Donovan Dicks

11/30/12
English Pd. 6
The Dark Sides of Rebellion

Would a rebellion in the death camps of Nazi Germany have made a difference for those

imprisoned? Night, by Elie Wiesel, is a memoir of the authors experience in multiple

concentration camps during World War II. The camps were brutal, the prisoners lived in terrible

conditions, and death tolls never ceased to rise. The prisoners in the camps should not have

rebelled against their Nazi captors.

Although rebellions may have seemed like a way to escape life in the camps, prisoners

should not have involved themselves in any of these plots as they were likely to fail and end in

death. Anyone who plotted to or acted in a rebellion were captured, killed, or both. There was an

attempted rebellion that took place in a camp, including sabotaging an electrical plant and

gathering weapons, that Wiesel describes in Night. The rebellion ends with at the signal, the

three chairs were tipped over (Wiesel 64). The rebellion had failed, and the three prisoners that

had been associated with the plan had been captured, interrogated, tortured, and when none

would talk, sentenced to death by hanging in front of all the prisoners in the camp. Rebellious

acts were viewed as very dangerous and the deaths of those involved were held publicly in the

camps as a warning for any that followed in a rebels footsteps. This was not the only instance of

rebellion, but almost all other similar events were handled in the same way, no matter the

number of people involved or the specific acts that were performed. Seven hundred Jewish

families escaped from a ghetto, a compact neighborhood where Jews were isolated before being

sent to concentration camps, and were all hunted down, leaving 15 to survive (Jewish

Resistance to the Nazi Genocide). The Nazis treated small acts of rebellion with death, just as

they did a larger more impactful rebellious act. In two other concentration camps, there were
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more violent and effective rebellions. A group of workers destroyed a crematorium in one camp,

and 700 hundred Jews were successful in destroying an entire camp (Jewish Resistance to the

Nazi Genocide). Despite the success of the rebellion itself, all those involved in the

crematorium destruction were caught and killed, and only 150 to 200 Jews survived the attack on

the camp. Thus, for a better chance of survival, the prisoners should not have attempted to rebel.

Not only were rebellions deadly, they were also very hard to orchestrate and should not

have been attempted. Supplies for a resistance, e.g. weapons and food, were difficult to gather.

Besides the small rations prisoners were normally given, food was scarce, leaving many

prisoners weak and unable to fight. In comparison to food, weapons were unimaginably harder to

obtain. The three prisoners previously mentioned had managed to gather weapons, but when the

camp guards investigated the plot, they found a trail [] and after a search, they found a

significant quantity of weapons (Wiesel 63). Though they managed to gather the weapons, the

prisoners could not keep them hidden long enough to enact their rebellion, and those involved

were executed. Other than the weapons, there was also little support for resistance outside of

camps, and even less in the camps. There was not much help that prisoners could get, and Jewish

resistance did not have popular support (Berenbaum). It was hard to spread interest in a rebellion

to gather fighters, and there was no way to meet secretly and plan a revolt with a large group of

prisoners. Keeping a plan secret and supplies hidden were nearly impossible tasks, therefore

making rebellions weak thus resulting in failure and death for those involved. Hence, the

prisoners should not have rebelled since their plans were not well constructed.

On the other hand, one might say a rebellion could have been a great deal of good

for the prisoners. One could say that a successful rebellion would have overthrown the Nazi

captors and freed those that were prisoners in these camps. However, rebelling against the
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captors would have been an unbelievably challenging task. Weapons were scarce and were

virtually unobtainable (Berenbaum). The revolt would have taken planning and involvement of

many prisoners, which would have been hard to conceal and a long process. Not only would a

successful rebellion be extremely hard to accomplish, there is no telling how long the prisoners

could have remained in control. A rebellion wouldnt have been easy to keep quiet, and no doubt

there would have been knowledge of the event outside of the camp soon after it happened. All of

those freed could have been slaughtered or returned back to their previous conditions in a matter

of minutes if reinforcements had arrived. There was a very slim chance of achieving freedom by

force, and it would not have been wise to attempt to do so.

But say a rebellion was successful, and the prisoners were freed; there was still no life for

the prisoners if they managed to rebel and escape the camps, leaving the question of why would

they rebel if there was nothing for them after a success? There truly was nothing. At the

beginning of Wiesels journey, his father tells him that There are rumors [] that we are being

taken somewhere in Hungary (Wiesel 14). Hungary was a long way from home, and throughout

the book there are many transfers to other concentration camps. All those that were being taken

to the camps had immediately lost their homes, jobs, valuables, anything they possessed or were

a part of. Their lives had been stripped from them at the beginning, leaving nothing for them if

they managed to survive. A successful rebellion would have freed many prisoners, who would be

lost and in poor condition, to the open world. After the war, the Allies found millions of people

living in countries that were not their home lands, and many of the Jews had nowhere to go.

Their homes had been destroyed and their families had either been killed or lost along the

journey through the camps (Berenbaum). There was little chance that anyone had anything to

return to if they survived. Beginning a new life would be hard for all involved in the war, but
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especially for the prisoners, specifically those returning to Germany which had suffered large

destruction in the war. Thus, if a rebellion was successful, the prisoners would have been in a

situation not much better than what they were already living in.

The prisoners clinging to life in the concentration camps should not have rebelled against

their Nazi captors. Any rebellion that could be created was likely to end in death, and a success

would have left those who were freed in awful conditions. There would be no good side to a

revolt, only death and darkness.