“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.
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.
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?”
He says, “These failures have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations,... so much violence; so much indifference.” (4). Indifference is shown by not only the people involved in these violent events, but also Wiesel’s audience as well, many clueless of these events. For one to fail to know and understand these events in order to stop and bring awareness to them is just as wrong as committing the event in the first place, according to Wiesel. One must also believe the event itself to escape the corruptive qualities of indifference. During the Holocaust, many did not believe what was happening and chose to then ignore it rather than do anything about it. The unaware audience and people in the 1940s thoroughly proves the corrosiveness of
Of course, this is one question among many that will never be answered. In the end Wiesel resigns himself to go to the synagogue, light the candles, and say the Kiddish for his father. Both of these writings were of value to me as they were not mere entertainment. They were stories of human suffering, suffering at the hands of other human beings.
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).
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
Wiesel states that in many instances while in the camp, the only thing keeping him going is his father. Wiesel is never truly alone. Even after he loses his faith, his father proves to...
Wiesel’s loss of religion becomes the loss of identity, humanity, selfishness, and decency.... ... middle of paper ... ... This man is obviously beside himself and does not trust anyone except Hitler, his archenemy.
‘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
In the beginning of the book, Wiesel strongly believed in a god. He believed in a god so strongly that he sought out someone to teach him about his god. He also wanted to teach him how to live by the rules of his god. As the book, progressed Wiesel began to lose faith in his god. Wiesel saw many horrific events, which led him to believe that there is no possibility of a god existing because he would never let these things happen to his people. By the end of the novel, Wiesel had lost all faith in God.
Eliezer Wiesel loses his faith in god, family and humanity through the experiences he has from the Nazi concentration camp.
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.
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.
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.