Faith In Elie Wiesel's Night

One wouldn’t expect faith, or the idea of it, to be as volatile as it was in chapter five of Night. This chapter highlighted two examples of losing faith in G-d, but while that loss left Elie Wiesel without the ability to believe in anything, it brought someone he described as a faceless neighbor to devote all his faith entirely to one man: Adolf Hitler.

This declaration was as surprising as the justification behind it, for on page 81, that neighbor explains, “‘I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.’” This moment was something I could only describe as shocking, as it was the truth, or a crooked version of it. Hitler promised to exterminate the Jewish people

That doubt plagued Wiesel, causing him to abandon his faith and walk away from it. However, that nameless “neighbor” he encountered not only walked away, but followed a different path, a path where the man intending to slaughter the Jewish people was the sole figure he believed in.

This situation introduced two polar opposite aspects–a loss of trust in what is unseen versus a change of trust in what is seen. Yet, in both cases, the decision to make those life-altering changes was undoubtedly a difficult one. To lose your faith is one thing, especially when that faith has shaped who you are. For that reason, it makes sense that on page 69, Wiesel felt as if a void had ripped open inside him when he lost his faith in G-d. Nevertheless, to refill that hole with trust for another man, one as cruel and wicked as Adolf Hitler, is unimaginable.

I can understand how Wiesel would feel empty. After all, He who was supposed to defend and protect him and the millions of other Jews had failed to do so. Growing up, lessons on the Holocaust brought me to question G-d, too, for I couldn’t understand how He could let so many people suffer and perish. The similarities of our doubt is why I can empathize more for Wiesel than his neighbor, who admitted to trusting and only trusting the face of a