Night Elie Wiesel Journey

It is a universal maxim in the tenets of the main monotheistic religions, that, if a Christian/Jew/Muslim holds true to God, they will assert the continued existence of, “the self,” the monotheistic-trio’s idea being most overt with Judaism, one of the trio, during the dark period of history titled the Holocaust. From 1933 to 1945, the Holocaust was essentially a methodical killing of certain categories of people - 11 million total, 6 million being Jews, the rest being Gypsies, homosexuals, and the disabled - by a party of cold, intelligent, unempathetic people, going by the name of Nazis. However, ‘twas not always literal killing, but sometimes the killing of “the self,” that being defined as a person’s ability to make personal decisions amidst …show more content…
In the historical text Night, which recounts the journey of Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust and the author of the aforementioned text, Elie is greeted by an acrimonious welcome when he and his father first arrive at Auschwitz. Not only were those first few moments the last few moments he had with his mother and sister, but the moments that shaped his resolve to endure and fight for his inner freedom. How did he do that, though, with even his own kind - the Kapos, Jews enlisted by the Nazis for “administrative” positions - brutalizing him, as they did many other Jews? It is implied that, upon parting from his mother and younger sister, “behind him, an old man fell to the ground,” due to death by an SS officer’s revolver. An unnamed man then came forward and yelled, “‘Do you think we asked to come?’” and the entire atmosphere indicates that the prisoners, including Elie, were feeling the spark that one feels when instinct takes over. In this particular instance, the instinct was one that has been with us since we were basic homo sapiens; the instinct to fight whatever is supposed to be an oppressive threat, maintaining also necessary endurance if anything were to come up. It is that instinct that drove Elie to keep fighting, and drives us, furthermore

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