Night Blogs

        The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel illustrates the nature of the isolation created by the Holocaust.  First, the Jewish people are discriminated against, alienated by the antisemitic influence of the Nazis.  This isolates the Jews socially, in their plight.  They are also isolated physically, first put together in ghettos, in which they are essentially interned, and later, are isolated from the world in concentration camps.  We see this in Sighet, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Buna in Night.  Furthermore, people are separated from their families; the Wiesel family was split at Birkenau, resulting in sadness and diminished hope.  The book also demonstrated another, unique sort of isolation: the isolation of individuals that the Holocaust created, the "every man for himself" mantra.  The threat of death isolates us.  Generally, it makes us more selfish, more focused on our natural instinct of survival than altruism.  This passage sheds light on this idea: "... he slapped my father with such force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours.  I stood petrified.  What had happened to me?  My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked.  Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal's flesh.  Had I changed that much?  So fast?" (p. 39)

        Yet solidarity must be found to maintain some sort of hope, to escape the threat of death.  God, Judaism, and prayer does this for many people at Buna.  It lets them know that there still is light.  Isolation is neither sustainable, nor permanent.  Night also demonstrates, through the experiences of Elie Wiesel during the Holocaust, the importance of faith and hope in preserving one's motivation to keep moving forward, to survive.  On page 41, A young barracks leader, a Pole, advises the Jews to keep faith, and to stay together: "Ahead of you lies a long road paved with suffering.  Don't lose hope.  You have already eluded the worst danger: the selection.  Therefore, muster your strength and keep your faith.  We shall all see the day of liberation.  Have faith in life, a thousand times faith.  By driving out despair, you will move away from death.  Hell does not last forever... And now, here is a prayer, or rather a piece of advice: let there be camaraderie among you.  We are all brothers and share the same fate... Help each other."  Prayer is commonplace at Auschwitz and Buna, as we see in the book.  Wiesel begins to lose faith in God, seeing no light in the mass graves of Birkenau but the fire of death.  He despairs, and this has a negative effect.  Wiesel must realize that He to whom he was faithful before was not a separate entity, but light inside of Wiesel.  Indeed, He, it, God, is a part of him.  Realizing this, and the solidarity of others facing the same plight, truly helps Wiesel survive.

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        Night, in the book, serves as a symbol for the absence of God and despair.  Here, it is critical to recognize the Biblical role of night.  God first dispelled darkness, creating light, helping us understand that night can serve as a symbol for the absence of God.  In Night, nightfall corresponds with a terrible event, often.  On page 12, Wiesel establishes, "Night fell... Suddenly, the gate opened, and Stern, a former shopkeeper who now was a policeman, entered and took my father aside.  Despite the growing darkness, I could see my father turn pale."  The news that Wiesel's father receives is that of the deportation, news of hopelessness and grief.  It comes with the falling of night.  The symbol is also particularly evident upon Wiesel's arrival to Auschwitz-Birkenau.  He says, "In front of us, those flames.  In the air, the smell of burning flesh.  It must have been around midnight.  We had arrived.  In Birkenau." (p. 28)  It was in this darkness that Wiesel experienced the death of hundreds of innocents.  And it expelled his God, a source of eternal light, in the face of interminable darkness.