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Explain the allusions to Lazarus and Nietzche. How does Wiesel connect with these two men?

Forewrod pages xix and xx

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The allusion to Lazarus had to do with Francois' meeting Elie and seeing the look of someone who has risen from the dead. Elie had been surrounded by death and had lost everyone...... he saw death and yet he lived.

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The allusion to Nietzche is a bit different. This allusion has to do with Elie's questioning of God's existence in the face of smoke and desecrated corpses. Nietzche was the originator of the phrase "God is dead," and the allusion to his words came from the child who'd witnessed the Holocaust and given up hope and faith.

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Lazarus is the Romanized version of Wiesel's first name, Eliezer.

Nietzsche was a German philosopher whose most famous pronouncement that most people remember was "God is dead." The Nazis took Nietzsche's idea of "superman" and perverted it to serve their own genocidal purposes. They wanted to prove the superiority of the Aryan race.