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 loved God and study with due diligence. He wanted nothing more that to continue his study in God, but unfortunately he was too young. Elie would often talk with a man named …show more content…
Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and the terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for? (Page 33)” This is the first time Elie truly blames God for what is happening to them and his faith in the hope of God’s mercy is gone. Yet, even when he was questioning God’s mercy he prayed, “His name be exalted and sanctified… (Page 34)” He found himself hating God, yet clinging to God because He was the only thing Elie had left. “Never shall i forget those moments that murdered my God (Page 34).” Elie had truly believed that there was no Almighty, because the Almighty would have saved them from their horror. He concludes that the Germans murdered God too, that in that moment of fire, God went up in smoke. “As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice (Page 45).” Elie has come to the point where he knows God is real, but he believes that God simply does not care about them so it simply is of no use to pray to Him. He has come to the point of utter denial. “‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is? This is where -- hanging here from this gallows… (Page 65).” Elie has come to the point that the Germans that peril them are killing God with every innocent Jew life that they murder. The Germans appear to be stronger than God and he has no one but the other inmates because God is not strong enough to save him. “Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mas graves? Because He kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days?... Yes, man is stronger, greater than God (Page 68).” He is laying down his reasons for why he no longer trusts God and he affirms it when he says, “But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to
Throughout his recollections, it is clear that Elie has a constant struggle with his belief in God. Prior to Auschwitz, Elie was motivated, even eager to learn about Jewish mysticism. Yet, after he had been exposed to the reality of the concentration camps, Elie began to question God. According to Elie, God “caused thousands of children to burn...He kept six crematoria working day and night...He created Auschwitz, Birkenau, [and] Buna”(67). Elie could not believe the atrocities going on around him. He could not believe that the God he followed tolerated such things. During times of sorrow, when everyone was praying and sanctifying His name, Elie no longer wanted to praise the Lord; he was at the point of giving up. The fact that the “Terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent”(33) caused Elie to lose hope and faith. When one cho...
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.”
But why would I bless him?” Elie says that on page 67 of this book. To me, when Elie says this, he shows his anger towards God and about everything that he is letting happen. He began to wonder, if he was God, why he was letting all the Germans do horrible things to them. However, this never made any sense to Elie.
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.
Elizer’s personal account of the holocaust does not merely highlight the facts of the holocaust: millions suffered and the event was politically and religiously motivated, but provides an in depth investigation to what a person endured mentally, physically, and emotionally. Beginning as a teenager, Elizer thought highly of God and of his own beliefs, however, that quickly diminished when he was put into a system of sorting and killing people. During the holocaust, Elizer was not the only person to change; almost everyone suffered and changed differently. The stressful and harsh times affected Elizer just as they affected the person working next to him in the factory. Elizer quickly began to question everything “I pinched myself: Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?” (Wiesel 32). Although Elizer forms this mentality, he also finds the will to survive, to protect his father, and to not turn into the people that were aro...
"Night" by Elie Wiesel is a terrifying account of the Holocaust during World War II. Throughout this book we see a young Jewish boy's life turned upside down from his peaceful ways. The author explores how dangerous times break all social ties, leaving everyone to fight for themselves. He also shows how one's survival may be linked to faith and family.
How does religion push people? How does it give people hope? Is there an extent to it? Elie Wiesel’s book Night he showed how through his experience on how tragedy can shape your faith in religion. While in Auschwitz his faith was beyond tested,it was stretched,lost then found. Elie uses faith in Night to show how it is key to survival whether it’s in god or other people.
The Holocaust was a test of faith for all the Jews that were involved. There were several instances in the book Night when Elie’s faith was hindered. Not only was his faith in God tested, but also his faith in himself and his fellow man. Although the trials of the Holocaust were detrimental to Elie’s faith at the time, a number of the Jews’ strengthened by the test. Whenever the Holocaust began, Elie was very young and wasn’t sure what to believe or understand everything yet, causing him to go back and forth on how he felt and what he believed. The people around him were a tremendous impact on what he was thinking and believing. The state that people came out of the Holocaust heavily depended on who they were when they went in and what they
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.
Elie Wiesel had a very strong religion and always wanted to improve his faith but when the war came he began to lose all faith that he couldn't find anything to believe in anymore, because of all the horrible things that went on in the camps and the working
In the final moments of Night, Elie has been broken down to only the most basic ideas of humanity; survival in it of itself has become the only thing left for him to cling to. After the chain of unfortunate events that led to his newfound solitude after his father’s abrupt death, Elie “thought only to eat. [He] thought not of [his] father, or [his] mother” (113). He was consumed with the ideas of survival, so he repeatedly only expressed his ideas of gluttony rather than taking the time to consider what happened to his family. The stress of survival allocated all of Elie’s energy to that cause alone. Other humanistic feelings like remorse, love, and faith were outcast when they seemed completely unimportant to his now sole goal of survival. The fading of his emotions was not sudden mishap though; he had been worn away with time. Faith was one of the most prominent key elements in Elie’s will to continue, but it faded through constant. During the hanging of a young boy Elie heard a man call to the crowd pleading, “Where is merciful God, where is He?” (64). It snapped Elie’s resolve. From this point on, he brought up and questioned his faith on a regular basis. Afterwards, most other traits disappeared like steam after a fire is extinguished. Alone in the wet embers the will to survive kept burning throughout the heart ache. When all else is lost, humans try to survive for no reason other than to survive, and Wiesel did survive. He survived with mental scars that persisted the ten long years of his silence. Even now after his suffering has, Elie continues to constantly repeat the word never throughout his writing. To write his memoir he was forced to reopen the lacerations the strains of survival left inside his brain. He strongly proclaims, “Never shall I forget that night...Never shall I forget the smoke...Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the
Eliezer Wiesel loses his faith in god, family and humanity through the experiences he has from the Nazi concentration camp.
He killed men in order to protect the book and himself. Eli’s judgement was trumped by his mission. He was put in situations that made him make unethical and ethical decisions. He did what he thought was right for the sake of the Bible: to help save mankind. Eli was trying to make the world a better place. He used his knowledge and fighting skills to his advantage to defend the book and himself, I do not think there is anything wrong with that. Eli had God on his side. God was there to protect and defend Eli in each oppressive situation. The book is symbolized as mankind's salvation. I believe that the rebuilding of humanity needs to be protected especially after a nuclear war.
Elie seems to lose faith in God. “"Yisgadal, veyiskadash, shmey raba…May His name be celebrated and sanctified…" whispered my father. For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” (33) The God Elie once prayed and cried out to before was allowing his people to die in horrible ways. God, a being who is supposed to be loving and merciful was allowing them to die alongside millions of other
Elie Wiesel writes about his personal experience of the Holocaust in his memoir, Night. He is a Jewish man who is sent to a concentration camp, controlled by an infamous dictator, Hitler. Elie is stripped away everything that belongs to him. All that he has worked for in his life is taken away from him instantly. He is even separated from his mother and sister. On the other side of this he is fortunate to survive and tell his story. He describes the immense cruel treatment that he receives from the Nazis. Even after all of the brutal treatment and atrocities he experiences he does not hate the world and everything in it, along with not becoming a brute.