Night: Changes

Eliezer Wiesel. The name that touches and changes people in ways unknown to those the Nazi death camps left untouched. The modern day's desensitized generations tend to submit to ignorance when it involves what mankind is capable of. Although this Transylvanian's record touches each reader, one never fully understands his messages until one slips on Wiesel's shoes. He places many messages into his account, but some, unfortunately, go unnoticed and misunderstood by the general reader. Many people miss the big messages that Elie places in the small details, such as a loss of sense of time or the changes that oneself and one's relationships go through under such circumstances. In ways unimaginable Elie Wiesel would truly experience night and tells the many different ways he would endure utter darkness, from the effects of people and places to how quickly his relationships would change.

Elie begins, and continues throughout, by examining himself and the reasons why he becomes the person writing his memoirs. The influences of people and places make deep and lasting treads in his personality. The first chapter of his book, "Night," tells of the most prominent influence of his childhood, Moshe the Beadle. Wiesel recalls how Moshe would live humbly and "insignificant[ly]" (Wiesel, 1), and all of the Jews in Sighet held great respect for Moshe. Elie describes him as having "dreaming eyes, [and a] gaze lost in the distance" (Wiesel, 1). He remembers that Moshe would talk very little, but would tend to sing. Wiesel reminisces about his search for "a master to guide [his] studies of the cabbala" (Wiesel, 1), and how he would come to find seemingly infinite knowledge lying inside an unlikely source. His time spent with Moshe, talking for hours on end, would prove to be the most profound time of Elie's life. Elie's father tells him: "You're too young Ð'... to venture into the perilous world of mysticism" (Wiesel, 1-2), but Elie feels that his "initiation [into mysticism] began" in his time with Moshe the Beadle. Moshe helps to form Elie's profoundly deep way of thinking, and allows him to see the world differently.

Unfortunately, all of Moshe's teaching would eventually unravel at Elie Wiesel's first sight of "Birkenau, reception center for Auschwitz" (Wiesel, 26). Moshe's wisdom and knowledge and Elie's faith would become whittled and weakened by the "smell of burning flesh" (Wiesel, 26). This one night at Birkenau changes him eternally:

"I Ð'... had become a completely different person. The student of the Talmud,

the child that I was, had been consumed by flames Ð'... A dark flame had entered

into my soul and devoured it." (Wiesel, 34).

"Never shall I forget Ð'... the first night in camp which has turned my life into

one long night Ð'... Never shall I forget the faces of the children whose bodies

I saw turned into wreaths of smoke Ð'... Never shall I forget those flames which

consumed my faith forever . . . that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all

eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered

my God and my soul Ð'... even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself. Never."

(Wiesel, 32).

Birkenau, a place of horror, changes Elie forever and in ways he never imagined possible. He held so much disbelief for what he had seen that first night and would keep asking God how He could let such atrocities happen. Wiesel describes the transformation of the concentration camps as creating super humans. The entire group of prisoners "were masters of nature" (Wiesel, 83) and they "had forgotten Ð'... fatigue [and] natural needs" (Wiesel, 83).

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