The Essay : The Consequential Concerto

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 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.

Elie’s rights were violated even this Universal Right which the article states that you have right to freedom from torture and degrading treatment. They especially suffered degrading treatment when all the Jews arrived at Auschwitz. “What have you come here for you sons of bitches? What are you doing here, eh? What do you think? You shut your trap, you filthy swine or I’ll squash you right now.” This is degrading treatment they have suffered being called filthy swine. “One day when Idek was seized with one of his fits of frenzy, I got in his way. He lept on me like a wild animal, hitting me in the chest on the head, throwing me down and pulling me up again, his blow was growing more and more and more violent, until I was covered in blood.” Elie suffered this and it was torture and he was humiliated in font of all the Jews for no reason. Elie suffered horrid treatment and it was torture to him for no purpose. All just because Idek was having a fit and took it out on poor Elie because he was a Jew and they were saw as less. This type of treatment was just

The holocaust is one of the world's most tragic events, approximately 6 million Jews died and the concentration camp Auschwitz is the world's largest human cemetery, yet it has no graves. In Elie Wiesel's autobiographical memoir Night, he writes about his dehumanizing journey in the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Firstly, Elie experiences the loss of love and belonging when he is separated from his mother, sisters, and eventually his father. Also, the lack of respect that the Nazis showed the prisoners which lead to the men, including Elie to feel a sense of worthlessness in the camp. Finally, the lack of basic necessities in the camp leads to the men physically experiencing dehumanization. As a result, all these factors contribute to the

Before Elie had been deported to the terrors of the Auschwitz, he was a completely different person. Some of the traits that he exhibited were hopeful, shielded, and religious. As Wiesel said in “Night” “There was joy, yes joy. People must have thought there could be no greater torment in God’s hell than that of being stranded here, on the sidewalk, among the bundles, in the middle of the street under the blazing sun.” (16) The town was not concerned about what was going on. They didn't believe that anything else would get worse. Elie and the people of his town were unable to accept the fact that anyone would do such a horrible deed. Elie and his neighbors were ecstatic because they thought nothing could get worse than it was already; what Hitler would do to them in the future, did not even seen imaginable. The victims believed that God would

“He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible, only dehumanized.” Elie and his family just wanted to live a normal life. They didn’t have very much money, but were happy with the state they were in. One day, SS officers showed up and took Elie and his family away. Not knowing where they were going, they were obviously scared. Once they finally got there, they realized what they were in for, and that Moishe the Beadle was right. In Elie Wiesel’s book, Night, the German Army dehumanizes Elie Wiesel and the rest of the Jewish prisoners by depriving them of love, safety, and physiological needs.

The mental aspect of dehumanization seemed to cut as sharply as any weapon used by the Nazis. Adolescent Eliezer seemed to have a strong spiritual connection before he endured life in the concentration. This seemed to be the case as he shared that at an early age, he found a master named moishe to teach him Kabbalah. The two would meet every evening and remain in the synagogue long after the faithful had gone (pgs.4-5). Conversely, after he and his family endured the camps, he began to make statements such as, “ Why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because he caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves?( Wiesel 67). Eliezer being the faithful young man he is, never would consider words like those in his vocabulary. Along with the narrator’s religious pathing fading away in the midst of the camp. Eliezer and the rest of the Jewish civilians in the camp have to withstand the unkempt conditions of the bunks in which is the same place they sleep eat ,and release their bodily fluids. By this, I can look up to Eliezer, because knowing myself. I would not be able endure one second of being in the bunks, let alone years just as the narrator and his father had to

At the beginning of the memoir, Elie describes the extent of psychological abuse that he is subjected to, and already the reader can sense a theme of darkness. The atrocious cruelty showed by Nazi soldiers toward Jews, is beyond all realms of rationality. Through strategic verbal abuse, Nazi soldiers slowly deprive the Jews of their stimulus and ability to react. The author reveals, “Our senses were numbed, everything was fading into a fog…The instincts of self-preservation, of self-defense, of pride, had all deserted us” (Wiesel 36). This daily psychological pressure is intended to extinguish any trace of humanity in Jews. The Nazi soldiers know that if they deprive the Jews of their innate nature and interests in life, it would be easier to instill fear and exponentially erase hope. The author affirms, “I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would had dug my nails into this criminal’s flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast?” (39). In this section of the memoir, Elie underscores the Nazis’ success in creating a mental paralysis and an incapacity to react to injustice. The Nazis are using one of the most invasive forms of torture, the psychological abuse. They are progressing every day in their brutal plan, and consequently, the Jews’ anguish becomes more intense and precise. Caleb Lewis in

One of Adolf Hitler’s promises was to eliminate the Jewish race. In order for this to happen, you must first see people as less than human. Once you have accomplished this task, the mass murder of millions of people becomes easy. In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel recalls the multitude of times he was seen as less than human, and how this affected his life while in concentration camps. The dehumanization of the prisoners not only crushes them, it causes them to become desensitized and often see each other as less than human.

