FREE ESSAY ON HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED?

HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED?

How Could This Have Happened?
Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Jewish massacre during World War II, opens his classic
autobiography, Night, in his hometown of Sighet, Transylvania (now Romania). In this
short, but powerful, book, Wiesel speaks of the incredible events that take place in his
life from age twelve to age sixteen; his carefree childhood; the brutal torture of Wiesel
and his fellow Jews at the hands of German soldiers in the concentration camps; and the
day of his liberation in the spring of 1945.
Although World War II began in 1939, when Hitler and his troops invaded Poland and set up
concentration camps, Sighet remains under Hungarian control. The year is 1941. Wiesel is
twelve years old and is a bright, religious Jewish boy who studies the Talmud, the
collection of writings constituting the Jewish civil and religious law. However, he wants
to go deeper into Judaism by studying the cabbala, an occult mysterious form of Jewish
philosophy developed by certain Jewish rabbis, based on a mystical interpretation of the
Scriptures. His father refuses to help him with the cabbala, so Wiesel begins to talk
with Moche the Beadle, a poor, humble, somewhat strange individual, who works at the
synagogue. Moche teaches Wiesel that it is not the right answers that one should seek
from God, but rather to know the right questions to ask God.
Wiesel's father, an important man of the community, his mother, and three sisters lead a
normal life, making plans and socializing with friends and relatives, believing that they
will be untouched by the horrors of the war, despite a warning from Moche the Beadle and
rumors from other areas of the war front. It is in the spring of 1944 that the day of
reckoning arrives in Sighet. German soldiers enter the town and set up ghettoes
surrounded by barbed wire. From that day forward, Wiesel's life will never be the same.
Darkness begins to fill his days and nights. He is afraid. He is angry. He is right to be
afraid and angry because after he and his family are deported and arrive at Birkenau, the
German's welcome center for Auschwitz, Wiesel's childhood is destroyed forever. The Jews
suffer miserable crowded conditions during the train ride to Birkenau. Wiesel watches in
horror as his fellow Jews brutal, tie, and gag Madame Schachter, who has become
hysterical. She is screaming of seeing visions of fire and flames in the distance.
Nothing, however, can compare to what he found at Birkenau, the smoke, the smell of
burning flesh from the crematories, and the flames from the pits where babies and young
children were being thrown.
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, 
which has turned my life into one long night, seven 
times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I 
forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces
of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths
of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my
faith forever.
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived
me, for all eternity, of the desire to life. Never shall I
forget those moments which murdered my God and my
soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget
these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as 
God Himself. Never. (Wiesel 32) 
This is the darkest "night" of Wiesel's young life, but the Germans have only begun their
torture campaign. Families are separated, food, water, and sanitary conditions are in
short supply, and the Jews are treated worse than unwanted, stray animals. This type of
mental and psychological torture would follow Wiesel and his fellow Jews through-out
their days in the concentration camps.
Wiesel surely thought about how the Jews may have contributed to their own problems,
although he cannot fault them for their optimism. In Wiesel's camps, there seemed to be
very little resistance put forth by the Jews to try to save themselves from almost
certain death. I think that the Jewish people truly believed that if they cooperated with
the Germans and their orders, that they would somehow escape their destruction. Wiesel,
in his darkest moments, must have thought of the times that he and his family might have
avoided the German horrors. He had begged his father to immigrate the family to Palestine
when such permits were still available, but his father refused because he felt he was too
old to start again in another place. Moche the Beadle tried to warn the citizens of
Sighet of what lay before them. Martha, an old family non-Jewish servant begged for the
Wiesel family to escape and hide in her village. Wiesel's father offered Elie the
opportunity to go with Martha, but Wiesel chose to stay with his family. It is
interesting that as soon as they reached Birkenau, Wiesel's family is pulled apart, and
he and his father go on alone. 
Because the Jews are subjected to nothing but brutality, are kept half starved, and are
treated as less than human beings, Wiesel watches his people begin to behave like
animals. Their survival becomes their primary goal, as well as avoiding "selection" which
would give them a trip to the crematories. The Germans force the Jews to watch the
hanging of prisoners who do not obey, so that the Jews will be terrorized into behaving,
as the Germans want them to. He sees how the Germans, through separating families,
destroy the Jews' will to live and any hope they might have. Without their human
contacts, despair takes over and they lose the faith in the God they had prayed to and
