Summary Of Conflict In Night By Elie Wiesel

Millions of Jews and non-Jews were lulled into a false sense of security when they were told they would be taken to camps that had better working conditions. They were manipulated to the point where they no longer had a voice. Slowly, Hitler’s true intentions started to show. It all began with the manner in which they were transported to the camps. Trains were packed with hundreds of people to the extent that many had limited movement and it was difficult to breathe. The ghettos and factors were not an improvement. People were chosen for either enslavement or execution behind the closed gates of the ghettos. Death Marches or gas showers were used in mass genocides. Mothers, fathers, children; no matter which race or gender they were, if they …show more content…
Mothers and fathers had to see their children being ripped away from them; unable to do anything, and if they did do something, they were killed right there in front of everyone. Some people were fortunate to be put in the same camp as a family member, while others were not. Although being able to stay with a family member made it slightly bearable to go through the torture, it also made it harder. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, for example, he describes his recollection of his internal conflict on whether to help his father or leave him behind. The experience that Elie Wiesel suffered was common inside the ghettos. To survive, they had to only think about themselves. Fighting to survive everyday was hard just being by yourself and even harder when you had someone you love with you. They had to see each other, dying inside and losing hope each and every …show more content…
Any thing that was in their possession (if valuable) could be used to get a bit of more food. For food prisoners would give up whatever they could: shoes, blankets, gold teeth for example. Many of the memories the survivors have of how supplies were dealt with amongst prisoners are unbelievable. Food was the fine line of being civil and becoming dehumanized. For example, one of the survivors had recollections of how desperate everyone was to get a piece of bread even if it meant they had to fight for it (See Figure 1). Prisoners were depraved from bare necessity so much that everyday some would drop dead. A survivor even has memories of how she took things that she could use from a dead body; “The dead body had a piece of bread…” “…I’m taking this piece of bread from the dead body… …and I’m taking this one pair of boots and I can sell it. With this I can buy myself a place to live. I can buy myself a place to sleep. With this bread I brought myself a bit of access [to wash]. Your bowl was your life, without your bowl you didn’t eat.” (Kitty- Return to Auschwitz,