Throughout World War II, Nazi Germany was composing a plan to completely eradicate inferiors in a massive genocide. Millions of Jews were shipped into concentration camps dispersed throughout major Eastern European cities. Many Jewish believers, used their faith, to guide them to freedom. Others didn’t have that privilege for peace in the camps. In Night, Elie Wiesel discusses Man’s relationship with religious faith through imagery motifs, and selection of details to reveal how the absence of a just and loving God led to the Jews loss of Faith. Elie Wiesel recollects on his experiences in the concentration camps using olfactory and visual imagery to paint vivid pictures outlining the loss of Faith in the concentration camps. As Elie lost his hope and trust in the Lord, he felt that his faith was consumed by his fears. Over the course of life in camp. He discloses that the flames engulfed his faith forever, which caused him to live as long as God (page 32). This excerpt expressed after his first night in camp, expresses the feeling of endless torture for a crime not committed, like our sins are to the Lord. Wiesel concretely expresses the loss of faith using olfactory imagery. However, his faith cannot burn in itself, instead it ignited in Elie causing smoke to rise from his heart. His loss of faith from the camps undoubtedly reflects the numerous others whom also continued a blazing faith. Furthermore, Elie and a stranger question …show more content…
Elie Wiesel establishes that even with a background in religious practices one experience can cause one to lose it all. Imagery, motifs, and specialized detail all aid to Wiesel’s description of Jews losing their faith in the horrifying experience of the Holocaust. Even when one loses sight of what is important, don’t give up on everything good because to the all-powerful God will never fail to save
The section in the novel night that painted a dark and angry picture of human nature is when the Jews were fleeing Buna and hundreds of them were packed in a roofless cattle car. The Jews were only provided with a blanket that soon became soaked by the snowfall. They spent days in the bitter cold temperatures and all they ate was snow. For these reasons, many suffered and died. When they stopped in German towns, the people stared at that cattle cars filled with soulless bodies. “They would stop and look at [the Jews] without surprise.” It was a regular occasion for the German people to see suffering Jews and not feel pity. The dark and angry picture of human nature was when a German worker “took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it
In the 1930s-1940s, the Nazis took millions of Jews into their death camps. They exterminated children, families, and even babies. Elie Wiesel was one of the few who managed to live through the war. However, his life was forever scarred by things he witnessed in these camps. The book Night explained many of the harsh feelings that Elie Wiesel experienced in his time in various German concentration camps. Prior to being taken, it is known that Wiesel was very strong in his beliefs of God and the ideas behind the Jewish religion. However, he questioned God while he endured the torture that the Nazis inflicted on many different races. He questioned why God had done this to these innocent people. Elie Wiesel lost much of his faith while in the
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
A statement from the nonfiction novella Night –a personal account of Elie Wiesel’s experience during the Holocaust—reads as follows: “How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou. Almighty, Master of the universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end up in the furnaces” (67). War is a concept that is greatly looked down upon in most major religions and cultures, yet it has become an inevitable adversity of human nature. Due to war’s inhumane circumstances and the mass destruction it creates, it has been a major cause for many followers of Christianity, Judaism, and other religions to turn from their faith. Followers of religion cannot comprehend how their loving god could allow them to suffer and many devout
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.
In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the author displays the transformation and the evolution of the average human being, through a horrible experience that he personally went through. When he is transported from one place to another, forced to leave everything behind, to go live in the ghettos, then in a horrible concentration camp. In the concentration camp, Elie experiences numerous events that challenge his physical and mental limits. Some of these events made him question his faith, and whether there is such a thing as God, turning him from a conservative Jew to a reform Jew. Elie doesn’t love the concentration camps, yet he doesn’t hate it, in fact he does not care anymore.