worshiped all of their lives. Wiesel relates an experience after he and his father had
been moved to Buna. The Kapo in that camp, Idek, an unstable, nervous man, beats Wiesel's
father repeatedly with an iron bar until he collapses. Wiesel's tells of reaction in
these words:
I had watched the whole scene without moving. I kept 
quiet. In fact I was thinking of how to get farther away 
so that I would not be hit myself. What is more, any 
anger I felt at that moment was directed, not against the
Kapo, but against my father. I was angry with him, for
not knowing how to avoid Idek's outbreak. This is what
concentration camp life had made of me. (Wiesel 52)
When the Jews were transported from Buna to yet another camp, Buckenwald, Wiesel
describes the savagery of his people when a German worker threw a scrap of bread into the
train wagon. "Men threw themselves on top of each other, stamping on each other, tearing
at each other, biting each other. Wild beast of prey, with animal hatred in their eyes;
an extraordinary vitality had seized them, sharpening their teeth and nails. (Wiesel 95)
The Germans found this to be great fun and begin throwing other pieces of bread to the
Jews, like feeding animals in the zoo to watch their actions. Wiesel simply watches. He
sees a son beat his father to death for a small piece of bread, but it was not to be, as
two others took the bread and killed the son. Father and son lay side-by-side, dead. "I
was fifteen years old. (Wiesel 96)
Doubts about his God begin to trouble Wiesel. On his last night in Auschwitz, as he and
his comrades sang Hasidic melodies, Wiesel listened to others speak about God, his
mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and their future deliverance. "But I had
ceased to pray. How I sympathized with Job! I did not deny God's existence, but I doubted
His absolute justice." (Wiesel 42) 
On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, while imprisoned in Buna, Wiesel's rage
against God reaches a new high. The Jews are chanting, "Blessed be the Name of the
Eternal." 
Why, but why should I bless Him? In every fiber I 
rebelled. Because he had had thousands of children burned in His pits? Because He kept
six crematories 
working night and day, on Sundays and feast days? 
Because in His great might, he had created Auschwitz,
Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death? How 
could I say to Him: "Blessed art Thou, Eternal, Master
of the Universe, Who chose us from among the races to
be tortured day and night to see our fathers, our mothers,
our brothers, end the crematory? Praised be Thy Hold 
Name, Thou Who hast chosen us to be butchered on 
Thine altar? (Wiesel 64)
This is another "night" for Wiesel. "This day I had ceased to plead." He is alone,
"without God and without man. Without love or mercy. I had ceased to be anything but
ashes." (Wiesel 65)
This is how far young Wiesel has come from those happy days in Sighet. Had only three
years passed? Not only is young Wiesel fighting for his own survival, but also he feels a
responsibility to keep his father alive. It may have cost him many moments of pain and
grief, but it is also, I think, one of the main reasons that Wiesel is able to survive
the ordeals of the concentration camps.
The ultimate trick that life played on Wiesel is not discovered until after the war.
Wiesel is in the hospital in Buna, recovering from an operation to his foot. The Allied
forces are closing in on the Germans, and the Jews are marched like machines to Gleiwitz.
Corpses are covered with snow and ice and are trampled by those who keeping up with the
pace. Wiesel and his father could have stayed in Buna. "The choice was in our hands. For
once we could decide our fate for ourselves. We could both stay in the hospital." They
chose to evacuate. After the war, the Russians evacuated those who stayed in Buna two
days after the Wiesels left for Gleiwitz. (Wiesel 80) 
Wiesel's father gave up life on January 28, 1945 at Buckenwald, their last stop. He was
ill, and could hold out no longer. The story ends here, as Wiesel has nothing more to
say. Nothing could touch him anymore. (Wiesel 107)
On April 10, 1945, Wiesel and his remaining fellow Jews were liberated from Buckenwald.
Their first thoughts are of food, clothes, and sex, not revenge. Wiesel develops food
poisoning several days later and is hospitalized. After several days, he looks into a
mirror: 
"From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they
stared into mine, has never left me." (Wiesel 109) 
For Wiesel, the nightmare of the concentration camps was over, or was it just beginning?

Until I read Night, I had barely heard or thought about the horrors of the Holocaust.
What hell these people must have endured to survive! It is an unbelievable story. I keep
asking myself how something like this could have happened in the twentieth century. I
understand that about six million Jews died or were put to death. Where were the
Americans, the British, and all of the other nations not directly involved in the war
yet? Why didn't someone, anyone, try to stop Hitler and his deadly plans? How could the
German people really believe that they were so superior to the Jewish people that the
loss of a few Jews might clean up the world? Or was it that no one paid enough attention,
or cared enough to find out what was happening because then they might have to try to do
something about it. I have no answers, only questions. I can only hope that I will pay
attention to what is happening around me so that something like this is never forgotten
or allowed to happen again.