Ayrault 1

David Ayrault
Ms. Aughenbaugh
English 12
23 December, 2014
Night is a well-known book about the Holocaust, but not because of its historical
accuracy. Night was historically accurate, it was written by a survivor, but its not because of its
historical accuracy that it has become well known. It has become well known because it doesnt
focus on the history, if focuses on the victims, more specifically, Elie Wiesel and his family.
Elie Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet Romania. His parents were
Shlomo and Sarah Wiesel. When he was liberated, he vowed to stay silent about his experiences.
He finally broke his silence with the encouragement of Francois Mauriac. His memoir was the
800 page Ud di Velt Hot Geshvig in 1956, which later was shortened to be La Nuit in 1958, then
Night in 1960.
The book begins in Wiesels hometown of Sighet, Romania. He is introduced as a child
who is extremely intrigued in his own culture and religion. He wants to move on in his faith but
his father would not allow him until he masters what he is currently studying. Moshe the Beadle
teaches him until the fascist leaders come to power in Romania and force out all the foreign
Jews. He returns a few days later with stories of mass murder and brutality. No one believes him
until they are too chosen for deportation. Wiesel is sent to Birkenau and separated from his
mother and sisters. He goes through Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald where he is finally
liberated. He, and the two oldest sisters were the only members of his family to survive.
Many people didnt know the Holocaust was happening, mainly because the Germans
were good at covering it up. When mounting evidence was brought to Allied high command,
they refused to do anything because they had more important objectives than bombing the
railroads that transported the prisoners, according to Allied bomber command. The soldiers who
liberated and went through the camps were the first ones who actually believed the stories.
General Patton reportedly said after he visited one of the camps that he wanted every Allied

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soldier in the reserve to march through a camp. After the war, Allied commanders put on trial the
Nazi war criminals and gave the Jews a small piece of land which later became the nation of
Israel.
There were many death camps in Europe, but the most famous one by far is Auschwitz.
Wiesel at fifteen was sent to this camp. Auschwitz killed more prisoners than any camp in Nazi
occupied Europe. The sign that greets the entrance of Auschwitz states, Work is Liberty.
Auschwitz was not originally a death camp; no concentration camps of the Nazis were originally
intended to be a death camp. They were changed into death camps after Hitlers Final Solution.
After the Final Solution plan was decided upon, the prisoners sent to these camps were meant to
die, not work. The camp was eventually evacuated before the Allies got to it, but some prisoners
were left behind in the hospitals and were liberated. Wiesel was not liberated here, but was
instead forced to march to Buchenwald. During this march he met a kid who abandoned his
father because he decided that his father was dead weight. Wiesel vowed that this would ever
happened to him, but when Wiesels father was dying in bed, he didnt feel sorrow, but instead
relief.
After Germany surrendered, the high ranking officers and many camp workers were put
on trial. The Nuremburg Trials, named after the city in which the trials took place, sentenced the
accused to either death or life in jail. Here, the famous, judgment that following orders does not
excuse people from war crimes, came to be. Similar trials happened in Japan, but these were
largely opposed by the public because there was never any proof that high ranking Japanese
officers ordered the massacre of POWs and civilians. Several war criminals escaped during the
last hectic days of Nazi Germany, and it is possible that some may still be out there.
The Nazis believed in their master race, the Aryans, and thought that anyone else was
hindering society. They believe that it was their responsibility to kill all other races to save
humanity. Many people stayed quiet, or even supported this, because while the Nazis were brutal

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in their rule, the German people never faced real hardship during the war until the Russians
finally broke through the German lines and invaded Germany itself in 1944 1945. Hitler
remembered that Germany lost WWI because of internal strife, so he took great measures to keep
rebellion down. While the SS were brutal in hunting criminals and rebels alike, Hitler had kept
production of commercial goods online and always had a steady supply of food coming into
Germany. This mix of fear and full stomachs not only prevented rebellion; it also removed the
urge to rebel. This tactic was very effective. Many people believed Hitler was Germanys savior
until the last moment when the news of his death went worldwide and the Russians were burning
down Berlin.
Mussolini, Hitlers Italian ally, didnt have any strong feeling about the Jews, and left
them alone, and the only real persecution of them came when the German army occupied them
after Italy officially surrendered. There was practically no Japanese response to the Holocaust
because of a mix between the massive distances that the Germans and Japanese had to
communicate over, meaning that they really couldnt send that many messages between each
other, and the fact that the Japanese were doing significantly worse to the people of China and
other Asian countries they conquered. The Japanese would ultimately kill more people than the
Nazis would by the end of WWII.
The majority of Jews did not see the Holocaust coming, even with mounting persecution.
This is evident in Night as well where the local Jews of Sighet did not believe Moshe until it was
too late. Some Jews did join the Russian partisans and armies to fight, but this was a relatively
small minority. Many of the occupied nations tried to resist the deportation of Jews, in fact; only
the French puppet government assisted the Nazis in hunting them down. In Denmark, when the
German armies invaded, they were able to save all but 100 Jews from the Nazis by sending them
to Sweden. Norway also repeated the same method to sneak the majority of their Jews to Sweden

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as well. In the Netherlands, strikes and general non-cooperation hindered the Nazis, but the Jews
were so close together, that it was impossible to hide many. In Poland and Russia, no organized
resistance was able to take shape because the Nazis were far less quiet about their actions. The
first German units just went through the towns and shot people they didnt like on the spot with
the excuse that they were Jews or Communists.
Night gained its fame from focusing on the victims, however, not the historical context. It
showed how much the Holocaust affected the people. When Wiesel is introduced, he is very
religious, very innocent, and loyal to his family. Through the book he loses these traits, and
therefore, his identity.
In the concentration camps, he lost his faith in God when he couldnt understand why
everything was happening. When his father was about to be burned alive, he felt relief that he
didnt have to drag him around anymore. When he is beaten and suffers for no reason, he loses
his innocents. When he is liberated, he describes himself as a walking corpse.
Even after he was freed, that didnt mean that the suffering had ended. His home was
destroyed and he didnt know if anyone else he knew survived; he later found out that his 2
oldest sisters had survived but his mother and youngest sister had not. He even vowed to not
speak of what had happened, a vow that was broken with encouragement of Francois Mauriac.
It is because that the book wasnt just listing facts that it made such an impact. It showed
the human side to the Holocaust. The book does not give you numbers or statistics, but people. It
gave you the Holocaust through the eyes of a child. It gave the feelings he felt, the things he
experienced, the thought process he was going through, and because of that, it made the reader
care more about what was happening because they could relate to the emotions he felt. The book
effectively puts you in his shoes. In short, the reason why the book has such a large impact can
be summarized by the following quote made by Joseph Stalin; A single death is a tragedy, a
million deaths is a statistic.

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Works Cited
Wiesel. Elie. Night. New York: Hill & Wang, 1960. Print
Arnold-Forster. Mark. The World at War. New York: Stein and Day, 1973. Print
Toland. John. The Last 100 Days. New York: Random House, 1965. Print
Rees. Laurence. Auschwitz. New York: Public Affairs, 2005. Print
Night. Novels for Students. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Volume 4. Farmington Hills: Thomson
Gale, 1998. 229-252. Print
Contemporary Authors Elie Wiesel: Power Library. Webpage. 12/15/14
Pariser, Michael. Elie Wiesel : Bearing Witness. Brookfield, Conn: Millbrook Press, 1994.
eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 15 Dec. 2014.