Elie Wiesel's Night When We Essay

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Furthermore, that Wiesel describes her as a girl rather than a woman is telling. The image in my head is a young girl of 13 or 14, far too young for sexual activity, coerced into doing something, perhaps for the promise of food for her or her family. It is just a heartbreaking image. This makes her frantic attempt to cover her breasts and cover her shame all the more poignant, as one can only imagine how she felt like a traitor to her people to be caught having sex with a Nazi. Then, when one considers how many young girls must have been put in this same position, over and over again, forced to choose between impossible alternatives: protecting their families or taking a moral stand with their people, it just becomes overwhelming.

Of course, the vignette is not from the girl's perspective, but from a young Elie's perspective. He was not trying to be a trouble-maker. He was looking through a warehouse, desperate to find a scrap of bread when he encountered Idek having sex with this girl. His punishment is a brutal public whipping of 25 lashes.

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The punishment was wholly unnecessary; he was not trying to find Idek and discover what he was doing, and he did not seem to pose a threat that he would reveal what had occurred. In fact, by bringing attention to the issue with a public whipping, Idek is the one who made it clear that Elie had discovered him doing something he should not have been doing. The whipping occurred because it could. Combined with the forced sex with the young Polish girl, the whipping was very resonant of what is known of slavery as practiced in American prior to the Civil War; physical abuse and humiliation just because it was a possibility. Taken as a whole, the incident described makes me heartsick. I would like so very much to believe that human beings simply could not do these types of things to one another, but, time and time again, history demonstrates that not only can they, but they do, and they seem to enjoy it.

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