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Instances of Survival Due to Chance in "Night" by Elie Wiesel

Summary:

In Night by Elie Wiesel, instances of survival due to chance include Elie avoiding selection by sheer luck, receiving unexpected help from other prisoners, and narrowly escaping death during the camp evacuations. These moments highlight the randomness of survival in the concentration camps, emphasizing the role of chance in the lives of those who endured the Holocaust.

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In Night, what are six instances of Elie surviving due to chance?

In Night by Elie Wiesel, there are survival incidents that are based solely on chance. In chapter four, Elie Wiesel was instructed to visit the dentist. When the dentist desired Elie Wiesel's gold crown, it was by chance that Wiesel was able to postpone the extraction of his gold tooth. He reported to the dentist that he did not feel well. The dentist instructed Wiesel to come back when he felt better.

In chapter two of Night , Elie Wiesel and his family are on a train with a lady named Madame Schachter. They are on their way to a concentration camp. Madame Schachter keeps seeing a fire that isn't there. She screams about seeing a fire, yet when the Jews look out the window, there is no fire. It is by chance that she keeps seeing the fire. No doubt, she was having a premonition of the crematories...

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which were to come. 

It was by chance that Wiesel and his father remained together the entire time they were in the concentration camps. In chapter five, Wiesel's father was selected to die in the Selection process. Jewish prisoners were instructed to create two lines. One line was for those who had escaped the Selection process. The other line was for those who had been selected to die. Wiesel's father had been chosen to die. He was in the line for those who were chosen to die. Wiesel's father escaped when Elie created a mass confusion and his father switches lines. The German leaders did not notice that Wiesel's father had switched lines.       

In chapter four, due to exhaustion and starvation, Elie Wiesel should have died after he was severely beaten for finding Idek with a naked Polish girl. It was by chance that Wiesel survived. He was too weak to survive, yet he lived through the horrible beating. He did faint, but he miraculously survived what should have been the death of him.

It is also miraculous that Wiesel survived running forty-two miles in the freezing snow with an injured foot. In chapter six, Wiesel had just had surgery on his foot, and he could not even wear a shoe. Somehow he managed to survive and was able to complete his evacuation to another concentration camp forty-two miles away. Elie Wiesel, along with hundreds, ran forty-two miles in the freezing snow. During his run, his foot was bleeding in the snow, yet he continued to run forty-six miles. This was amazing. He never once fell down which would have required the Germans to shoot him. The Germans shot anyone who fell down during the forty-two mile run in the freezing cold and snow.  

Another miracle happened during that same forty-two mile run. Wiesel's father also made it. Wiesel's father was extremely sick, yet he continued to run for forty-two miles. He would have been shot if he had fallen or stopped to rest. Wiesel's father kept up a running pace for forty-two miles. Even though Wiesel's father was elderly and extremely sick, he managed to endure a forty-two mile run in the freezing cold and snow. By chance, he endured and survived.

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What are three instances where luck helped Elie survive in Night by Elie Wiesel?

Overall, it's fair to say that Elie has been incredibly lucky to survive the Holocaust. Millions of other Jews perished at the hands of the Nazis in the biggest and most notorious act of genocide in history.

But Elie lived to fight another day and to tell his story to the world so that others might learn from it and do everything they could to ensure that such an appalling crime would never happen again.

This is an example of luck helping Elie to survive, a set of circumstances coming together over many years to ensure that he didn't perish along with his family and so many other Jews in Auschwitz.

Elie is insistent that, in surviving the Holocaust, he was the beneficiary of luck and nothing more. He regards it as insulting to the memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis to claim that his survival is a result of anything he himself did.

As well as luck being responsible in general for Elie's survival, there are two specific incidents that illustrate how lucky he was. First of all, there's the time when Elie is beaten to within an inch of his life by the psychotic Kapo Idek.

A French woman, imprisoned in the camp as a forced laborer, tends to his wounds and comforts him. That this should've happened is a case of pure luck, as such selfless behavior in the camps, where the fight for survival is everything, is rare indeed.

Then we have the case where a fellow inmate tells Elie to pretend to be eighteen. The inmate is clearly aware that in Auschwitz, the chances of survival increase if one is a healthy adult capable of doing hard work, and lots of it.

As with the French woman rendering assistance to Elie, the inmate didn't have to do this. But the fact that he did is a piece of good luck that goes some way toward helping Elie survive the unmitigated hell that is Auschwitz.

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