Night

Night

  • Submitted By: jomama99
  • Date Submitted: 01/08/2014 6:16 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 604
  • Page: 3
  • Views: 54

Part I
Un di Velt Hot Geshvign ( And the World Remained Silent )was first published in 1956. La Nuit was published in France in 1958 and Night was published in 1960. The story takes place during World War II ( 1941-1945) in several different places in Europe. It starts in the small town of Sighet, in Hungarian Transylvania. Then follows his journey to several concentration camps Birkenau and Auschwitz in Poland but at the time occupied by the Germans. Buna and Glieitz also in Poland finally Buchenwald, Germany. During this time period Europe was being invaded by the Germans under the rule of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. It was under the Nazi's that the part of Transylvania was given to Hungary and after the was in 1947 it was then given back to Romania. The Nazi's initially wanted to have a world without Jews, but then grew into ruining the world and any memory of the Jews. It is known as the Holocaust and more than 6 million had been slaughtered, most of them Jews.
It took Eli Wiesel ten years to find the words to write his memoirs. He never felt that the words would do "it" justice. The world around was rebuilding and the Soviet Union and the United States had become super powers. Transylvania had been given back to Romania and there were uprisings in Hungary and Poland. It was a time of rebirth and also a time of distrust.
A distrust that stemmed from a passivity that almost allowed the destruction of an entire Culture.
The Jewish people shared a culture that was firmly based on three things: 1. A devout faith in God, 2. Family and 3. Tradition. Each of these traditions are greatly affected throughout the book. When we first meet Eliezer in 1941 he has a deep faith in his God by the end of the book his faith has been shattered by the cruel and inhumane treatment by the Nazi's in the concentration camps. His sense of family is also replaced by the animal instinct of survival. He first encounters this with the Kapos and there view...

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