The comfort of one’s home is an almost indescribable feeling, characterized by the open arms of the ones you love and a space where you have the freedom to do as you choose. For the millions of Jewish people living in Europe during World War II, this statement was far from the truth. Families, like Elie Wiesel’s, were removed from their homes and forced to live in ghettos. They faced atrocious circumstances that would only get worse with time, as their fate was to eventually be moved to horrid concentration camps. Their existence became one of pain, suffering and misery, and it all started in the slums that became their homes. European Jews lived normal lives up until the brink of World War II, when the Nazis came into power. They cruelly …show more content…
Countless individuals taken to live in these places recorded their experiences, similar Elie Wiesel and Mary Berg. Stanislaw Sznapman was one of these people, and his writing displays the horrors of his living situation. “And so the days passed, filled with persecution, humiliation, and hideous torments. No one felt safe day or night.” (Sznapman 19) This goes to show that the Jews were regularly discriminated against and treated like complete filth. This was due to Nazi ideology, which favored an “Aryan” race and deemed it necessary to exterminate those who did not fit this description. Jews were a part of this and faced unspeakable crimes during the holocaust. Many people immediately think of concentration camps, but it is important to realize that the root of all of that was the ghettos. Jews were seen as burdens on society and Nazis had a yearning to wipe them out. Their success in doing so began in these ghettos. As stated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Food allotments rationed to the ghetto by the German civilian authorities were not sufficient to sustain life.” Tens of thousands of Jews died from this reason alone. This truly portrays the absolute magnitude at which the Jews were being mistreated. Already, this lack of food and decent resources was a kind of warning as to how they would be taken to …show more content…
An example of this was the tendency of children to continue to go to school despite laws that said otherwise. As stated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Many young people tried to continue their education by attending school classes organized by adults in many ghettos. Since such classes were usually held secretly, in defiance of the Nazis, pupils learned to hide books under their clothes when necessary, to avoid being caught.” This was the little solace that the Jewish kids were able to receive among so much chaos. For many people nowadays, education is seen as a burden. Jewish children during the holocaust were not given this right. This made it difficult to maintain a normal life. Not being able to receive a proper education affected many children negatively, as they were held back from having normal childhoods. Education is a vital part to growing up and having a stable life, but Jewish children were not offered this, as going to school was viewed as somewhat of a privilege. Despite this, numerous efforts were made across the country in the ghettos to ensure that children were continuing to get their education. This was not the only thing that the Jews did in secret in the ghettos. They refused to allow the Nazis to tear their religion away from them. As stated in the following quote by the
Throughout the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer, the protagonist, is transported and moved to numerous concentration camps. His story, which is corresponding to Wiesel’s biography, is representative to the lives of a billion other Jews. Jews were stripped away from their families, beliefs, identity, and freedom. They could no longer express their faith in God or have the human right to live where desired. During the holocaust, nothing was fair, everything was dark and cruel.
Throughout his memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel chronicles the brutality and inhumanity of the Jewish concentration camps during the Holocaust and recounts their brutal toll on the ethical awareness of the Jewish people. The novel’s protagonist,
This brutality was also seen in The Terrible Things, when the “Terrible Things” came to get rid of the animals that they found were annoying and that they did not want any more in the forest. This discrimination is related because it is a carbon copy of the viewpoint the Nazis had in their mind. The Nazis found that the Jewish were undesirable and annoying, so they took them away and segregated them from the rest of humanity to ensure they were not annoying. Additionally, the Jewish were able to murder many people because of their deadly transportation conditions. It was able to be seen that in the first part of Night, Jews can be seen dying exceptionally rapidly.
This made it really hard for them to really fight back because most of them were poor and could not afford weapons like guns or knives ( Hass). Since the Jews had no power over The Nazis they were forced to do anything they wanted them to do. From 1933 to 1945 Jews were in a tough time along with the people that were against Hitler and his group of Nazis that were out to kill the Jews. Over those twelve years, many things had happened, many lives and businesses were lost in the Holocaust. Many people moved to the United States or Israel(US Holocaust memorial) because they couldn’t stand living in Europe during the time of the Holocaust.
