Night by Elie Wiesel

Night by Elie Wiesel

Night, By Elie Wiesel is a devastatingly true story about one man's

witness to the genocide of his own people. Living through the

horrifying experiences in the German concentration camps of Auschwitz

and Buchenwald, Elie sees his family, friends and fellow Jews starved,

degraded, and murdered. In this essay I will address three important

topics expressed throughout the course of the book. First, I will

discuss the struggle and eventual loss of religious faith by Elie in

his battle to maintain humanity in this de-humanizing environment, and

what ultimately enabled him to survive. Second, I will show the

established relationship between Elie and his father, and the impact

life in the camp had upon it. And finally, give my personal opinion on

why Elie Wiesel wrote this book.

One of the main topics in this book is how Elie, a boy of strong

religious faith, as well as many Jews lose their faith in God because

of the atrocities that take place in the concentration camps. Elie

Wiesel lived his early childhood in the town of Transylvania, in

Hungary, during the early 1940's. At a young age Elie took a strong

interest in Jewish religion as he spent most of his time studying the

Talmud. Eventually he comes across Moshe the Beadle, who would take

him under his wing and instruct him more in depth of the ways of the

Talmud and cabbala. Through Moshe's instruction, he is taught to

question God for answers. Elie recalls, "Moshe had changed…. He no

longer talked to me of God or the cabbala, but only of what he had

seen." Thus right away Elie is exposed a loss of religious faith in

Moshe. When Elie arrived at Birkenau, I s...

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... on the head by an officer and the last words were

that of Elie's name as he called him for water. Ashamed forever, this

is what concentration camp life had done to Elie.

I believe that Elie Wiesel wrote this book as a living testament,

being one of the few survivors of the Holocaust. He felt it was his

duty to justify how so many of his people could be allowed to die

while the world remained silent. He and his people did not create the

Holocaust, but rather the Holocaust created them. As a survivor, Elie

has no choice but to tell all who will listen what the silenced

victims would tell if they could speak for themselves today. Having

lost his entire family to the aftermath of the Holocaust, one can only

hope that the world can learn from the Jewish people's suffering and

prevents history from repeating itself.