The Holocaust, was a time period from 1933-1945, in which primarily Jews and other groups were imprisoned and exterminated by Nazi Germany. With the ascendance of Adolf Hitler in 1933, most Jews who did not flee Germany were sent to concentration camps. When World War II started, Hitler declared that all Jews in his conquered nations were to be exterminated. By the end of the war, 6 million Jews had been killed, along with Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the disabled, and others. Night by Elie Wiesel, starts out in Elie’s hometown of Sighet, Romania.
Eliezer is a teenage boy living in the Hungarian town of Sighet, Romania. His father is a well respected in the community. Eliezer is a student of Talmud, Jewish oral law and also Cabbala, Jewish mysticism. Eliezer is also very religious since he is an Orthodox Jew.
It is 1941 and Sighet is one of the last untouched Jewish communities left in Europe. The first act of anti-Semitism was the deportation of all foreign Jews, including Eliezer’s teacher, Moshe the Beadle. Moshe soon comes back to warn Sighet, that German officials intercepted the train carrying Jews out of Hungary. The Jews were forced to dig graves and ended up being shot and thrown into them.
No one believed him, thinking he was mad, including Eliezer. By the spring of 1944, the fascists take control of the Hungarian government and Hungarian capital, Budapest, yet the people of Sighet ignore this. When the Germans arrive in Sighet, they force all Jews to live in ghettos and wear yellow stars. Eventually all the Jews are put on trains bound for Birkenau, leaving all their possessions and lives behind.
The Term Paper on Between Shtetl and Salon: Jewish Women in Vienna 1900
Alison Rose’s pioneering monograph Jewish Women in Fin de Siecle Vienna charts new territory on the familiar waters of Vienna 1900. Since the publication of Carl Schorske’s compelling series of cultural historical essays (Fin-de-siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture [1980]), a model that attributed an efflorescence of modern art, literature, and science in the Austrian capital circa 1890-1914 to the ...
Being the last family to leave for Birkenau, Martha, former servant of Elizier’s family offers to hide them in her village, but their foolish optimism rejects her offer. At the first concentration camp Birkenau, Eliezer is separated from his mother and sister, but stays with his father, in which he is very happy about. However they are still uncertain as whether they will be sent to labor camps or cremated. As they moved through Birkenau, they see babies thrown into cremation pits, with a separate pit for adults. Eliezer cannot believe what is happening, and his father cries. After being processed at Birkenau, the prisoners are sent to Auschwitz, where they are tattooed with their prison numbers and stay here for several weeks before being transferred again to Buna.
At this point, the prisoners still have faith in god and see redemption in the future. While at Buna, the supervisor of Eliezer’s workgroup, Idek is prone to violent outbreaks and Eliezer’s father became a victim of it and was savagely beaten. Eliezer felt no pity for his own father and even felt anger since his father could not avoid Idek’s wrath. After an air raid on Buna, several resistance members were discovered and executed. One of them was a young boy who was a servant of the resistance member. While the other two members cried out “Life, Liberty” before being killed, the young boy remained silent and was executed, which prompted tears from the crowd.
It is here that Eliezer really starts to lose faith in god and humanity. According to Eliezer, god died with the death of the child, ‘hanging here on this gallows.’ Marking the end of summer, the most holiest days Rosh Hashanah, the celebration of the New Year and Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. While most of the Jews at Buna come to celebrate, Eliezer’s questioning of his religion furthers and he refuses to bless God and also refuses to fast. News comes of a advancing army upon Buna. The camp is excavated and prisoners are sent on a long run, more than 42 miles to Gleiwitz camp. Without food or water for three days, the prisoners are moved again, by train to Buchenwald.
The Essay on Night By Eliezer Concentration Camp
Night by Eliezer Wiesel Themes: One of the main themes throughout the book is the title of the book "Night." There are references from Eliezer about night during the book, which are full of symbolism. The word "night" is used repeatedly, and Eliezer recounts every dusk, night and dawn through the entire book. For instance, Night could be a metaphor for the Holocaust-submerge the family and ...
At Buchenwald, Eliezer’s father is fatally sick and Eliezer abandons him when an air-raid siren calls all prisoners into the barracks. The next day, Eliezer makes a half-hearted attempt to search for his father, but also contemplates abandoning him to conserve his strength. Although by chance, he finds him, his guilt makes him give coffee and soup to his father. Eliezer’s father has dysentery, which is an inflammatory disorder of the lower intestinal tract and also causes extreme thirstiness.
Eliezer tries to get his father medical attention, but the doctors refuse to help him. As the days past, other prisoners take advantage of his father by beating him and stealing his food. Eventually, Eliezer wakes up to find his father no longer there. Apparently he had been taken to the crematory during the night. Eliezer does not cry, but in fact feels relieved. News of an American army approaching to liberate Buchenwald, but Eliezer does not budge.
While the Nazis decide to kill of the remaining Jews in camp, the resistance movement strikes and drives the remaining SS officers out of camp. In a frenzy of hunger, Eliezer feasts himself on the remaining food in the camp and gets food poisoning. After spending weeks in a hospital, Eliezer finally looks at himself in the mirror shocked, ‘From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.’ Eliezer lost his humanity and faith in his own religion, a religion in which he displayed such devoutness and fervor in the beginning of the novel. His survival was one marked by luck and circumstance, but more importantly, his will to survive, although at the cost of everything he once held dear. At the end of the novel, what remained of his humanity, died with his father.
