Concentration Camps In The Book Night By Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel was a Romanian American born Jew, who was an activist, professor but, is most famous for his writing. He was imprisoned by the Nazis during the holocaust and survived the ordeal. He later went on to write a historical fiction book based upon his experiences in the concentration camps. The book night follows the writer a boy, Eliezer and his dad during the war. In the beginning the family starts in a quiet village in Romania around 1944. The village becomes under Nazi control and him and his family are forced into cattle cars and taken west to Auschwitz. They move to another concentration camp Buna, where they spend the majority of their time. Here between the rags and the measly food rations they struggle everyday to keep their health and strength. The savagery of the SS officers is made very clear as they have no regard for the Jews. A key point of this in the book is when a thirteen year old boy is hung and slowly dies before the main charters eyes. Around the beginning of 1945 the Russian bring the front closer to the camp. The Nazis force evacuation. Eliezer is sick during this and has a choice. …show more content…
Jews rely heavily on tradition as they have more than 6,000 years of it. The Nazis were brutally good at defiling the Jewish people, in an attempt to exterminate their culture. In the camps they were forced to break dietary laws and shave their heads which is considered taboo. This sense of tradition is so great that even after Eliezer seems to loose all faith in a good God he still clings to the traditions. Elie writes in the first volume of his autobiography, All Rivers Run to the Sea, about this.” My anger rises up within faith and not outside it…I had seen too much suffering to break with the past and reject the heritage of those who had suffered.” (Wiesel) Eliezer clings to the traditions like it is all he has