Prejudice Versus Tolerance

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Cover picture of Elie's Nobel-Peace-                          Photo of Elie Wiesel at the

Prize-Winning Night.                                                   age of 15.

(Photos from www.photobucket.com/ElieWiesel)

Night, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, is a story written by Elie Wiesel about his time spent in several different concentration camps during the Holocaust. Elie had initially written, in Yiddish, a 900-page novel entitled Un di velt hot geshvign, or And the World Remained Silent. Because of the length, the book was unable to be published. Elie then went on to write a much shorter version entitled La Nuit in French which was later translated into English and called Night.

Elie was not the only one in his family to be deported to a concentration camp. His father, Shlomo, mother, Sarah, and sister, Tzipora, were also deported. (Elie also had two other sisters, Hilda and Bea, whom of which may have been deported, but I could not find any information to support this assumption.) The family was first sent to live in a ghetto in Sighet. In 1944, the Hungarian authorities deported the ghetto to the concentration camp Auschwitz - Birkenau. Elie and his father were separated from Sarah and Tzipora, who were thought to have been killed at Auschwitz. At Auschwitz, Elie recieved the number A-7713. Elie was able to remain with his father for about a year when his father began to show signs of dysentary. Unfortunately, Elie's father did not live long enough to recover. Elie awoke on January 29, 1945 to find that his father had been taken away to the crematory. The last word his father had spoken had been "Eliezer," Elie's name.

Prejudice versus Tolerance plays a vast part in the story of Night. Elie's family, along with many other familes, was deported because of the fact that they were Jews. The sending of Elie and his family to Auschwitz - Birkenau because of their beliefs is a clear example of prejudice. Unfortunately, prejudice dominated Elie's stays at the camps with very little sign of humanity. Many of the guards at the camps were cruel. They would continuously beat anyone who crossed their paths and would do anything that would benefit themselves. Had these people been Germans, the guards wouldn't have acted in the way they did. Their treatment of the Jews is an example of prejudice. 

Tolerance was a very difficult thing to find in this book. The only time I recognized tolerance whatsoever was in one of the more humane guards. Elie spoke of how he was easy to get along with, probably because he was a prisoner that was in charge. Eventually, the kindness of the prisoner got him in trouble, and he was taken away for being too humane-replaced by one of the most vicious guards spoken of in the book.

Prejudice-

1) An unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without thought, knowledge, or reason

2)Any preconcieved opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable

3)Unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, especially of a hostile nature, reguarding a racial, religious, or national group.

Tolerance-

1)A fair, objective, or permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own

2)The act or capacity of enduring 

(Definitions from www.dictionary.com)