Night Falls On Armenia

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Night Falls on Armenia
Elie Wiesel’s Night explains the day-to-day hardships of a boy who survives the pain and suffering of a Nazi concentration camp. After the loss of his family, the narrator, Eliezer, along with his father, endures the inhumane treatment of Nazi soldiers. In Night, Eliezer struggles through the Jewish Holocaust, yet years before, the Armenian people had to battle arguably harder conditions in order to survive genocide. Turkish soldiers began their crusade against the Armenians out of fear of both social and economical suppression. The Jewish and Armenian people had similar fears about the people who oppressed them, and the oppressors’ style of subjugation is also homogeneous, but society’s review of the events differs greatly.
The oppression of the Jews and Armenians indirectly results from the fears of both the victimized cultures. Eliezer realizes the existence of these fears when reading a letter from a friend. Eliezer recalls the friend’s account of the common beliefs of his community:
“ ‘The Jews in Budapest are living in an atmosphere of fear and terror. […] The Fascists are attacking Jewish shops and synagogues. The situation is getting serious,’” (Wiesel 7). The Jews’ fear of loosing what they spent their whole lives building, in a way paralyzes them and prevents them from leaving the hellish conditions they faced in their homes. The reality of leaving behind their life’s work for destruction by the Fascists subconsciously may be unbearable. Similarly, the Armenians had to deal with the fears that engulfed their communities. Reynold Khachatourian, a genocide survivor reminisces, “ ‘They called it “ethnic deportations due to national interest.” We didn’t care. My family refused to leave as long as we could. We were

afraid to go. We were afraid to loose our home, our lives. It was all we had, and we couldn’t bear to leave it behind” (Miller 68). Eventually the Tur...