Like many of Elie Wiesel’s works, Dawn—and the entire Night Trilogy—is devoted to exploring the post-Holocaust Jewish experience. As an Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor himself, Wiesel imbued Elisha’s story with real-life details based on his own experiences. Elisha’s traumas at Buchenwald reflect one of millions of stories from Jewish concentration camp survivors. This is exemplified by his parents’ and community members’ deaths. In addition, Dawn touches on gentile Holocaust survivors’ experiences through characters like Stefan the German sculptor. While addressing Jewish persecution by the Nazis, Wiesel explores the Jewish cultural relationship to that persecution. Even before the Holocaust, European Jewish culture was inextricable from what <a data-internal-link data-link-type="Character" href="https://www.supersummary.com/dawn-wiesel/major-character-analysis/#333047">Gad</a> calls a “persecution reflex.” <a data-internal-link data-link-type="Character" href="https://www.supersummary.com/dawn-wiesel/major-character-analysis/#333040">Elisha</a> has his own experiences with this reflex. When he learns about the Movement, he remarks: “This was the first story I had ever heard in which the Jews were not the ones to be afraid. Until this moment I had believed that the mission of the Jews was to represent the trembling of history rather than the wind which made it tremble” (17). This “trembling of history” refers to the numerous pogroms (antisemitic massacres) and exoduses that litter Jewish history, the latest being the Holocaust, the single most ambitious pogrom in modern history.

The Post-Holocaust Jewish Experience

Victimhood

Death and Suffering as a Result of Military Conflict

Other Media

Books Made into Movies

Values & Ideas

Fate

Good & Evil

Emotions & Behavior

Guilt

Fiction

Historical Fiction

Book Events

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Memorial Day Reads

Memory

History: World

Military Reads

Society

World War II

Elie Wiesel

Adult

Novel

The Night Trilogy

Guide

Study Guide

Before You Read

Explore Dawn reviews, reading age recommendations, and essential genre and thematic details before you start reading.

Before You Read Dawn | SuperSummary

Dawn

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