“There was no God in Auschwitz. There were such horrible conditions that God decided not to go there.” Linda Breder-Holocaust survivor. If, all of a sudden, the population of Rio de Janeiro vanished one day, people would take notice almost instantly. However, when six million Jewish people were killed in the concentration camps during WWII, people turned a blind eye, even when they were fully aware of what was happening. Elie Wiesel was among the people who disappeared into the night and was one of the lucky ones that survived. Ten years later, he wrote about his experience in his memoir Night. In the memoir, one of the main themes is faith, or lack thereof. When some of the prisoners lose their faith, they lose the will to live as well. For young Elie Wiesel, faith is the only thing he focused on. So when he loses his faith, he almost gives up but he manages to keep going without the aid of his God. In the beginning of the memoir Night, Wiesel talks about how strong he believed in his faith. He states “I believed profoundly” (1). Even at a young age all Wiesel focused on was his faith “In days gone by, Rosh Hashanah had dominated my life. I knew that my sins grieved the Almighty and so I pleaded for forgiveness. In those days, I fully believed that the salvation of the world depended on every one of my deeds, on every one of my prayers” ( ). Wiesel even wanted to study the Cabala at the age of twelve; his father however, wouldn’t allow it. Wiesel spent twelve years of his life building up his faith but it only took a year inside the concentration camps to tear it down. Even before he arrived at the camps, his faith started to wither away slowly “I looked at my house in which I had spent years seeking my God…Yet I felt sadness.... ... middle of paper ... ...t was an absolutely horrible experience, Wiesel still took it as a learning opportunity. Because of this, Wiesel is now an enormous advocate for humanitarian causes and urges others to be as well. People often forget that while there may be humans in some places that does not mean there is humanity. While faith is still a part of Wiesel’s life today, he continues to look at it with a skeptical view. Due to the events that took place in those concentration camps, something that was whole in his life will never have all the pieces anymore. To survive a tragic event like the Holocaust without a support system to fall back on is a feat many people couldn’t do. Wiesel has thought and done things a single person shouldn’t be able to do, such as almost completely lose his faith but then go back to it. This is just one of the many things Wiesel was able to do and overcome.
He experiences numerous people being hanged, beaten, and tortured daily which changes the amount of faith and trust that he has in Humanity and God. He sees faithful and courageous people crumble in front of his own eyes before their lives are stolen. Towards the end of the book, Wiesel is in the hospital at the camp for surgery on his leg and the man in the bed next to him says something that is bitterly true, “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people,” (Wiesel 81). Wiesel doesn’t argue with this, which shows that he had lost his faith in humanity, and doesn’t know who to trust. Wiesel is also naive and vulnerable at the beginning of the book. He refuses to touch the food at the ghetto and strongly considers rebelling against the officers at the Concentration camps. At the same time, he is also a strong and fairly well-fed boy who does not grow tired easily. He is shocked that the world is letting these barbarities occur in modern times. Over time, he grows accustomed to the beatings and animal-like treatment that is routine at the camps. “I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked….. Had I changed that much so fast?”
Most people have never experienced anything near as awful as what Wiesel experienced. He was one of the only people who found a way to hold onto their faith. Many made excuses not to perform rituals and eventually lost all faith. Wiesel was weakened, but remained faithful. Akiba Drumer, a friend of Wiesel, tried to convince himself that it was a test by God. However, Akiba also lost faith. “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” (Wiesel 34) This quote was from a small portion of Wiesel’s “Never Shall I Forget Poem.” It showed how Elie lost faith in God when he saw what the Nazis were doing to families and children. This quote shows how the religious part of Elie was “murdered.” Elie seemed to become foreign and isolated from his people. He seemed to be just going through the motions during his time in the camps. “In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger.” (Mauriac XXI) This quote shows how Wiesel felt like he was a stranger to the religion, community, and faith. Elie Wiesel couldn’t understand why God would hurt people, and most of all why he was spared. “And question of questions: Where was God in all this? It seemed as impossible to conceive of Auschwitz with God as to conceive of Auschwitz without God.” (Hope, Despair and Memory) This shows how Wiesel couldn’t grasp the reasoning behind God. He wanted
In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel remembers his time at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Elie begins to lose his faith in God after his faith is tested many times while at the concentration camp. Elie conveys to us how horrific events have changed the way he looks at his faith and God. Through comments such as, “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God, my soul, and turned my dreams into dust,” he reveals the toll that the Holocaust has taken on him. The novel begins during the years of 1942-1944 in Sighet, Transylvannia, Romania. Elie Wiesel and his family are deported and Elie is forced to live through many horrific events. Several events such as deportation, seeing dead bodies while at Auschwitz, and separation from his mother and sisters, make Elie start to question his absolute faith in God.
