The Holocaust was a genocide of primarily Jewish people. They were treated horribly and forced into concentration camps and ghettos. In his memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel writes about his experiences during the Holocaust. He survived three concentration camps: Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald. While in these camps, Wiesel experienced starvation, extreme working conditions, and he witnessed thousands of brutal murders. He did not have basic necessities like clean water, a good place to sleep, or toiletries. Wiesel’s experience of dehumanization during the Holocaust destabilized the foundations of his identity, which is seen through his relationship with his father, his faith, and his guilt from survival. One way that Wiesel shows his dehumanization …show more content…
In the first few chapters of the book, Wiesel frequently talks about his faith. He said that he lived to worship and that his faith was important to him. Wiesel writes, “Why did I pray… why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (Wiesel 4). Wiesel comparing praying with living in breathing demonstrates how important his religion is to him. About halfway through his imprisonment in the concentration camps, Wiesel began to question his beliefs. While all the other prisoners were praying during a Jewish holiday, Wiesel wrote about how he couldn’t understand why the God he devoted everything to would make him suffer. He explained that he couldn’t bring himself to worship someone who brought death and torture to people. Before the Nazis took over his life, Wiesel’s religion and his God were important to him. However, once he was imprisoned in the concentration camp for a few years, he stopped believing. This decrease in faithfulness occurred due to the dehumanization and brutality Wiesel experienced. His religion and faith were clearly a large part of his personality, and after that was gone, he lost a key piece of his …show more content…
These actions broke the foundations of his identity, seen through his relationship with his father, his faith, and his guilt from survival. Wiesel had a few things that were important to him, including his faith, his father, and his innocence. After spending years in concentration camps, all of these important things were taken from him. This book, specifically the theme of losing identity, is important because people need to understand that it can’t happen again. Everyone needs to treat people like humans and realize that they don’t have to look like them, act like them, or even believe what they believe in. Regardless of all of these factors, they are still humans and deserve to be treated as such. Wiesel’s book shows what happens when everyone ceases to treat people as humans; they lose their identity and lose the life inside of them. Wiesel went from a carefree, happy, faithful young boy to someone who felt that they had no purpose. Now, it is up to the people of today to not let anything like that happen
The Holocaust was a horrible point in time where around 6 million Jews were tortured and killed in what was called concentration camps back in the early 1900s. The things that Jewish people went through were nothing like anything we've seen before, almost inhuman the things they were forced to do. The book Night by Elie Wiesel tells the horrific things that went on in the Holocaust that were dehumanizing. Wiesel shows how the Nazis dehumanized the Jewish people by putting in great detail as to what was going on like the carts they had to travel by and the way they are lined up to be thrown in a pit
He goes though the book telling the reader how he had began to lose not only his faith but himself as well. His faith, which at the beginning of the book was something he valued greatly and wanted to get deeper into. But sadly, as the book goes on he begin to resent hid god due to prayers not being answered right away and the circumstances of the holocaust were that of which he felt a god such as the one he had grown up serving should not subject his people to. We also see Wiesel lose himself though out this experience. On the closing paragraph of his memoir Wiesel states, “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me.
Prior to being taken from his house, he would pray every day with his family and attend the synagogue to learn more about his religion. Earlier in the book, found on page five, Wiesel writes,
Wiesel’s faith in Judaism changes completely from the begging of Night to the end. When the memoir starts the reader is introduced to a fifteen-year-old Elie Wiesel who is asking his father, “[...]to find me a master who could guide me in my studies of Kabbalah” (Wiesel 4). Wiesel was interested in his religion and he wanted to learn more about his faith, but when he was brought to the camp he lost all faith saying, “The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” (Wiesel 33)
Wiesel lost his faith, another incredibly powerful moment in the book is when the author had to run forty-two miles on a bad foot in one night to be able to survive. First of all, this moment showed many different character’s traits in the book, especially Mr. Wiesel. When the were running, the characters had the choice to live or die, and the author chose to live. This moment showcased the author's trait of determination to survive this nightmare when the odds were against him. At the same time this moment contributed to character development, it also contributed to the setting of the book.
Elie Wiesel thought of his faith as an integral part of his personal being. He held no questions of why. Wiesel just prayed and prayed. Without his
Wiesel was asked why he prayed which he responded with, ¨Why did I pray?... Why did I live? Why did I breathe?¨(Wiesel 4). This reveals how much he believes that God is the way to live and the reason there is such a thing as life. Wiesel's faith before the Holocaust is very strong and important to him to have a part of his
He prayed everyday everynight, and always thought about god. But, we begin to see Wiesel deeply think about
Wiesel and his family were forced to abandon their home and were eventually sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The horrors of the concentration camp are described in graphic detail as Wiesel recounts the beatings, starvation, and disease that he and
Earlier in the book, when asked by Moishe why he prays, Wiesel is stumped by the question but thinks. Wiesel implies that to him, praying was an unquestionable and, therefore, a crucial part of his identity. Thus, Wiesel’s decision to stop praying signifies the gradual disappearance of his faith and of his former
Wiesel lost faith in humanity and his will to live after his father’s
In the Memoir “night” by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel describes his experiences of being stripped away from his home in Sighet. And the life of a concentration camp with his father. Because of all the experiences, Wiesel lost faith in God and created a very complex relationship with his father throughout the time living in a concentration camp. Prior to being in a concentration camp with his father, Wiesel was a very religious person. Studying his religion was his passion, and that’s all he would do in his free time But through the things he witnessed, Wiesel began to question his God.
As a child, Elie Wiesel was deeply religious. He spent much of his time praying and studying religious texts. When his family was sent to Auschwitz, Wiesel stayed with his father but was separated from
(Wiesel 4). Wiesel felt as though the answer was obvious, his religion was a major part of his life and he would never question God or his ways. However, he put his faith on a pedestal and saw praying and God as important as breathing and even life itself. He has always prayed and never once questioned why, but he feels it is important to his life. Wiesel also devotes the majority of his time to his faith and “almost
Wiesel's loss of faith was brought on by the absence of God. This resulted in him questioning why it was God's will to allow Jews to suffer and die the way they had. Another portrayal of religious confliction within Wiesel was the statement of his faith being consumed by the flames along with the corpses of children (Wiesel 34). Therefore, he no longer believed God was the almighty savior everyone had set Him out to be or even present before them. To conclude, his experiences within Nazi confinement changed what he believed in and caused him to change how he thought and began questioning God because of the actions He allowed to take