Elie Wiesel’s touching memoir, Night, shares intimate details about the cruelty of World War Two concentration camps and the horrors that occurred within them. Concentration camps were spread throughout Germany and Poland from 1933-1945 as the result of strong anti-Semitic views radiating from the President and Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler. In the memoir, Night, Wiesel shares of the time that he and his father endured being held captive in several concentration camps, and the battle to escape death, day after day. In the memoir, the significance of night was used throughout the piece to draw connections and emotions from the reader. In Night, night was used both literally and symbolically to portray the unknown, pain, and the end of a journey.
Elie Wiesel was one of many whom experienced the unthinkable. As a young teenager his life was changed when he was ripped away from his norms due to religious persecution during World War II. Through his experiences written in his autobiographical book, Night, it is evident that Wiesel experienced exile. Edward Said, a literary theorist and cultural critic, has the view that “exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience.” Wiesel might agree, as he experienced exile and knows the horrors, but continues to share his story.
It’s hard to believe what atrocities have been committed throughout the course of history; however, it’s important to learn about them. World War II was an especially dark time in history when many types of people were killed by Nazi Germany. “Night” by Elie Wiesel is an autobiography in which Elie recounts his terrible experiences in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Elie tells what horrors he had to endure as a Jew and how the Nazis made him lose his sense of being, as well as making him almost lose his faith. Prisoners in the camp were constantly being killed and burned in the crematorium and everyone who was not able to work either died by themselves or died at the hands of the SS guards.
The Jewish Struggle in Ghettos By mid-1941, almost all Jews in occupied Poland had been forced into these overcrowded districts. This meant Jews living in Poland at that time had barely enough food, water, and clothing to survive, as so many people were put into one area to live. The reason for this was that the Nazis wanted to control the Jews and their whereabouts. The Nazis and Germans disliked the Jews, because they believed they were a source of “racial pollution.” Although people across Europe tried to help Jews escape the ghettos, they were unable to do so because the Nazis controlled most of Europe, created policies for Jews in ghettos, and living conditions were terrible for Jews.
No school for Jews.” Along with the nazis wanting to take away as much power as they could from the Jewish, they were also choosing to take away the children's
With such dreadful conditions, the Jews began initiating resistance and uprisings. For example, “Hundreds of Jews fought the Germans and their auxiliaries in the streets of the ghetto. Thousands of Jews refused to obey German orders to report to an assembly point for deportation” (“Jewish Uprisings in Ghettos and Camps,” par. 3). Even though, the prisoners knew loss was unquestionable, they fought bravely and with certainty. The Jews wanted future generations to know that they would never give up without a fight.
The severely cruel conditions of concentration camps had a profound impact on everyone who had the misfortune of experiencing them. For Elie Wiesel, the author of Night and a survivor of Auschwitz, one aspect of himself that was greatly impacted was his view of humanity. During his time before, during, and after the holocaust, Elie changed from being a boy with a relatively average outlook on mankind, to a shadow of a man with no faith in the goodness of society, before regaining confidence in humanity once again later in his life. For the first 13 years of his life, Elie seemed to have a normal outlook on humanity.
That's just another reason we need to teach kids about the holocaust, but don't stop there. We need to teach them about all the genocide events that took place. They need to learn about the flaws of their world, so they can fix them. In conclusion, the holocaust should be taught in schools because, it teaches students about the thin line between good and evil, it was a major event of history in the 20th century, they should know the past early so they can prepare for the future, and it helps them deal with the world they live in
To find a man who has not experienced suffering is impossible; to have man without hardship is equally unfeasible. Such trials are a part of life and assert that one is alive by shaping one’s character. In the autobiographical memoir Night by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, this molding is depicted through Elie’s transformation concerning his identity, faith, and perspective. As a young boy, Elie and his fellow neighbors of Sighet, Romania were sent to Auschwitz, a macabre concentration camp with the sole motive of torturing and killing Jews like himself. There, Elie experiences unimaginable suffering, and upon liberation a year later, leaves as a transformed person.
After going through so much, many people do not have the same mindset as they did before. Being tortured and watching others being tortured changes a person’s life, especially Elie’s, his father’s, Moshe the Beadle’s, and Rabbi Eliahou’s. Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, shares his own experience of going through a concentration camp, and it is clear that many things in his life changed
Very few books illustrate the suffering endured in World War II concentration camps as vividly as Elie Wiesel's Night. It is a memoire that will leave disturbing mental images of famine, anti-Semitism, and death such as infants being shoveled as