Night

Personal Response: Night by Elie Wiesel. The holocaust was a time during which human rights were withheld from the Jewish community across the majority of Europe. The book Night by Eliezer Wiesel shows how the morals of humans were questioned as they engaged in deeds which implied that their ethics or basic principles of life were distorted, corrupt and wrong. However the Holocaust and many memoirs written by survivors have provided the liberated world with knowledge of why certain morals and ethics are needed in our world. The respect of others and their human rights can be taught through learning of the Holocaust, for it was a time in which the opposite had taken place. Learning about it reminds us never to engage in such crimes ever again. During this period of time, the Jews had endured injustice. In addition to the Jewish people, there are many other groups of people around the world which have had immoralities done unto them.

It is to the benefit of every human being in this world that we practise human rights. It is not without heartache that we learn exactly how their rights were broken. Rights cannot be earned nor denied, they are without thought, naturally given. The Jews were victims of prejudices and stereotypes. The Jewish community as a whole were targeted implying that the oppressors were against the religion of the Jews thus, oppressing Judaism. Their lives were belittled and most lives were even taken away, as the Jews were murdered for no apparent reason except for the hatred that Hitler had for them. They had been stripped of their liberty. Their general freedom had been taken away from them as they were taken to the concentration camps and death camps. Instead of living a life wherein they thought of the future, they lived a life of fear, hunger, thirst, pain and sadness.

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Night paints us a picture of how the Jews were submersed in the darkness brought upon them by the anti-Semitics. It raises issues of violence, murder and racism against Jews. The Nazis under Adolf Hitler showed no mercy on the Jewish people. They forced Jews into cattle carts, forced them to do labour, forced them to live in harsh conditions and if they did not respect these orders, they were forced to by means of violence and aggressive acts by the SS officers. As the main goal or the final solution of the Nazis was to rid of all Jews, they found no problem with exterminating those which were of poor health or incapabilities. The Nazis stripped the Jews of all dignity as they were seen as animals. We see through this that respect played absolutely no factor during the Holocaust. The morals and ethics of the oppressors were unacceptable and had no standards as to what was right or wrong.

At first, during the Holocaust as viewed in the book, The Jewish community had hope in the Germans (Nazis). The Jews found ways of justifying the acts of their future oppressors. When they were put into the ghettos (which the book depicts as a Jewish settlement, complete with their own social services) they felt that they were reunited with their fellow Jewish neighbours, they no longer had to stare into the hate-filled faces of anti-Semitics (pg. 12). When the first acts of the Nazis took place, the community was paralyzed with fear and helplessness. The Jews had no idea what type of life awaited them (pg. 13), but like live-stock they were transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Night shows the world through the eyes of a young boy who witnesses brutal deaths and aggressive behaviours, as we are now able to read about in this memoir. This literature work has educated me on the damage that anti-Semitism did to the world during 1940 and 1945. It was as if the Nazis had the right to the lives of every Jew residing in Europe.

Night

The people of the Jewish community suffered injustice. Their rights had been violated and they had been dehumanized, humiliated and degraded. The unfair treatment of the Jews included being banned from public schools, boycotting all Jewish shops or businesses and the vandilisation of their property and buildings. Jews were not allowed to resist the Nazis; else their punishment would be death.

In this new age we must support and promote justice. Holocaust museums and memorials of the Jews help us to fight injustice by reminding all of us of the horrible crimes against humanity. People such as Eliezer Wiesel help make a change in the mind-sets of people. They educate others on the wrongs of the world and in doing so, help prevent it from happening again. Through experience, whether from ourselves or someone else, we can learn great lessons. We can also learn from the mistakes made by previous oppressors of our world. Eliezer Wiesel once said -Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech- I have tried to keep memory alive; I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.