In his first and most famous work, The Night, Elie Wiesel relives his experience in the concentration camps of the Nazi regime during the Second World War. Wiesel, who was born and raised a devout Jew and excelled in Talmudic and spiritual studies, recounts his loss of freedom, innocence, family, and ultimately faith. One of the achievements of Night as a human document is that it not only shows the evils of the oppressors in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, but also what evil can do to man. Wiesel saw good men transformed through cruelty into “unleashed beasts of prey” (101). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The most important theme of the book is the way evil transforms and deforms man. Although the horrors of the Nazi regime are described in Night, it is the evil done by the Jews and the victims of the Nazis that occupies a central place in this work. From the beginning of his stay in Auschwitz, Wiesel suffered the worst abuse from his fellow inmates. In the first barrack where Wiesel stayed, veterans waited to beat the newcomers indiscriminately with sticks (35). This behavior, which constitutes not only a lack of compassion but also real anger and violence towards one's fellow man, appears continuously throughout the night. After only a few days in the Buna labor camp, Wiesel himself begins to engage in this behavior. The dentist who was about to remove Wiesel's gold crown was arrested for taking gold for himself and was about to be hanged. Wiesel not only felt no pity or remorse for the dentist, but was also happy about it. In the concentration camp there was no room to worry about others or abstract notions such as compassion; all that existed was your own life and your empty stomach (51-52). When the tide of war turned against the Nazis, prisoners in concentration camps were subjected to further horror and suffering. As the Allied troops moved towards Buna, the prisoners were forced to evacuate, but not before clearing the barracks: “For the liberating army. Let them know that men live here and not pigs." (84) This distinction between humans and animals disappears, however, when Wiesel describes the scene in which civilians throw bread crumbs into one of the cattle cars transporting prisoners to the next concentration camp. The prisoners, so hungry for food, violently throw themselves on each other and beat each other to obtain a few crumbs of sustenance. Wiesel actually witnesses a son strangle his father for a crust of bread (101). At this point in the book it is clear that everything that distinguishes us from animals, and humans from pigs, has disappeared. The concentration camp experience had the effect of systematically stripping prisoners of what made them human: their individuality, their compassion, and their remorse. What remained was only the body, more precisely the empty stomach, and the impulse to protect the pathetic life he had left. For Wiesel, an important aspect of evil experienced seemed to be man's reluctance to accept it, or even to recognize it forever. things. Before the native Jews of Sighet began to be persecuted, all foreign-born Jews were forced to leave. Moishe the Beadle returned from a near-death experience at the hands of the Nazis and sought to share his knowledge of their wickedness with his fellow Jews. It was not easy for the people of Sighet, still living their ordinary lives, to conceptualize the proclaimed evil Moishe the Beadle, and having been poor and of a lower class it wasmuch easier for him to be dismissed as a madman. (6-7). After the fascist regime had taken over Transylvania and the Jews were forced into ghettos, there were still those who did not want to believe that the worst was possible: "As far as I'm concerned, this whole thing is a big farce... They I just want to steal our valuables and our jewels” (21). Perhaps it was not until the people of Sighet were gathered on transports that some began to overcome the doubt that everything might not be right elderly woman on the transport, began to shout: “Jews, listen to me, I see a fire! I see flames, huge flames!” At first the people crammed into the cattle car felt pity for her, but as her screams became more frantic, the other passengers also increased the need to silence her in their desire to calm her, and perhaps to calm the doubt in them themselves, the normally peaceful people who would have been her friends and neighbors from Sighet struck her and tied her up (25-26) once the cattle car had emptied its load of people in Birkenau, the reality of the evil that the inhabitants of Sighet had not wanted to accept, he finally shouted at the arriving Jews: “You should have hanged yourself rather than come here. (30) Evil often remains a mystery because we are too scared to explore its real possibilities. The question of why evil and suffering exist is important to every person who is faced with the reality of evil difficult question for a devout Jew to answer. Being a very religious person, you have to reconcile the reality of what is happening with the type of God you believe in. Some in Auschwitz thought that perhaps they were being punished for the sins of the Jewish people. Others thought, “God is testing us. He wants to see if we can overcome our base instincts, to kill the Satan within us” (45), on the other hand, was angered by what he saw as the silence of God: “Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank him for?”(33) Wiesel compares himself to the biblical character Job. Job was an innocent and righteous man who still suffered, despite leading a life devoted to God. He challenged the assumption that suffering was punishment for sins, since he had committed none. Job is able to find peace through the realization that, although there may be no explanation for the suffering, God is present in Job's suffering just as He is in Job's blessings. Through this reaffirmed faith in God's presence in his life, Job is able to find peace with his pain. For Wiesel, however, not even the story of Job brings peace. Wiesel found God completely absent from Auschwitz. It seems that only after writing Night Wiesel can he find some sort of peace with what happened. Wiesel, as he states in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, tried to draw something from the life he was fortunate enough to lead during the concentration camps. As Wiesel said: “I tried to keep the memory alive… We have to take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim” (118). It seems that for Wiesel the evil experienced had at least one positive result: it could prevent such evil from happening again. This idea of ​​suffering as a renewing or teaching experience is common in late Jewish thought and Christianity. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a custom essay Night is a look deeply.