Critical Lens Essay on the book Night by Elie Wiesel Essay

We must always take sides. disinterest helps the oppressor, n constantly the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. That abduce is from Elie Wiesel in his Nobel Peace cargon for Speech. I agree with the quotation. In the write up dark by Elie Wiesel, umpteen a(prenominal) elements correspond to the iterate and to the idea of put away and complicity. Wiesel says in his book that many different wad were still because they were non directly affected by the final solution, and thought that if they did something to try to stop it, whence they themselves would get hurt. He similarly explained how people like Moshe the Beadle and other reputations in Night who were humiliated by fellow Jews did non believe that the Holocaust was occurring. Overall, the Jews, deity, and the German citizens were all uncommunicative during the Holocaust. Their closeness encouraged the Nazis to gain strength and reach the magnitude of at last massacring six million Je ws.I did not move. I was afraid, (37) give tongue to the character Eliezer in Night. That quote refers to when his father is beaten at the concentration inner circle and Eliezer just stood there watching it and doing nothing to stop it. The setting of the story Night takes place in a small town of Transylvania in 1941. To this day Wiesel still feels guilty about his inaction. The silence of the victims and the lack of bulwark to the Nazi threat is one way in which neutrality and silence helps the tormentors, or in this case the Nazis and never the victims who were the Jews. Even when Eliezer was beingness direct to the fire pit and thought he was going to die, he did not try to run or escape.In the concentration camps, the Jews greatly outnumbered the Nazi soldiers. Maybe if they revolted then even though many would die in the try, many could still escape and the number of people who died would be unnoticeable to the amount of Jews who died when they did not put on up togeth er. It is implied throughout the text that silence and passivity are what pull up stakesed the Holocaust to continue. Wiesels writing of Night is itself an attempt to break the silence, to tell loudly and boldly the new generation of people about the atrocities of the Holocaust. He feels that people need to know so that they goat find out the warning signs and prevent anything so horrible from ever happening again.Where is divinity? Where is He? (61) someone behind Eliezer asked. This quotefrom Night refers to when a child is hung in front of all the Jewish prisoners to alarm them into behaving. For more than half an hour the child in the noose stayed there, seek between life and death, dying in slacken agony beneath our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not in time glazed. (62) Behind Eliezer, he heard the same man as who said the above quotation asking Where is God now? ( 62) And Wiesel heard a voice within himself say Where is He? Here He isHe is hanging here on this gallows. . . . (62) Those quotes show that God was also silent during the Holocaust. It is the idea of Gods silence that Eliezer finds most troubling.Eliezers forecast of view during the story Night changes from not questioning why he prays, to believing that God is dead and does not care about him or any other person on earth. When a man asks, Where is God? (61) the only response is total silence throughout the camp. (61) Eliezer and his fellow Jews are left to wonder how an all-knowing, allpowerful God can allow such horror and cruelty to occur, especially to such devout worshipers. The origination of this horror, and the lack of a divine response, forever shakes Eliezers faith in God. At first Wiesel used to pray without questioning Gods existence. Now, Eliezer does not fast on the holy day of Yom Kippur and believes that God has died on with the boy that was hung. The silence of God shocks Eliezer and allows the Nazis to persecute them because the Jews hope for a miracle that never comes from a God who does not exist.The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. That quote is also from Elie Wiesels Nobel Peace Prize Speech. The German people liveness right next to the death camps such as Auschwitz and Buna could smell bodies being burnt, and could see the fire and smoke yet they did nothing. This is complicity, which is defined as the stake as an accomplice in a questionable act or a crime (according to dictionary.com). The Germans were silent, and because of their silence, the tormentors and Nazis were able to further persecute their victims, who were the Jews and many other ethnic minorities that were used as scapegoats. In Night, Eliezer says, Never shall I go out that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.This famous quote can be interpreted to mean thatthe silence of the Germans and the ally forces is what very allowed the Jews to be murdered so heartlessly. Even though the German civilians did not do anything, Eliezer blames the Allied countries such as Great Britain and the United States for their slow response in reacting to the Nazi threat. It was said years after the Holocaust that if any powerful figure got on the BBC news radio station, say all of the Jews to evacuate their homes and flee to Russia because all of the other Jews are disappearing, then more Jews might encounter been save. Eliezer and his family were taken to Birkenau in 1944, when the war was already going on for many years. His family could have been warned and most likely saved from the Nazis. It was the neutrality and the lack of involvement of the Allied forces that led to the death of the Jews because they were not warned.In conclusion, the quote We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented is valid because the sil ence of the Jews, God, the German civilians, and the Allied forces contributed to the mass murder of millions of people. All of these people in their own bump ways, due to their neutrality and silence during the Holocaust period, allowed the victims to be murdered. The Jews did not rise up against their tormentors, and therefore allowed themselves to be killed. God did not act to cherish his chosen people and at the moment of a horrible sacrifice, God does not intervene to save innocent lives. The German people went along with Hitlers grand scheme as puppets.Finally, the only way that the Jews could have had the opportunity of escaping their fate was if they were warned. The allies had the opportunity to warn the Jews, but didnt, by chance believing that other countries would warn the Jews. But they didnt. In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didnt deal up because I wasnt a Communist. accordingly they came for the Jews, and I didnt speak up because I wasnt a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didnt speak up because I wasnt a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didnt speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up. That quote is from Martin Niemoller and proves that silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.