The+Ashes+of+Night

Abby Shubert September 12, 1995 English Mr. Grassano

The Ashes of Night

Rising from the ashes of World War I, the Nazi’s appeared as a military power in Central Europe. Adolf Hitler initiated the most horrific genocide in European History. Many notable works surfaced from this era, including Night, the story of Elie Wiesel, a Jewish Holocaust survivor. Wiesel was confined in such infamous concentration camps as Auschwitz, Buna, and Bushenwald. The title Night symbolizes the darkness present in Europe during the course of World War II.

Night, the time in which darkness envelops the Earth, is commonly associated with death, fear, and evil. Night in a concentration camp was memories, despair, and change, where illusion and loss of pride and security consumed the souls of its prisoners. Night was a time of separation and loneliness, where family bonds were broken in the struggle for survival. While Elie slept, his father was taken away to the crematory. Rabbi Eliahiou’s son watched his father lose ground and fall in the trek between camps but did nothing because he thought the burden of his father was inhibiting his own chances of survival. Each night was the chance of never waking from eternal sleep. Time passed slowly for the condemned. Night brought the bell, the tolling of separation.

Wiesel’s faith in his God died with his family. Night presented the time to question the belief in God. God was the light, and night was an absence from God. Many prisoners questioned God because they could not accept a God who would let such anguish befall his people. The flames of the crematoriums were like the flames of hell, scorching anyone who even came in contact with the knowledge of their existence. Sealing the Jews fate, night was a hell that supported the Nazi’s belief that all the Jews were damned. Driven along the footsteps of people with forgotten faces and names, the subjugated ceased to acknowledge the silence of submission. Night was a time to think about how it had been, of those who were and those who would not be. A time to pray to a God who never seemed to listen.

The barracks were walls of the dying, gasping for air, where morality and civility perished and barbarianism thrived. Marking the end of another day of survival, night meant one less day until liberation. It was a time to find strength, to battle the weariness, and to gather hope for the light.

Few could comprehend the fire of hatred that consumed millions in its flames. The Nazi’s cast a shadow of darkness over Europe, demoralizing the minds of millions around the world by casting a veil of eternal night over the their eyes.

Survivors lived to tell of the horrors buried in mass graves and burned to ashes. The spirits the Nazi’s attempted to incinerate endured. The reverberating cries of the innocent still echo around the world. The darkness was subdued by the light. The new day had come, for those forever haunted by the night.