Night

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Having faith in something can help one with survival in tough times. Elie and his family were taken from their home to the concentration camp Auschwitz. His mother and sisters are killed and he and his father go to labor camp. They get little food and are transported to many camps. Elie undergoes operation for a foot injury. In the end his father dies of a sickness and he is liberated. Elie survives the Holocaust through a battle of conscience - first believing in God, then resisting his faith in God, and ultimately replacing his faith with obligation to his father. Elie survives the Holocaust by believing in God. Elie talks about Moishe the Beadle and how the townspeople helped the needy but didn’t like them, Moishe was the exception. “By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple” (p.3). Elie gives much of his time to studying and praying. He spends a lot of his time on studying and praying, so he must strongly believe in God. He gives more importance to religion than education. Elie asks his father to find him a teacher to teach him Kabbalah, but his father says he is too young to learn it. His father wanted to drive the idea of learning Kabbalah out of his mind. “I succeeded on my own in finding a master for myself in the person of Moishe the Beadle” (p.4). Elie really wants to learn more about god and study Kabbalah even though his father says no, so he finds a teacher by himself. He has a strong belief in God, which why he found a teacher despite his father telling him is too young to learn it. Moishe the Beadle had seen him pray one day and asked him questions. He explains to Elie that the answers to his question lie within himself. “Why did I pray? Strange que... ... middle of paper ... ...bers that he has a father and he forgot about him in the mob. “I knew he was running out of strength, close to death, and yet I had abandoned him” (p.106). Elie feels guilty for leaving his father when he needed Elie the most. After he wakes up he goes looking for his father. He feels as if he is responsible for taking care of his father. Elie replaces his faith with obligation to his father to help keep him going thought out the holocaust. Elie survives the Holocaust through a battle of conscience - first believing in God, then resisting his faith in God, and ultimately replacing his faith with obligation to his father. Elie survived the holocaust through a battle with his inner voice. He witnessed people who lose their faith and died like Akiba Drumer and Meir Katz. His father helped him get through the Holocaust by giving him something to live for and support.

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