Examples Of Tough Decisions In Night By Elie Wiesel

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Tough Decisions

Approximately 11 million people died during the Holocaust, 1.1 million of those being children, and 90 percent being Jewish. However, Jewish boy, Elie Wiesel was not one of those children. He feels as though he was the only one in his family to be kept alive to write this book. Elie Wiesel 's’ book, Night, was published in 1956 after about 10 years of silence. It was first published in French and later on in English. 15 year old Elie and his family were stuffed onto a train with many others from their area. They were on the train for many days not knowing where they were going to end up. They arrived at Auschwitz and he and his father were then separated from his mother and sister not knowing that is the last time he will ever
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Elie has many opportunities to help his father get stronger but then the head of Elies block tries to get him to take care of himself and forget about others by saying, “Don’t forget you’re in a concentration camp. Here, every man has to fight for himself and not think of anyone else” (Wiesel 105). Elie is being told that he needs to depend on himself and if he wants to make it out alive he needs to put himself first. The head of the block then goes on by saying, “there are no fathers, no brothers, no friends. Everyone lives and dies for himself alone” (105). Although Elie wants to give all his time and energy to help his father get better, the head of the block is telling him that it does not matter that he is his father, he needs to focus on himself. It is survival of the fittest in these concentration camps and even though no one wants to fight alone they almost have too. No matter how many times others tell Elie to focus on himself he continues to stay by his father, “he works and prays to maintain the strength not to forsake his father as these other sons did. "I was his only support," he says of his father” (Gale Virtual). A big part of Elies life before the concentration camp was praying and his family always had his back. Now it was time for Elie to show his dad that he had his back and was going to stand by him until

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