Revised Blog Post #3 - Ellie

I believe the overarching theme of Elie Wiesel’s novel Night was luck and the lack of luck. Wiesel’s father had gotten word that the Nazis were going to evacuate the ghettos that they were forced to move to. He went around to alert the neighbors of the sudden yet expected change. “My father was running right and left, exhausted, consoling friends, checking with the Jewish Council just in case the order had been rescinded. To the last moment, people clung to hope” (15). Wiesel’s father had gotten word that in the morning the ghettos would be evacuated and everyone would be sent to camps. He went around spreading the news to prepare people. If he hadn’t have heard this news, no one would have been prepared and the morning of evacuation would be even more awful: “‘Someone is knocking at the sealed window, the one that faces outside!’... But by the time we succeeded in opening the sealed window, it was too late. There was nobody outside.” (14) Wiesel explains that after the war, he found out that the person knocking was his father’s friend who was a Hungarian policeman. He was coming to warn them that there was danger. If the Wiesels had been able to open the window in time, they may have been able to escape. Wiesel and his father get moved to a different camp and request to be able to work next to each other. They are “lucky” enough to be able to work next to each other.“‘Please sir… I’d like to be near my father,’ ‘All right. Your father will work here, next to you.’ We were lucky.” (50) In many situations, families were separated, broken, or even forced to harm or kill each other. Wiesel and his father were “lucky” because the concentration camp they had been placed in was less harsh than some of the others. Wiesel’s “luck” provided him with a sense of hope throughout his experience in the Holocaust. This may have and is most likely one of the main reasons he remained hopeful and survived the Holocaust. Luck was a significant factor in Elie Wiesel’s survival of the Holocaust.