Later, the Jews are slowly ripped of their freedom and belongings by the Hungarian officers. Even this does not scare the naive young author. Members of the Jewish community and Weisel's family are determined to remain positive but their efforts are useless when they are forced into concentration camps. It is in these "hell holes" that Weisel loses his family and relationship with God.
Night is told from the first person which allows the reader to "experience" what is happening in the novel. While "listening" to the young boy one can sense his unreal state. It is as if the author cannot fathom the events that are taking place. However, once Weisel can grasp reality he does not see God. The author questions God's presence and eventually loses complete faith. It is ironic how nobody who listen to Moshe the Beadle the same way people deny the Holocaust.
Conspiracy, allows viewers to delve into another perspective other than the direct victims of the Holocaust. The movie shows the Nazi perspective. Multiple men in high positions are called to the Wannsee Conference "discuss" problems about the Jews. However, later in the film one understands that this meeting is only to give direct orders to massacrer Jewish people. This is the only solution they have arrived at with dealing with "the Jewish problem." It is obvious that several of the men at the meeting do not wish to go through with this idea but they silence their inner morals and agree because of fear.
Soviet Story, reveals the Soviet Unions role in helping Germany during the Holocaust. The film exposes the allied power for taking part in the genocide and murdering its own people.
All three of these mediums for the Holocaust show betrayal and various forms of silencing. In Night, Weisel denies Moshe the Beadle, his father, God, and himself. He is betrayed by God, the Hungarian officers, and others who participated in the Holocaust. In both of the films people betrayed the Jewish community and allowed their morals to be silenced. It is this silencing that allowed such a horrific event to occur. Evidence was thrown away, people were murdered, and their remains disposed of to "silence" the crime. The genocide was about stripping people of any sort of power. For example, people were stripped of their belongings, home, family, morals, faith, even their title as humans, and eventually their life.
I agree with you that readers experience Eliezer’s story not only through reading about it, but also by listening to what he says. I found, at least for me, that I could feel a little of what Eliezer was feeling and when visualizing children being hung, I felt a twinge of grief. In my opinion, Eliezer had every right to question what the world was coming to that children are being killed. Wiesel’s Night succeeds in aiding readers to get a true understanding of the Holocaust, especially through a teenage boy.
ReplyDeleteI like how you talk about the silencing theme through both movies and the book. Going back, I can see that. In Conspiracy, the Jewish community is not only silenced, but is not even present in the movie. The only way that they are present is when a few sympathizers attempt to change how to get rid of the Jews. However, they are even silenced for their “rational” thinking of how to get rid of the Jews.
MILLER-COMMENT ON PAULI'S BLOG ON WIESEL
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that all the media we viewed have one overarching theme-betrayal. In Night, I got kind of emotional reading about when Eliezer's father was getting beaten by another prisoner. Betrayal is evident on so many levels.
Otto: Comment on Pauli's Blog on Wiesel:
ReplyDeleteIt is true that there was a running theme of silence throughout the works. Wiesel said himself in his acceptance speech, "That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices" (Wiesel, 1986). Wiesel, as a boy and as an acclaimed writer of the Holocaust and literature world, still like many cannot believe that so many people kept silent during the Holocaust, for fear, guilt, laziness, or other. He also says, however, “No on may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.” Their silence remains and we can never fully understand what those who perished lived through, whether it be the Jews who were mercilessly killed in camps, or the soldiers, now passed, who doubted their orders but feared their own death more than the guilt that would follow the murder of another human.
excellent blog. You are the first to bring up Soviet Story--a very important film.
ReplyDeleteWhat if Hitler won the war, would people have ever seen genocide or torture that way we read about it today? Would these people see what had happened as something much more, or would they praise the men that discussed the extermination of the Jewish race? Also would people today be allowed to read about the Holocaust or would it be forbidden? Basically if Stalin was hiding information from his own people, what would have stopped the Germans? Imagine a world if Stalin was able to take over?
ReplyDeleteThese questions make you think about the immense impact that literature has had via its ability to connect us with the individuals who experienced these atrocities, and how unfortunate it would have been had such information been censored from the public by authorities. Stalin basically did these things to his own people and people around the world, masking the horrors of his regime behind a wall of lies.