There are a few good examples of heroism in Elie Wiesel's Night. When Elie and his father are facing the selection at Birkenau in section three, an unknown man takes them aside and asks their ages. He advises them not to divulge their actual ages. Rather, he tells Elie, who was only fourteen at the time, to tell the SS that he was really eighteen and for his father to change his age from fifty to forty. This heroic act might have cost the man his life had the Nazis found out what he was doing. Ultimately, his help may have saved Elie and his father from possible extermination. In section four, while at the work camp of Buna, Elie and his father are housed in a block overseen by a German Jew who was dedicated to the prisoners he supervised:
He was called Alphonse. A young man with an extraordinarily aged face, he was entirely devoted to the cause of "his" block. Whenever he could, he would organize a cauldron of soup for the young ones, the weak, all those who were dreaming more about an extra plateful than liberty.
Unlike many of the other prisoner "kapos," Alphonse is heroic in his simple humanity. Likewise, the doctor who operates on Elie's leg in section five is heroically kind and reassuring toward Elie:
"My" doctor was there. I took comfort from this. I felt that nothing serious could happen while he was there. There was a balm in every word he spoke, and every glance he gave me held a message of hope.
Not surprisingly, Elie refers to the man as "a great Jewish doctor."
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