Category: Night

During the Holocaust, millions of Jews were killed as result of Hitler wanting to make a master race. It was a terrible event for Jewish adults, but more so for the children. Most children under 18 would have been killed, as the Nazis saw no use for them. In the story ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel, and the movie ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ by John Boyne both stories follow two families that were of different races during the war.

In the novel ‘Night’ you follow along Elie and his father as they try to survive the Auschwitz concentration camp during the war. Throughout the book Elie and his father develop a stronger relationship and learn to take care of each other no matter what. Towards the end of the book, the roles are switched. Elie is now taking care of his father all the time instead of his father taking care of him. Elie’s father dies not to long before the war ends, and the Jews are released from the camps. In the movie ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ you follow Bruno and his family, who are German, that get moved to a house near a concentration camp. Bruno doesn’t understand quite what is happening, as he sees the prisoners as strange, pajama-wearing, farmers. He soon befriends a Jewish boy named Shmuel who becomes the only friend Bruno has. At one-point Bruno sneaks into the camp to help Shmuel find his father but is killed in a gas chamber with hundreds of other Jews.

Some of the main differences in the two stories are as followed. In ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ the father/son relationship starts out stronger than in ‘Night’. Bruno’s father wants his son to be happy when they move to the country and protects him from what is going on as best to his abilities. In ‘Night’ Elie’s father is not as interested in Elie’s life at the beginning of the book, but it is quickly changed when they are forced into the camps. Another difference is how some prisoners work as servants instead of working at camp. In ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’, there is a Jewish prisoner who is forced to work at Bruno’s house as a servant.

Many similarities in the stories are camp life, treatment of prisoners, and how it follows two boys throughout the war. The camps in the ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ are surrounded by electrified barbed wire fences, and guards. The prisoners are also crammed into small shacks, without much cover from the cold. The camps in ‘Night’ are visualized as much of the same as in ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’. Prisoners in both stories are treated much the same. They are forced to work, and aren’t fed much either. They’re also forced to wear ragged clothes, shave their heads, and not have a name, but instead a number. Another similarity is how the Nazis made propaganda convincing people, who were opposed to the camps, that life in the camp wasn’t that bad. They had commercials showing happy prisoners, that had many activities to do. Many people didn’t know that the camps were a thing at the beginning of the war anyway.

In conclusion, these stories are both alike and different in many ways. They both follow a terrible event that happened from both sides of the war. The Holocaust was a horrible event for all Jews, especially young ones. All in all, millions from both sides of the war died, and the Jewish race was drastically thinned out. If Hitler had not been beat the Jewish race could have possibly been destroyed. In both works we have followed a young boy, one Jewish, one Nazi, and we have seen how terrible the Holocaust was from a first-hand account on one side, and a story that could have happened from the other side.

World War II was a horrible war that killed millions, but sadly most of the casualties were innocent civilians. The Nazis were the driving force of killing civilians during the war with their death camps, or as they are known as concentration camps. During the war they targeted mainly Jews and the handy capped. ‘Night’ and ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ both gave views of the Holocaust; one from the view of a Jew, and one of a fictional boy whose father was a Nazi general. Since they both gave different views of the Holocaust, they will both have similarities and differences.

One of the major differences between ‘Night’ and ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ is the point of view. ‘Night’ is a non-fiction book written by Ellie Wiesel, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. While ‘The Boy in the Stiped Pajamas’ is a fictional movie about the son of a Nazi general who is the head of a Nazi concentration camp. During ‘Night’ Ellie explains how he was taken from his home and then forced to work in Auschwitz or die. He explained in the first-person point of view how he and his father struggled to survive and all the horrific sites they had witnessed. While ‘The Boy in the Stiped Pajamas’ gives a very convincing story it is in fact a fictional story. The story is told in the third person limited point of view. The main character Bruno is the son of a Nazi commandant who moved his family near a Nazi death camp. All the while keeping the secret of what the camp was from his kids who were not allowed outside of the front yard. One day while Bruno’s mother was away running errands he snuck out of the yard and went exploring. Where he comes across a barbed wire fence at the edge of the camp where he comes across a small Jewish boy and thinks he is a farmer that is dressed in pajamas. He then becomes friends with the kid and begins to sneak him food whenever one day the kid’s dad has not come back Bruno decides to help the kid look for his dad. While he is there looking, he and his new friend they are taken to a gas chamber and poisoned to death. Whenever his family learns of his disappearance they begin looking frantically for Bruno. By the time they make it to the camp, it is too late and he is already dead in the gas chamber along with his friend. The two different stories gave a very different perspective on how people viewed the Holocaust and the death camps.

