Keira McTighe

Miss Schmidt

Honors English 9

February 27, 2018

Alone

Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

2017

Life after the Holocaust and liberation was a hard time. Many survivors felt joy after

triumphing out of all the Nazi evil. But many people didn’t feel this way. Liberation was

not the ending they wanted. Liberation also caused people to have many different

emotions. Some wanted revenge while ethers couldn’t help but feel hopelessness and fear

of the future. It then goes on to talk about some of their experiences in liberation.

Ferderber-Salz talks about the feeling of losing her last family member that was living

during liberation. Finding joy was hard for her. Those survivors who had someone to lean

on made it easier to find joy and life and liberation compared to those who didn’t. If

someone got sick during liberation there were no doctors there to help them. Compared to

concentration camps liberation was much better. Yet it still wasn’t home. It was a long

ride until one could return home.

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Press, Associated. “World Holocaust Day: the Lonely Survivors.” The Telegraph, Telegraph

Media Group, 27 Jan. 2017, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/27/world-holocaust-

day-lonely-survivors/.

A blind man named Ernest Weiner who is 92 years old and lives on his own. It was his

birthday and he had no one to celebrate with. So more than 100 Holocaust survivors sang

Happy Birthday to him and showered him with hugs and greetings. Israel is the world’s

largest survivor community. They were trying to save those like Weiner living their final

days all alone. "It's not pleasant to be alone," Weiner said in his apartment. "It gives a

good feeling" to have people visit. Associated Press then goes on to talk about the

Association for Immediate Help for Holocaust Survivors. The survivors said that this was

nice but money couldn’t address their emotional needs. Many survivors kept their pasts to

themselves for decades, often alienating even the people closest to them due to their

trauma. Only in their final years are many finally ready to open up, and often then there is

no one around. All these survivors wanted was someone to be with them. They didn’t

want all the money, just a friend. They are all alone in the world.

“Impact of the Holocaust.” Papers, www.sandrawilliams.org/HOLOCAUST/holocaust.html.

The Holocaust very clearly had a major impact on victims, mentally and physically. They

had to go through so much and when they thought they were finally done and that it was

all over it wasn’t. They still had liberation to go through, though liberation was much

better compared to the hideous treatment they had to go through in the camps. The

impact of the Holocaust was so horrible. Many victims were left with many

psychological effects. There can be no doubt that profound shock enveloped those

arriving at the death camps. Recreating a family and bringing a child into the world was a
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concrete attempt to compensate for their losses, to counter the massive disruption of their

lives and to undo the dehumanization and loneliness they had experience. A way

survivors coped with the prolonged horrors of the Holocaust was to sustain the hope of

reuniting with their families. This is so sad to me because many didn’t have their family

to reunite with. Many survivors, when physically able, returned to their home towns only

to find their property destroyed or taken over. They were left with nothing. Just the left-

over effects of a horrible thing they called the Holocaust.

“Life After the Holocaust: Blanka Rothschild.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,

www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007189.

Survivors of the Holocaust went through many struggles after the Holocaust. Many had

no finances nor family. This paragraph “documents six Holocaust survivors whose

journeys brought them to the United States, and reveals the complexity of starting over.”

Blanka tells her story about being in the Holocaust. She lived in a Ghetto for four years

until she was deported to Ravensbrueck concentration camp. She then goes on to talk

about her experiences after being freed. Nothing felt the same and home didn’t feel like

home anymore so she went to a displacement camp. She felt lost, she wanted to go home

but couldn’t, she had nothing and no one there with here. She wanted privacy. All Blanka

wanted is to have the feeling of someone loving her again, so she didn’t have to feel so

empty inside. Blanka then went on to talk about how she wanted to have a child, so she

did. She felt like this gave her life back. She wanted to live now, she had a reason to live.

All she ever wanted was to not feel so lonely.

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Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

2017.

Night is a memoir that describes the account of the Holocaust by Elie Wiesel. He gives a

lot a detail from the very beginning to the very end. The novel starts with all the people in

his town being warned about this from Moshi the beetle, but they thought nothing of this.

Wiesel then goes on to talk about being split from his mother and sister. Wiesel is lucky

enough to get to stay with his Dad. Him and his Dad went through everything together.

There were so many horrific story’s Wiesel shared and he went into deep detail. He had

to survive with very little food and drinks. His life changed so fast and so unexpectedly.

He would never live the same life he was living before. He was so young, just fifteen and

had to go through so much. He watched so many people die, and learned being in these

death camps was all about survival. Coming to the end of the Holocaust was the worst for

Wiesel. He had to watch his father die. Him and his father went through everything

together. They always had each other’s backs and always wanted the best for each other.

Wiesel had to watch his Father die a slow painful death. He was now all alone, he had no

one. “Since my father’s death, nothing mattered to me anymore.” Wiesel was eventually

freed not long after his Father’s death and soon got ill and was transferred to a hospital.

The novel then ends with Elie looking himself in the mirror for the first time since the

Holocaust.
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