Cultivating The Gardens Candide And Night - 1577 Words

Chris Skowron Professor Dwan Simmons English 2110 November 26th, 2014 Cultivating the gardens: Candide and Night The Holocaust was a genocide in which approximately six million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime under the command of Adolf Hitler. While many did perish during the holocaust, some survived to tell the haunting tales of what they endured. One of which was a young Romanian man named Elie Wiesel, a Jewish-American professor and political activist. (The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity) In 1940, Romania lost the town of Sighet to Hungary following the Second Vienna Award. (The Second Vienna Award and the Hungarian-Romanian Relations 1940-1944) Later, in the year 1944, Wiesel, his family, and the rest of the town were placed in one of the two ghettos in Sighet. (Night, page 11) Wiesel and his family lived in the larger of the two, on Serpent Street and on May 6, 1944, the Hungarian authorities allowed the German army to deport the Jewish community in Sighet to Auschwitz-Birkenau. While at Auschwitz, his inmate number, A-7713, was tattooed onto his left arm. (Night, page 42) Wiesel was separated from his mother and three sisters, but was able to stay with his dad at the same camp. The two of them were sent to Buna, an attached work camp and a subcamp of Auschwitz III-Monowitz. Elie remained with his father for more than eight months as they were forced to work under appalling conditions and shuffled among three concentration camps in the closing days of