Another big difference how the concentration camp is run. In ‘Night’ the camp is a brutal place where beatings occur every day and public executions are every other day. It shows the camp as a place where there is no freedom for the Jews who must work to stay alive. They are forced to go on extremely long runs with those who can’t keep up the pace they are killed mercilessly. Meanwhile in ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ the camp is not as harsh and cruel. From what little we see of the camp some of the prisoners are not monitored and have practically free roam of the camp. The movie doesn’t tell of any beatings or any public executions. The people in the camp do not look extremely starved like they are described as in ‘Night’.

Even though both stories are different they do have some similarities. One of the major similarities is that they both show the consequences of not doing what you are told to do. In the beginning of the book ‘Night’ Moishe the Beadle warned Elie and his family about what the Germans would do to them. He told everybody that they would kill them and force them to work and then die. Whenever they didn’t listen to him, they soon found out that they would soon be sent to the most awful concentration camp, Auschwitz. Where Ellie’s mom and sister were killed as soon as they arrived at the camp, they were put into a gas chamber and they were buried in an unmarked grave. His father later died after he got dysentery and later died of his sickness. Because they did not listen to Moishe the Beadle, Ellie lost his mom, dad, and little sister. In ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ Bruno did not listen to his mother when she said, “do not go exploring in the back yard”. Whenever he didn’t listen to her a found the camp and befriended a Jew in the camp. When he continually disregarded her rules and went to help his new friend look for his dad, he ended up being taken to a gas chamber where he was killed, while his family was looking for him around there home and in the front yard. By the time they went and looked at the camp he was already killed. That shows the consequences of not taking the advice from others or just plainly not listening to what people tell you.

World War II was the most devastating war ever with millions of innocent people being killed. Sadly, enough most of the citizens who were killed were Jewish families that were sent to the Nazi concentration camp and there they were treated like animals and slaughtered like cattle in a butcher shop. The two stories ‘Night’ and ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ give two very different views on the Holocaust with both having some very big differences like one being fictional and one being nonfiction and some similarities like one wrong choice could lead to death.

Three days after the liberation of Buchenwald, Elie became very sick from some form of poisoning. He was transferred to a hospital and spent two weeks battling between life and death. Wiesel said the quote above after seeing himself for the first time in the mirror after the Holocaust. The last lines of this quote leave the reader with a sense of hopelessness. Eliezer views himself as dead, innocent dead, humanity dead, God dead. Shortly after Wiesel was liberated, they didn’t fully realize that he survived the Holocaust. When he looked into the mirror, he didn’t see himself as a person who was now free. Instead, he saw how the mirror reflected him as a dead corpse, just like the ones he saw at the camps. In this quote, Wiesel uses many literary devices to emphasize some aspects of it.

Elie uses a metaphor to describe his current state physically and mentally “ a corpse was contemplating me ”. He compares himself to a corpse because of the lack of food in his body, but also because of the death of his internal behind. He saw himself as dead, God as dead, humanity as dead, and his innocence as dead. Also, he uses imagery to create a powerful picture in the mind of the reader. As readers, we are able to create a mental picture of the horrendous monstrosity he saw in the glass. Furthermore, Wiesel uses descriptive language within the quote to emphasize tone and mood. The words depth, corpse, contemplating, and never let me show the intensity of the moment.

