Night - Theme Paragraph

Night In the story, ‘Night’, author Elie Wiesel shares his most personal experiences during the Holocaust, during which he lost his family and many friends. As a young man, Eliezer’s faith in humanity and religion is shattered following the unparalleled evil perpetrated by the German’s against the Jews. In the year 1944, at the young age of fifteen, Eliezer and his family were taken from their home to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and then to Buchenwald where they endured unimaginable cruelty at the hands of the Germans. Eliezer and his townsmen are packed into cattle cars, with barley room to stand and suffer terribly. When Eliezer arrives in Auschwitz, he is greeted by his first selection. He and his father follow the line that passes a pit of burning babies. Elie writes “Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never” (pg. 34). Over the following months at Auschwitz, Eliezer and his father endured inhumane treatment and living conditions within the camps. The prisoners are forced to run 42 kilometers in a blizzard following evacuation from Buna. For those who could not keep up, the SS had orders to shoot anyone who could not sustain the pace. “Their fingers on the triggers, they did not deprive themselves of the pleasure” (pg. 85). Upon their arrival at Buchenwald, Eliezer's father is unable to move. Eliezer brings him soup and coffee, against the advice of other prisoners who counsel him to keep it for himself. Eliezer's father, suffering from dysentary, begs for water. An SS guard becomes annoyed and knocks him in the head. Eliezer wakes up the next morning and discovers his father's empty bed. He is more relieved than sad. On April 11th, the resistance movement moved in, “the SS had fled and the resistance had taken charge of the camp”. After three days of Liberation, Eliezer fell ill with food poisoning. Once he was well enough to get up, he decided to look at himself in the mirror, as he had not seen himself since the ghetto. Wiesel’s final passage “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed has never left me”. Eli’s last lines leaves the reader with a sense of hopelessness, in this passage, despite now been free, Eliezer views himself as dead; innocence is dead; humanity is dead; God is dead. The author of Night, Elie Wiesel, the older version of Eliezer, the death camp survivor, whom has dedicated his life to serving mankind and to prevent human rights atrocities, showing the world that humankind is capable of goodness, notwithstanding its inherent evil.