The Holocaust is a very tragic and unbelievable part of history. Many people lost their lives while being treated without any humanity. Elie Wiesel, the author of Night goes through many changes during his experience of being a victim of the Holocaust. He has many changes emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
Emotionally, Wiesel goes through a big change. At the beginning of the Holocaust, he went through very sudden, negative events. He reacted as any normal person would react. When he was taken from his mother he stated, "There was no time to think." and "I didn't know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever" (29). He was shocked and didn't really have time to process what had just happened. He also was a witness of young children being put in the crematorium and states, "Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes... children being thrown into the flames" (32). These two events really change a person. Not being able to have a proper goodbye with a person that you love, and seeing little, innocent babies being thrown into fire pits is traumatizing. However, Elie didn't notice that he was getting used to all of the negativity in a way. Eventually he got so used to it that there was a point where he didn't feel anything at all.
That point was when his father got slapped. He states, "My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked" (39). His father had gotten slapped because he had asked where the bathroom was. When it happened, Wiesel didn't blink. He was so used to the negativity in the camps that he didn't even react to when his father had gotten hit. Another example of when Elie eventually got used to the pain was during the death march. Wiesel had just had surgery on his foot, and it was not healed when he decided to leave the camp to go with his father to another camp. He states, "Our legs moved mechanically, in spite of us, without us" (87). He got so used to pain through the blows and whips of the Nazis, of the numbness and pain in his foot, that he just didn't feel it anymore. He just kept running.
Wiesel also went through a massive change in his beliefs. Before the Holocaust, he was very devout. He met someone named Moishe the Beatle in 1941, when he was 13 years old. Wiesel went to Moishe to learn religion from him. Wiesel states, "Together we would read, over and over again, the same page of the Zohar. Not to learn it by heart but to discover within the very essence of divinity" (15). He was very serious about his religion and would cry whenever he prayed. This al changed when he got to the camps. After seeing very tragic things Wiesel questions God, in a major way. He states, "Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?" (P. 33). The wonders why he should thank him for anything. He didn't feel like there was anything to be thankful for in the camp. He had completely changed when he states, “The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames.” (P. 37). When he says this he means that the student who was devoted to Talmud(religion/belief) had been completely wiped out by the camp. He no longer existed.
Physically, Wiesel went through a downhilled change. Before the Holocaust, Wiesel was like any other Jewish boy. He had a home, a family, and loved ones who called him by his name. He was unique in his own way and had many traits. That all changed. At the camps, all prisoners were stripped of their uniqueness. "Their clippers tore out our hair, shaved every hair on our bodies." (35), Wiesel explained. All prisoners were shaved. Elie also says that they got a tattoo with a number. They were called by that number ever since then. Not by names, but by numbers. By the end of the Holocaust Wiesel didn't even recognize himself. In fact, he states "From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me" (115). He refers to himself as two different people. The person he was before the Holocaust, and the person he was after.
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