Night/Holocaust

The novel Night by Elie Wiesel is a memoir about Elie’s experience in the holocaust. Elie and his father were sent to different death camps to work and attempt to survive selections, starvation, and exhaustion. During the holocaust, Night shows us, several groups of people were singled out and not wanted, therefore, they were executed; Jews were the main focus of this selection of people. Others would include; Gypsies (Sinti and Roma), homosexual men, handicapped Germans, Poles, and political dissidents. Throughout Night many Jews died, people suffered during just the transportations, and the people were treated horrible. Transported in cattle wagons the Jews were left a couple of loaves of bread and a bucket of water. They suffered so much through the transportation process. The cattle wagons were packed with 80 Jews going to the first death camp and over 100 Jews moving to the last one. “Lying down was out of the question, and we were only able to sit by deciding to take turns,” (page 12). 2,000 people died either from suffocated or suffered heat exhaustion before even getting to the first camps. They were already “exhausted, starving, and desperate for water.” The rest of the Jews who had survived the trip were told they had arrived at a transit camp, though this was not the case. “We realized then that we were not going to stay in Hungary. Our eyes were opened, but too late,” (page 15). Anyone who was not able to be transported was killed on the spot. Many Jews were able to escape through air holes, only to be shot immediately or killed later that night. Though some escaped, some stayed in the wagons and went mad like Madame Schachter, “ On the second night, while we slept, some of us sitting one against the other and some standing, a piercing cry split the silence: ‘Fire! I can see a fire! I can see a fire!’” (page