How does Night by Elie Wiesel view the concept of parent-child relationships?

I think that this is one of the most profound elements out
of Wiesel's work.  One of the strongest and most base of claims in the work is how the
experience of the Holocaust inverted all of reality.  In this inversion, Wiesel places
the parent/ child relationship.  It might be comforting to think that the connection
between parent and child is something that can remain intact in the Holocaust. Yet,
Wiesel does not believe in any such notion.  His vision of what was present during the
Holocaust is one where the inversion of the parent/ child connection is one of the most
haunting of elements.

Eliezer and his father are shown to
be together, for the most part.  There is some level of adolescent distance featured
when Eliezer wishes to study the element of Jewish mysticism and Shlomo is more
concerned with the day to day events of the community and his business.  Throughout the
harrowing ordeal, Wiesel shows how the dehumanization of the Nazi victims end up
infecting them to the point where they replicate the same patterns of abuse that are
being perpetrated unto them.  This is seen at several points.  When Madame Schachter's
child turns from his mother's beating, not speaking out, but rather vicariously living
through the mob, it is a reminder of how the inversion of values in the Holocaust
impacts all human connection.  At the same time, when Eliezer and his father witness a
father stealing bread for his child and the beating of father at the hands of the child
for food, it is another element of inversion.  Children abandoning parents during times
of crises are reflective moments of how the parent/ child bond is not immune to the
dehumanization that is such a part of the Holocaust narrative.  Certainly, this is seen
in Eliezer, himself, where a base instinct and drive to survive cuts off the ability to
hear his father's cries.  When Shlomo cries for water, yearns for someone to hear him,
and Eliezer remains silent, it is the ultimate telling point as to how the true horror
of the Holocaust was the severance of bonds between human beings, something that reared
itself in the relationship between children and their parents.  When Eliezer cannot
recognize the vision staring back at him at the end of the narrative, it might be a
telling sign of how estranged children can no longer acknowledge or understand their
connection to parents in such a time period.