When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.” (Moore) While living in brutal conditions, Wiesel did everything he could for himself and others. He prayed almost four times a day for the ending of the holocaust. Fighting through starvation, Wiesel was never selfish and continuously worked to help other Jews escape. While helping others, Wiesel was still a young man with hope to escape himself and tell his stories to the world.
It was the end of the war and he no longer has a family after he was relocated and wiesel is basically a walking corpse. “And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed.” was written in page 91 which clearly states that he no longer believed in God. Now the last piece of evidence to prove that he doesn't care for others anymore would by when his father left the land of the living. On page 112 Wiesel writes how he felt about his passing ‘And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have something like: Free at
The Holocaust will forever be known as one of the largest genocides ever recorded in history. 11 million perished, and 6 million of the departed were Jewish. The concentration camps where the prisoners were held were considered to be the closest one could get to a living hell. There is no surprise that the men, women, and children there were afraid. One is considered blessed to have a family member alongside oneself.
I think when Wiesel says that he does not feel human anymore he means that he is living like an animal. He is caged like an animal. He works like an animal. He also is stripped of all the things that make him human. He is not aloud to stand up for his rights. He can not speak with his own free will. If he does, he will be killed. This compares to someone who beats his or her dog. If you hit the dog long enough and he will flinch anytime, someone raises a hand to the dog.
‘Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu’s son has done’” (Wiesel 91). The topic of a father and son relationship is extremely personal to Wiesel, which makes him hark back to how he was raised: religiously. Though clouded with a sense of reality from his experience in the camps, Wiesel still has hints of hope in his view of the world from his upbringing in Sighet. Thus, our upbringing affects much of the way we see the
Throughout the speech, Wiesel utilizes a wide range of tones and uses strategic pauses so the audience experiences no difficulties in understanding the struggle he went through. In one of his more intense moments of the speech, he begins talking about how much worse being ignored was, versus being unjustly judged. Religion may be unjust, but it is not indifferent. People cannot live “Outside God” (Wiesel), they need Him even if He is far away.
The unimaginable actions from German authorities in the concentration camps of the Holocaust were expected to be tolerated by weak prisoners like Wiesel or death was an alternate. These constant actions from the S.S. officers crushed the identification of who Wiesel really was. When Wiesel’s physical state left, so did his mental state. If a prisoner chose to have a mind of their own and did not follow the S.S. officer’s commands they were written brutally beaten or even in severe cases sentenced to their death. After Wiesel was liberated he looked at himself in the mirror and didn’t even recognize who he was anymore. No prisoner that was a part of the Holocaust could avoid inner and outer turmoil.
Eliezer Wiesel loses his faith in god, family and humanity through the experiences he has from the Nazi concentration camp.
Years before being deported to Auschwitz, twelve-year-old Elie Wiesel is an incredibly religious boy. Even at his young age, Wiesel aspires to study the
During the book, Wiesenthal's shows a lack of faith in the Jewish religion. Understandably so, Wiesenthal like many others prisoners did not pray anymore to God while at the camp. Although is can be said that Wiesenthal did not seem to resent God, in fact, he was openly listening to the teaching of God shared by his friend Josek. Wiesenthal said of his friend," he knew that he was superior to us, that we were the poorer for our lack of faith but he was ever ready to share his wealth of wisdom and piety with us and give us strength" (5). While Wiesenthal did not care much of the faith anymore he still sought for help from those who did believe in God. He used his faith in others people's faith to try to answer the question of the dying SS man.
Night is a dramatic book that tells the horror and evil of the concentration camps that many were imprisoned in during World War II. Throughout the book the author Elie Wiesel, as well as many prisoners, lost their faith in God. There are many examples in the beginning of Night where people are trying to keep and strengthen their faith but there are many more examples of people rebelling against God and forgetting their religion.
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lives changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before the German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4).