Chimneys in the Night: A Comparative Analysis of Elie Wiesel’s Night and Olga Lengyel’s Five Chimneys

Abstract

This essay aims to evaluate some of the similarities and differences in the experiences of two Holocaust survivors, Olga Lengyel and Ellie Wiesel. The essay will explore the experiences of these two survivors in Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Buchenwald and examine why some of their experiences may have been different. The purpose of the essay is not to belittle the experiences of one gender or the other, but to identify how gender and sexuality made their experiences different. Wiesel’s and Lengyel's haunting memories of their experiences in these concentration camps offers a lense through which to examine the potential role that gender had on the experiences of the camp inmates. Both authors provide a graphic depiction of life in the concentration camp and the reader is taken into the depths of the hell in which these human beings were forced to live. Lengyel and Wiesel in a sense represent larger groups of people; women in the concentration camp and men in the concentration camp. Their memoirs exemplify the experiences of the millions of men and women who lived in the concentration camps, many of whom’s voices were silenced as a result of their presence in the camps. Therefore one can use the two accounts and the wealth of information within them to draw general conclusions about the experiences of each gender within the camp.