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What Keeps Elie Wiesel Alive at Auchwitz?
by Sean Lowe
Elie Wiesel lived a nightmare during the holocaust, the nightmare he depicts in Night. Many wonder what kept him alive through the horrific physical and psychological torture. Wiesel says directly that religion did not sustain him, that the holocaust “murdered [his] God” (32). Indirectly, Wiesel makes clear that basic human survival instincts and devotion to his father kept him alive.
His will to be with his father and his will to survive keep him alive at
Auschwitz Wiesel’s first residence. When
the SS march the recently arrived Jews past the crematory, Wiesel wants to kill
himself. He says,“ I gathered all
that was left of my strength, so that I could break from the ranks and throw
myself upon the barbed wire” (31). At
the critical moment, however, Wiesel utters the prayer for the dead and walks
by. Wiesel gives no reason for this
inability to commit suicide, and one can reasonable assume that his human
instinct to live prevents it. This
instinct dominates Wiesel in the form of hunger.
After saving his gold crown from an unscrupulous dentist, Wiesel writes,
“I had saved my gold crown. It
might be useful to me one day to buy something—bread or life.
I now took little interest in anything except my daily plate of soup and
my crust of stale bread. Bread,
soup—these were my whole life. I
was a body. Perhaps less that that
even: a starved stomach” (50). Thus,
it seems Wiesel does not need morale, religion, and hope to keep going; his
body’s needs drive him onward. Another
Jew, Frenek, wants Wiesel’s gold crown. Wiesel
initially refuses, but Frenek persists, beating his father for poor marching in
order to force Wiesel to yield. He
knows Wiesel’s love of his father is his “weak point” (53).
When Wiesel sacrifices his gold crown to appease Frenek, it is apparent
that Wiesel deeply cares for his father. Wiesel
loves his father, and this love is life-sustaining. It is life-sustaining at the
concentration camp because the father and son are able to support each other.
This support is evident during Yom Kippur, the Jewish New Year.
Wiesel writes, “ I went up to him, took his hand and kissed it.
A tear fell upon it. Whose
was that tear? Mine? His?
I said nothing. Nor did he.
We had never understood one another so clearly” (65).
They are empathically sharing their pain with each other.
Sharing the burden of living at
When the Nazi’s evacuate the concentration camp, Wiesel’s devotion to
his father continues to keep him alive. During,
this evacuation, Wiesel makes clear through his thoughts and actions that
preserving his father’s life is immeasurably important to him.
He saves his father several times. When
the Nazi’s make Wiesel’s father walk to a group of weaklings who will be
shot, Wiesel selflessly accompanies him and incites minor chaos as a subterfuge
for his father’s escape. When Jews
on the cattle car attempt to throw his father out of the car, believing he is
dead, Wiesel, “set to work to slap him as hard as [he] could” (95) to revive
him and save his life. The
zealousness in which Wiesel saves his father’s life proves that his devotion
to his father is as strong as it was at
When the prisoners finally arrive at
Wiesel’s memoir elucidates how human beings react under extreme physical and mental duress. On an intellectual level, Wiesel piously lives for his father, but on a biological level, Wiesel wants to preserve his life. His intellect dominates Wiesel for the majority of the journey. When his father dies, the underlying biological drive towards self-preservation takes over. Wiesel thus proves that humans need no tangible intellectual reason to live. Life demands survival, as it demands Wiesel to continue living, God or no God, father or no father.
This page was last updated on 10/10/05.