Night

First and foremost, it is important to differentiate between the author of Night, Elie Wiesel, and its narrator and protagonist, Eliezer. That a distinction can be made does not mean that Night is a work of fiction. Indeed, except for minor details, what happens to Eliezer is exactly what happened to Wiesel during the Holocaust. But Wiesel alters minor details (for example, Wiesel wounded his knee in the concentration camps, while Eliezer wounds his foot) in order to place some distance, however small, between himself and his protagonist. It is extremely painful for a survivor to remember and write about his or her Holocaust experience; creating a narrator allows Wiesel to distance himself somewhat from the trauma and suffering about which he writes.
Wiesel did not write Night merely to document historical truths about physical events. The memoir is concerned with the emotional truth about the Holocaust, as experienced by individuals. As Eliezer struggles for survival, his most fundamental beliefs—his faith in God, faith in his fellow human beings, and sense of justice in the world—are called into question. He emerges from his experience profoundly changed. The Holocaust shakes his faith in God and the world around him, and he sees the depths of cruelty and selfishness to which any human being—including himself—can sink. Through Eliezer, Wiesel intimately conveys his horrible experiences and his transformation as a prisoner during the Holocaust.


“Night” by Elie Wiesel is a gruesome story, not entirely true or false about one mans accounts in the time he spent in Auschwitz, a concentration camp during the holocaust. The accounts are not exactly what happened; they have been changed to differentiate between Eliezer and Wiesel. The story tells how Eliezer was taken from his home when he was just a boy and sent with his family to the concentration camp. When they arrived their family was split up, the mother and sister were taken away from Eliezer and his father somewhere else. A strange man told Eliezer to tell the guard at the front that he was 12 because if he was to young he would be killed. While there Eliezer saw some of the most horrifying things he could ever imagine. In the morning they would line up and the guards would shoot someone at random in the head. There were pits filled with bodies burning all the time that would produce the constant smell of burning flesh. Food was a great scarcity, not because there wasn’t enough but because they were being tortured and only given enough food to keep them alive. Every day was a guessing game on whether or not you would stay alive. This was all because Eliezer and his family were Jewish. The health conditions inside were atrocious to say the best. He loses his father while incarcerated at the camp. The struggle lasts for what seems like an eternity for Eliezer and many times during his stay he thinks about giving up on religion, he wonders how could God forsake him and others like this. Through it all he keeps his beliefs and makes it through as America joins the fight and frees him. America had been staying out of this battle in hopes that it would work itself out with time and that freedom would come without there involvement. Fortunately America did get involved and help those under attack and it couldn’t have been soon enough for all those suffering. This book relates to Johnson’s book “What It All Has To Do With Us”. Johnson explains that many American whites don’t think about privilege or oppression because they do not really experience it and think that they can’t to anything about what does go on. This is the idea that many American’s had during World War 2. They thought it had nothing to do with them because the war was all the way in Europe; Johnson said the problem was that if they weren’t doing anything to stop the pain and suffering they were almost just as bad as those who were causing it. This is true because granted the people in America did not cause it or support it they were not doing anything to make the Germans stop their massacre of what they thought of as impure races. According to Johnson American’s perpetuated the holocaust for not creating an uproar against it, and before they started helping they were just as bad as the German’s. When I read this book I was disgusted about the way some people can treat others, the fact that American’s did nothing for a long time and allowed this horror to happen was awful. I could not believe that some people were just able to torture people just because someone told them that they were not as important.