I remember reading Anne Frank's Diary when I was in middle school, but it didn't impact me as much as Eliezer Wiesel's Night. Elie Wiesel, his father, his mother and his three sisters experienced the horror of Nazi Germany. Since the Nazis separated men and women, most of the book is based on what Elie and his father experienced. The Wiesel family lived in the small town of Sighet, which belonged to Hungary. Elie's relationship with his father changes dramatically toward the end of the novel, but we cannot judge him because we have not experienced the monstrosities that he and his father endured. At the beginning of the novel, Elie's father, Shlomo Wiesel, is a respected leader in the Jewish community of Regarde. He was held in the highest esteem by the community and his advice and knowledge was frequently sought (Wiesel 22). Unfortunately, Shlomo Wiesel made the same mistake as other Jews and decided to ignore the warnings about the Nazis. Before it all started, Elie even asked his father to sell everything and move to Palestine, but his father told him: “I am too old, my son, too old to start a new life. Too old to start from scratch in a faraway country…” (Wiesel 27). Shortly after, the Nazis arrived in Sighet and formed two ghettos. While in the smaller ghetto waiting to be moved, Maria, the former servant of the Wiesel family, offers to hide the family in her village, but once again, Elie's father refuses. the opportunity. The Wiesel family arrived at the Birkenau concentration camp and were instantly separated. . An SS man ordered: “Men on the left!” Women on the right! (Wiesel 47) and that was the last time Elie saw his mother and sisters. An inmate approached Elie and his father and told them to lie about their ages; Elijah must make him...... middle of paper...... dead. He no longer thought about his father and mother and when he dreamed, it was about an extra ration of soup or bread (Wiesel 131). On April 11, 1945, Buchenwald was liberated. Three days later, Elie became very ill and was transferred to a hospital where he spent two weeks hovering between life and death (Wiesel 133). I don't blame Elie Wiesel for the changes in his father's relationship because ultimately he was just surviving. If Elie had intervened with his father in the different situations that happened in the camps or if he had continued to give his father his rations, he too could have died, either as a result of a beating by an SS officer, or from hunger. As inhumane as it sounds, it really wasn't, because it was the only way to survive. Works Cited Wiesel, Elie. Night. Trans. Marion Wiesel. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print