Inmate: The Similarities and Differences Between the Two

Both slaves and concentration/extermination camp inmates lived very crude and demanding lives. They lost their identities, and for many of them, their hope for better lives. Many slaves remained slaves their entire lives due to nothing more than their race, while similarly most concentration/extermination camp inmates were murdered for nothing more than their religion or race. Frederick Douglass and Elie Wiesel were able to survive the life of a slave and the life of an inmate, respectively, and they shared their moving stories with everyone. With the detailed description of Douglass' life as a slave in his book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Wiesel's description of his experience as an inmate in his book Night, it is possible to compare and contrast the life of a slave to that of a concentration/extermination camp inmate.

There are a number of basic similarities between the life of a slave and the life of a concentration/extermination camp inmate. For one, both Douglass and Wiesel say how they were acted on, or in other words they did not choose to be a slave or a camp inmate. Both

The many generations of slavery and the gruesome holocaust were both horrible periods in history that happened not too long ago. It is not possible to say which one was worse, or which one caused more pain, but it is possible to compare and contrast the two events. A few important differences are noticeable when comparing the two, including the role education played in their lives and the reason families were separated. But there seem to be many more similarities between the two then differences. Both slaves and camp inmates were nearly starved and had no choice in the matter. They were both treated like animals and they dealt with violence around them everyday. By reading the first hand descriptions of Frederick Douglass and Elie Wiesel we are able to compare the life of a slave with the life of a concentration/extermination camp inmate.

Slaves were not the only ones who witnessed horrible acts all the time; inmates regularly had to deal with incidences like the one Wiesel described above.

2 Elie Wiesel, Night (New York: Bantam Books, 1960), p.39.

For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed.8

Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Wiesel's Night are autobiographies in which they write about these lives that were forced on to them. One difference in literary style here is that Douglass tends not to individualize himself, where as he focuses more on the historic situation he was put in. Wiesel on the other hand goes into a little more depth about his own personal experiences. Both writers had to deal with vicious acts against fellow human beings all around them and they both have thoughts during these tough times where they feel they will never be free again and they both share with the reader how they overcome these thoughts.

There are also a number of deeper similarities between the life of a slave and the life of a concentration/extermination camp inmate that demonstrate a few of the important themes Douglass and Wiesel express in their autobiographies. One of these themes is the concept of being dehumanized. In Douglass' work he mentions a number of times when he felt as though he and fellow slaves were being treated as animals, not as a humans. Douglass writes, "Mr. Covey was a poor man; he was just commencing in life; he was only able to buy one slave; and, shocking as is the fact, he bought her, as he said, for a breeder."1 This example deals with Mr. Covey purchasing a young female slave for the purpose of

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Approximate Word count = 1815
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)