Mrs. Spreksel
English 2 Period 3
30 April 2013
Night by: Elie Wiesel
During the Holocaust, sons were often aggressive and brutal towards their own fathers. Such brutalities were witnessed by Elie Wiesel himself in his book Night. He witnessed such atrocities in the concentration camps and aboard the trains. Such displays of aggression show that these boys were fighting just to stay alive during these troubling times. In some rare cases the boys would literally beat their fathers to death. Which Elie witnessed first-hand aboard a train bound for Buchenwald.
For example, some sons would abandon their own fathers,”… I remembered something else: his son had seen him losing ground, limping, staggering back to the rear of the column… and he had continued to run on… letting the distance between them grow greater” (97). Elie sometimes felt as if he could relate to Rabbi Eliahous son because he often though about just leaving his father behind to die. Yet he couldn’t bear the thought of doing such as thing. In addition, sons in rare instances would completely abandon their fathers to die to be free of a burden,”…loomed up in my mind: he had wanted to get rid of his father! He had felt that his father was growing weak, he had believed that the end was near and sought this separation in order to get rid of the burden, to free himself from an encumbrance which could lesson his own chances of survival” (97). Yet in spite of losing faith in God, Elie Wiesel