During his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s outlook on life shifted to a very pessimistic attitude, showing emotions and actions including rebellion, forgetfulness of humane treatment, and selfishness. Elie shows rebellion early in the Holocaust at the Solemn Service, a jewish ceremony, by thinking, “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled” (Wiesel 67). Elie had already shifted his view on his religion and faith in God. After witnessing some of the traumas of the concentration camps, Elie questioned what he did to deserve such treatment. Therefore, he began to rebel against what he had grown up learning and believing. Not only had Elie’s beliefs changed, his lifestyle changed as well. When Elie’s foot swelled, he was sent to the doctor, where they put him “...in a bed with white sheets. I [he] had forgotten that people slept in sheets” (Wiesel 78). Many of the luxuries that Elie may have taken for granted have been stripped of their lives, leaving Elie and the other victims on a thin line between survival and death. By explaining that he forgot about many of these common luxuries, Elie emphasizes the inhumane treatment the victims of the Holocaust were put through on a daily basis.

Although Eliezer survived the bloodcurdling Holocaust, countless others succumbed to the Nazi’s inhumanity. The Nazi’s progressively reduced the Jewish people to being little more than “things” which were a nuisance to them. Throughout Night, dehumanization consistently took place, as the Nazis oppressed the Jewish citizens. The Germans dehumanized Eliezer, his father, and other fellow Jews for the duration of the memoir Night, which had a lasting effect on Eliezer’s identity, attitude and outlook. Wiesel displays the Nazi’s vicious actions to accentuate the way by which they dehumanize the Jewish population. The Nazis had an abundance of practices to dehumanize the Jews including beatings, starvation, separation of families, crude murders, forced labor, among other horrific actions.

Within human nature there is a want to act against the corruption and evils of society. A human’s moral compass directs each person to fight against what is considered evil and to praise everything that is believed to be good. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (The Devil Came on Horseback). This means that in order for humans to rise above the evils of the world, good men have to take action against those who have committed a wrong. “Not a cry of distress, not a groan, nothing but a mass agony, in silence.”(pg.84). Due to Elie and the other Jews submission to the powerful Nazis, the dehumanization of the Jews remained

After releasing from the police station, Elle’s father told his friends and relatives that, “The news is terrible, TRANSPORTS!” (Wiesel, P.13). The Jews thought that Hitler had given up his plan about the annihilation of Jews. They relaxed for a few months but Elle’s father had made people scared. They thought the German would kill all of them. After that, most of the Jews were not able to sleep and felt worried about their futures. At the same time, Night also told significant things in the Jews’ minds. One of the most touching things was about Elle’s friends, Juliek. Despite the cold weather during the transportation to another concentration camp, Juliek was persistently playing violin and he played a song during the night time. Elle mentioned in the book, “The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek’s soul had become his bow.” (Wiesel, P.95). It was important as many people in the concentration camp had lost their friends, families, or even interests. However, Juliek didn’t lose his interest in playing violin and his persistence became much stronger than German’s weapons. Night was symbolic in the Jews’ minds. It emphasised the helpless of the Jews, but at the same time, Night also witnessed lots of important things in the camp, which made them unforgettable.

The Holocaust revealed the extreme evil in human nature on both a grand and small scale. Hitler, a strong supporter of antisemitism, had an agenda to create a dominant Aryan race and would stop at nothing to diminish the Jewish population. This meant forcing innocent Jewish people into death and labor camps, where conditions were brutal and treatment was atrociously inhumane. Overtime, this grand scale oppression sparked anger and violence within the victims. Instead of supporting one another in times of trouble, they began to commit senseless acts of violence towards one another in response to the cruelty they faced. Survival became their highest value, at any cost. Elie Wiesel witnesses this first hand on many accounts and spends his life striving to educate the world about the horrors of the Holocaust. In his Holocaust memoir, Night, he uses the motifs: night, silence, and flames, to develop the idea that evil is part of human nature.

Since the Baroque era, the concerto has played a vital role in the music world. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, a concerto is “a composition for one or more soloists and orchestra with three contrasting movements.” There are two main types: the concerto grosso and the classical concerto; both will be discussed later. While the term concerto is relatively easy to understand in context, when put into use the term becomes more complicated to define.