Night

‘“Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God, and my soul, and turned my dreams to ashes”’ (Wiesel 34). The Holocaust changed the lives of many around the world. Those Jews who were the lucky survivors, like Elizer Wiesel, have their stories to tell. Wiesel’s moving story Night, teaches the readers a great lesson, and it touches the heart of every reader. Elie Wiesel in his novella, taught the readers that silence, beliefs, and death are the three most important subjects. Elie Wiesel was born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania. Elie and his family were taken from their home in 1944 and taken to their first destination of the Holocaust, Auschwitz. Elie has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Elie has been a professor at Boston University. 

Wiesel stayed quiet about the Holocaust for ten years and his reasoning was this, ‘“I didn’t want to use the wrong words. I was afraid the words might betray it”’ (Wiesel 1). Elie’s silence may account for the silence that he had to keep when he was fifteen years old in the Holocaust. Wiesel was the one out of his family to survive the Holocaust, and the words that he could not speak the are coming out now. As the events that Wiesel went through come back, I may not be able to feel his physical pain, but I do feel the emotional pain through his words. The reader not only goes everywhere with Elie, but I also know every thought that went through his head when he must keep silent.

Elie’s belief in God is a strong onset of the novel, but as the novel goes on, Elie’s faith grows weaker. ‘“I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted his absolute justice”’ (Wiesel 42). During a hanging ceremony, a man standing near Elie keeps asking where God is. Elie hears what he is asking and when many Jews celebrate the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah, blessing God, Elie asks why he should bless God. Elie still does believe that God is there, but he doubts God’s judgment.  Elie blames God for everything that is happening to the Jews. Throughout the story, Elie keeps on questioning God and makes himself lose hope in God. By the end, Elie gets his faith back when the war is over and the Jewish population still live on. To this day, Elie still says, ‘“ Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God, and my soul, and turned my dreams to ashes”’ (Wiesel 34). Instead of giving up all hope, Elie forced himself to continue.

‘“Do you see that chimney over there? See? Do you see those flames? Over there-that’s where you’re going to be taken. That’s your grave, over there”’ (SS Officer 28). As the smell of corpses got worse, Elie smelled the dead bodies penetrating his nostrils. After Elie had found out that his mother and sister’s had been killed, he couldn’t deal with the fact that he would never see them again. Elie almost killed himself when he was in the line to get into the concentration camp. Elie, almost to the front of the line, awaiting his destiny, decided to throw himself into a barbed wire fence.  But when Elie found out that he was going the opposite way of the crematory, he just kept on walking. By this time, Elie had become numb to the beatings and he had witnessed many hangings of his friends. He had, by now, become accustomed to the stench of burning bodies. When Elie and his father went to Buchenwald, the last concentration camp, Elie’s father died. ‘“After my father’s death, nothing could touch me anymore”’ (Wiesel 107). Death was just a part of life for Elie by now.

Let We Remember, a sign outside of Auschwitz, is a memorial telling the people of the world to remember the horrors of the Holocaust. What ever happened to “Never again?” In Darfur, there is a Holocaust going on today. Women are being gang-raped, children beheaded or thrown alive into fires, and young men tortured and excuted in a genocidal massacre. The horrors of the Holocaust were never supposed to come back. The human population needs to live on, not be destroyed. The silence of the Holocaust is wide open, beliefs in God are getting taken away and betrayed, and death is still happening everywhere around us, many at a time. ‘“From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes as they stared into mine, has never left me”’ (Wiesel 109). Let us end this Holocaust all around the