Classification of Jews in Elie Wiesel's
As a whole, our society takes our luxuries for granted far too often. Rarely do we contemplate how lucky we are to live in a world with health care, technology, automobiles, and other conveniences that are mostly contemporary devices today. In the Nazi concentration camps, these luxuries were a fragment of the past. People had to concentrate on receiving their ration of food for the day, not on the latest style of Persian Rug. The Jews not only dealt with survival, but also with their own personal caste system. As soon as they were tattooed with their prisoner ID number, they became another cattle in the herd, and nothing more. Before the Jews were deported, they had a small yet basic class system among the ranking people of the community. Elie’s father, Chlomo, was respected by all and sought for advice quite often. His words were always helpful and brought hope into the homes of his followers. Elie himself was very proud of his father for who he was, although Chlomo wasn’t at home to help his own family as much as Elie would have liked him to. Yet when they were captured and dragged to Auschwitz, any social standing Chlomo had was stripped from him. The new ranking social class belonged to those who were young enough and s
Once the prisoners reached Auschwitz, all of that changed. Their previous treasures held no meaning here. They had been stripped down to a barbaric lifestyle, where shoes were more important than any rug or lamp could be. Everything they took for granted before was now gruesomely pillaged from them. Watching their brethren be eaten alive by the flames of the furnace disillusioned them. They could not believe that something this atrocious could ever happen to them. The monstrosities of the camps forced them to reevaluate their lives, and more importantly what they would have to do to survive. trong enough to survive the brutal labor at hand. Elie was much too young to defend himself, and his father was much too old to fight off dysentery. The value that the Jews placed on items was drastically changed during the war as well. At home, they valued security, nourishment, and shelter, but they took it for granted, never thinking that it would be stripped away. Their focus lied in material objects that were unnecessary for survival, such as rugs, lamps, jewelry, and other temporal matters. Near the begginning of the book, right before the Jews were shipped away from their homes, a small flea market had taken place. One merchant had been selling handwoven rugs, a much sought after commodity, as they were very expensive and beautiful to look at. These people were so optimistic of their well being they never considered that all of their earthly comforts were unimportant in the grand scheme of the war. While the Jews were of no military standing, many of the prisoners of Auschwitz had been captured as prisoners of war. The lower ranking soldiers were thrown into the mud with the rest of the Jews, while the higher ra
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Approximate Word count = 1163
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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