I remember reading Anne Frank's diary when I was in middle school, but it didn't affect me as much as The Night of Eliezer Wiesel. Elie Wiesel, his father, mother and three sisters experienced the horror of Nazi Germany. Due to the fact that the Nazis separated males and females, most of the book is based on what Elie and his father went through. The Wiesel family lived in the small town of Sighet, which belonged to Hungary. Elie's relationships with his father change dramatically towards the end of the novel, but we cannot judge him because we have not experienced the monstrosities that he and his father had to endure. At the beginning of the novel, Elie's father, Shlomo Wiesel, is a respected leader of the Jewish community in Sighet. He was held in the highest esteem by the community and his advice and knowledge were often 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 began, 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 over in some distant land…” (Wiesel 27) . Shortly thereafter, the Nazis entered Sighet and formed two ghettos. While in the smaller ghetto waiting to be relocated, the Wiesel family's former maid, Maria, offers to hide the family in her village, but once again Elie's father rejects the opportunity. The Wiesel family arrived at the Birkenau concentration camp and were immediately separated. . An SS commanded: “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; Elie has to make him… middle of paper… death. He no longer thought about his father and mother and when he dreamed it was about an extra portion of soup or bread (Wiesel 131). On April 11, 1945, Buchenwald was liberated. Three days later, Elie became seriously ill and was transferred to a hospital where he spent two weeks between life and death (Wiesel 133). I don't blame Elie Wiesel for the changes in his relationship with his father because in the end he was just surviving. If Elie had intervened in the various situations that occurred in the camps to his father or if he had continued to give his father his rations, perhaps he would have died too, either from being beaten by an SS officer or from starvation. As inhumane as it may seem, it actually 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