The significance of night throughout the novel Night by Elie Wiesel shows a poignant view into the daily life of Jews throughout the concentration camps. Eliezer describes each day as if there was not any sunshine to give them hope of a new day. He used the night to symbolize the darkness and eeriness that were brought upon every Jew who continued to survive each day in the concentration camps. However, night was used as an escape from the torture Eliezer and his father had to endure from the Kapos who controlled their barracks. Nevertheless, night plays a developmental role of Elie throughout he novel.
When a person's faith is also an alternative for their culture and morals, it proves challenging to take that sense of security in that faith away from them. In Night, Elie Wiesel, a Jewish student living in Sighet, Transylvania during the war of 1942, uses his studies in Talmud and the Kabbalah as not only a religious practice but a lifestyle. Elie and his fellow civilians are warned, however, by his Kabbalah teacher who says that during the war, German aggressors are aggregately imprisoning, deporting, and annihilating millions of Jews. When Elie and his family are victim of this aggression, Elie realizes how crucial his faith in God is if he is to survive the Holocaust. He vows after being separated from his mother and sisters that he will protect he and his father from death, even though as death nears, Elie gradually becomes closer to losing his faith. In the end, to Elie's devastation, Elie makes it out of the Holocaust alone after his father dies from the intense seclusion to malnutrition and deprivation. Elie survives the Holocaust through a battle of conscience--first by believing in God, then resisting his faith in God, and ultimately replacing his faith with obligation to his father.
In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie states, “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless him?” (Wiesel 67). Inhumanity led to the division of religion and it also led to the loss of hope. Two significant themes when faced with inhumanity is wanting to give up and the loss of faith.
The year was 1943, young Elie Wiesel began to slowly realise the danger of the German Army and its leader; Adolf Hitler. Elie was one of the millions of the Jewish faith that was sent to concentration camps during the period known to all as the Holocaust. Throughout the journey to the camp, Elie and all others were promised that they would not be separated from their families; however, they soon learned the cold, hard truth that they were to be separated, “Men to the left, women to the right.” (Wiesel, 2006, pg. 29) Throughout the entire recap of Mr. Wiesel's experiences, everyone looked for something to give them the strength to survive, or the will to die. Night, by Elie Wiesel, shows the reader examples of objects taking on more than their
Eliezer Wiesel loses his faith in god, family and humanity through the experiences he has from the Nazi concentration camp.
To many in the United States and Europe, World War II is an icon that represents unimaginable turmoil and tragedy. The hardships brought about by World War II raises the theodicy question of how a righteous God could allow the Nazi’s to reign. Elie Wiesel was one of the many Jews who were persecuted during this period of history. When he was fifteen years of age, Wiesel was a prisoner in the infamous Aushwitz concentration camp (Brown vii). In an introduction to the trial of god, writer Robert Brown takes note of what Wiesel witnessed.
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.
One’s spiritual life can flourish or it can shatter in times of great trials. Elie Wiesel went through one of the world’s most horrific event and he lived to tell the stories of those who did not survive the Holocaust. To say that his faith and even his sanity was tested during his time in the concentration camps would be an understatement. He saw the people he loved suffering and dying for God, whom did not seem to notice their anguish. His relationship with God was broken and then put back together again due the great strain of the atrocity he experienced.
Elie Wiesel was once very spiritually grounded, however as he lost his faith he began to become less humane. In Elie’s strive to be more in tune with God, he tries to read the Kabbalah, a sacred Jewish passage, prematurely. Elie even compares praying to breathing when he says, “Why did I pray? Strange question...Why did I breathe?” (Wiesel 4). Elie’s faith is so strong he could not imagine a world where he did not pray, much like he could not imagine not breathing. However, he knows the exact moment he lost his faith. He delves into this moment and remembers it as, “the moment that murdered my God” (Wiesel 34). In his eyes, something that was so close to him, like his faith, is a significant loss and is a significant shift in his identity. He struggles to maintain his faith and begins to question God’s existence, and His audacity for the torment he is subjected throughout the Holocaust. Although Elie Wiesel may seem like a brute in his eyes, in comparison to other victims he is on the fence between human and