Otto- Forgetting the Past Will Do Nothing

Elie Wiesel’s Night is a chilling recollection of World War II and the Holocaust. For a child who is torn from his home, he deals with the many terrors of the Holocaust as one may expect. Many children were torn from parents and families. Attempting to stay by his father’s side, he cannot believe what is happening to the hundreds of people who were with them. His actions and dialogue seemed to be that of a person who was stuck in a surreal dream, however when reality set in everything became about keeping himself and his father alive.

When Elie and his father first arrive, Elie said to his father “that I could not believe that human beings were being burned in our times; the would would never tolerate such crimes...” (Wiesel, p. 33). As soon as the Jews had gotten into Auschwitz, Wiesel describes “I pinched myself: Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent? No. All this could not be real. A nightmare perhaps...” (p. 32). How a human being could do such horrible things to another was the question that arose in Wiesel’s young mind. In the film Conspiracy(2001), directed by Frank Pierson, the recreation of the Wannsee Conference was dealing with the ultimate solution to what they call “Jew Problem.” Both sides of the Holocaust, where one was in need of help while the other appeared to be brainwashed, are shown through these two works.

The final solution created at the meeting of the Conference was to gas the entire population of Jews. These Nazi and SS leaders gathered to discuss what to do and although “fixing” the Jews to where they could no longer procreate was suggested, Reinhard Heydrich(Kenneth Branagh) and Adolf Eichmann(Stanley Tucci) eventually convinced through conversation or threat that the best thing to do would be to exterminate the population by gas. These men appeared to have no human rationale concerning the Jews, and considered them to be of a different race, when in reality Judaism is the religion that they practiced. Race is merely a social construct that is used as an excuse to create “the other” or lesser group.

The involvement of the SS provided help to Germany, even after they were considered Allies, but today there are still those that do not admit it (The Soviet Story, 2008). With so many denials and people believing that they were helping the world, the Holocaust became one of the most bloody, remembered, and guilty times in human history. In is not hard to see why, through Elie Wiesel’s memory, it is important to remember this point in time. In his acceptance speech Wiesel explains “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor” (Wiesel). Many documents and films are there to remind people the difference help can do, and that as a human race, there is no reason to eradicate a group of individuals, and we must teach people to include.