These words give an eerie and depressing feeling to this section of the book. This quote represents the change in Wiesel’s identity. The faithful, strongly religious, joyful, hopeful, and curious boy is now dead with all the other Jews. What remains of him is the carcass he saw in the mirror. The unimaginable horrors that Elie witnessed while being held at the camp killed part of him. His spirit had been stomped on, yet there is still a part of Elie that is still there, buried deep inside. He will never be the same, never. Though liberated physically, the presence of death and the horrors Eliezer experienced remain with him. He is free physically but is still confined mentally. At the end of the novel, he sees only an “image” of himself because he can no longer see the person he used to be. The longer they remained in camps, the more they were reduced to a mere physical presence, losing themselves to their survival instinct, and eventually becoming simply hungry, nearly dead bodies. Throughout the novel, Wiesel uses the characters’ eyes as a symbol of one’s soul but also the changes in faith endured by those individuals. Earlier in the novel, Elie describes Moshe the Beadles’ eyes after he escaped from the Nazis.

“Moshe was not the same. The joy in his eyes was gone”. The look in the character’s eye is s symbol of their identity. Therefore, how he views himself at the memoir’s end demonstrates that he, like other personalities in the novel, has experienced a permanent change. In conclusion, the end of the novel leaves us with many questions. It makes us wonder how he was able to survive and how he was able to overcome this appalling challenge. I find it extremely inspiring that he had the courage to write an entire novel about it. He moved through it and was able to find hope in humanity again. Finally, Elie rediscovered his faith and found that there was still true compassion in this world. He saw the most atrocious actions and evil hearts, yet he had the resilience to forgive and to find good in humanity again.

Inhumane ” without compassion for misery or suffering; cruel”. The Nazis presented propaganda to the world but Wiesel explains to the world what really happened. The documentary, The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City and the novel Night by Wiesel demonstrate the circumstances the Jewish people encountered by the Germans these circumstances were slightly different and barbarous.

The book Night by Elie Wiesel demonstrates how badly the Germans treated the Jews and how horrible the Germans were as people. For one thing, the Jews were getting separated from one another, “I didn’t know that this was the moment… leaving my mother and Tzipora forever”(29). During, this despairing time families were getting torn apart from each other. Some probably didn’t even know this was their last time seeing each other, they were all probably so scared. Also, the author talks about the Germans going over rules and says “Anyone who will be found to keep these things will be shot on the spot”(24). For, the Germans to threaten the Jews for not giving them their belongings is delirious. It’s agitating especially for them to say they will be shot. Lastly, The author talks about the Germans taking their stuff and saying: ” As if we had a choice ” (48). Overall, The Germans were selfish towards the Jews and only thought about themselves. The Jews did not make any choices in anything because the Germans wanted all the power, in order for them to get this power they had to be controlling sadly.

Inhumane ” without compassion for misery or suffering; cruel”. The Nazis presented propaganda to the world but Wiesel explains to the world what really happened. The documentary, The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City and the novel Night by the Wiesel demonstrate the circumstances the Jewish people encountered by the Germans these circumstances were slightly different and barbarous.

The book Night by Elie Wiesel demonstrates how badly the Germans treated the Jews and how horrible the Germans were as people. For one thing, the Jews were getting separated from one another, “I didn’t know that this was the moment… leaving my mother and Tzipora forever”(29). During, this despairing time families were getting torn apart from each other. Some probably didn’t even know this was their last time seeing each other, they were all probably so scared. Also, the author talks about the Germans going over rules and says “Anyone who will be found to keep these things will be shot on the spot”(24). For, the Germans to threaten the Jews for not giving them their belongings is delirious. It’s agitating especially for them to say they will be shot. Lastly, The author talks about the Germans taking their stuff and saying: ” As if we had a choice ” (48). Overall, The Germans were selfish towards the Jews and only thought about themselves. The Jews did not make any choices in anything because the Germans wanted all the power, in order for them to get this power they had to be controlling sadly.