find it within himself. The book is based on real-life fact about how the Germans or best known as Nazis came and slave all the Jews, they took away their freedom and their happiness. And this tell book the the story of the holocaust in the point of view of a person named Elie Wiesel. Elements of dark and light can change your faith, how you believe and in what do you believe, but how can it be changed

Women and men are separated almost immediately upon arrival, and although he didn’t know it yet, “this was the moment… [Wiesel would be] leaving [his] mother and Tzipora forever” (29). After going with the men, Wiesel and his father are told to lie about their ages, presumably because they would be seen as useless if they were to reveal how old they truly were. This proved to help them, as they were both sent to the barracks, and not the dreaded crematorium. Looking back at this time, Wiesel admits that he would never be able to “forget those flames that consumed [his] faith” (34). The treatment of his people at the labor camp resulted in him doubting his God, and whether or not he should believe in someone who allowed this to happen to him. The chosen men run several kilometers to Auschwitz, a concentration camp, in the freezing cold while wearing hardly anything. Upon arriving, they are told that they must decide between “work or crematorium,” and if they don't work, they “will go straight to the chimney” (39). The thought of suffering from a burning death haunted the men, and seemed to be the only thing that frightened them at this point. For the following weeks, the inmates had a surprisingly humane Blockalteste, and didn't have to work much but this quickly changed once he was replaced with a much more difficult one. One night when the men are speaking of God, Wiesel begins to doubt “his absolute justice” due the situation that he’s in, but is told by Akiba Drummer that God is simply testing their faith (45). Soon after, the men leave with the next transport, arriving at their new camp, Buna, four hours

In the memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel portrays the dehumanization of individuals and its lasting result in a loss of faith in God. Throughout the Holocaust, Jews were doggedly treated with disrespect and inhumanity. As more cruelty was bestowed upon them, the lower their flame of hope and faith became as they began turning on each other and focused on self preservation over family and friends. The flame within them never completely died, but rather stayed kindling throughout the journey until finally it stood flickering and idle at the eventual halt of this seemingly never-ending nightmare. Elie depicts the perpetuation of violence that crops up with the Jews by teaching of the loss in belief of a higher power from devout to doubt they

•One day, the Nazi forces arrested all foreign Jews in the town -including Moishe the Beadle, the man that was guiding the protagonist in his studies of the ancient wisdom-. They took them to the Hungarian border and shot them there.