As a child, a large part of Elie Wiesel’s identity was his religion. Praying, asking questions, and learning about Judaism was an important part of his life and who he was. However, as the Holocaust progressed, it changed his character and he became a completely different person than he had once been. Throughout the course of World War II, Wiesel was transformed physically, emotionally, and most significantly spiritually. The horrors of the concentration camps made him question for the first time in his life the existence of God, or if, like nihilists believe, God had died. This existential conflict of Elie losing his faith in God and overall losing his identity can be seen from his behavior with Jewish rituals, his change in moral code, and …show more content…
As Wiesel’s first Yom Kippur in a concentration camp was approaching, he was struck with the conflict of whether or not to fast. Although one reason not to was because of all of the prisoners’ extreme hunger and starvation, Wiesel in the end eventually decided not to fast just to spite God for all he had done to the Jews. He declared, “As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him” (Wiesel 69). Wiesel’s act of eating during a time of fasting showed his fading religious beliefs and changing identity. However, Elie was not the only one who lost his faith in God during this terrible time. Israeli Supreme Court Justice Haim Cohen proclaimed about the Holocaust, “If there is Auschwitz, there is no God”. It was hard for many Jewish victims to believe that any God could exist if the absurdly horrific events of the Holocaust could …show more content…
Once a loyal and selfless person, he had to start becoming selfish and thinking of himself. One example of this can be seen in his relationship with his father. At the start of the Holocaust, Wiesel’s only goal was to stay with his father no matter where he went. Wiesel never wanted to be separated from him and tried to make sure they were always living near each other. However, as the war went on and circumstances changed, Wiesel started to view his weak father as a burden. As his father was dying he thought to himself, “You could have two rations of bread, two rations of soup” (Wiesel 111). Before the Holocaust, Wiesel would have never thought anything like this about his father, but the horrible conditions made each person have to fight for their own survival. Similarly to in Breaking Bad how Walter would have never even thought of killing anyone in his ordinary life, things changed once he became a drug dealer and it was how he had to act based on his situation. Moral codes definitely were altered during the events of the Holocaust, leaving huge amounts of guilt on the survivors for decades
Elie's character develops because he shows his loss of identity in his Jewish faith. Another example that supports the claim is when Elie stopped believing in the Jewish faith and says, “My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man” (66). Weasel again describes as an unbeliever, he has
In the memoir “Night” Elie Wiesel writes about what he experienced in the holocaust. He went from his house to ghettos and then to concentration camps and the entire time he had to wear the star of david. Elie was in the concentration camps and went through many events from the time he was forced to go to the ghettos until the last people including him were let free. Elie’s views on God changed his identity after he lost his trust in God and caring towards others. Throughout the memoir Elie along with his father and the other Jews changed due to how they were treated.
A fellow prisoner tells Wiesel the harsh reality that he is "... in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every man for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even your father." (pg 110) These words stick with Wiesel as, for a moment, he entertains the idea of prioritising his own survival over his father’s, even thinking to himself
Hitler’s Nazi Party commited many horrible atrocities that affected millions, killing six million Jews and five million Gentiles. Celebrated Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Elie Wiesel, writes about his experiences at Auschwitz in the memoir, Night. Wiesel underwent beating, whipping, forced labor, and starvation and witnessed many other inhumane acts at the hands of the Nazis, all while he was between the ages thirteen and seventeen. The many traumatic events that Elie experienced during his time in a concentration camp altered both his physical appearance and his spiritual relationship with God.
I remember when I was little, I would sometimes start crying because people made fun of me for what I believed in (and I was at a Catholic school for heaven’s sake!), but that is nothing compared to what Elie went through during his time in the “Death Factory”, Camp Auschwitz. In the famous memoir by Elie Wiesel, Night, Elie speaks of his physically and emotionally crushing experience in the most famous concentration camp, Auschwitz. At the beginning of the memoir Night, Elie was deeply religious and God was part of his daily life, but at the end of the memoir, he had lost most of his faith in God because he was destroyed on the inside from the Nazis. Throughout the memoir, Night, Elie is slowly losing his faith in God in whom he loved and
In his autobiography novel, “Night”, author Elie Wiesel writes about the horrors of his past, and towards the end he saw himself as a corpse when he looked upon the mirror which reflects his current state; he no longer believed in God’s goodness nor His justice. Elie Wiesel was a Jewish boy who had strong faith in God, but over the course of his life when he went through catastrophic events such as losing his mother, father, younger sister, starving, and being in concentration camps he declined God’s justice and blamed him for everything that was happening to him. In 1944 Elie and his family were deported to Auschwitz, a concentration camp, and that was where the horrors began. In the first instance, when Elie and his family arrived at the
Elie Wiesel was a young, religious man. During the Holocaust (1941-1945),Elie lost many things he held close to him, including his religion. As a result, of his experiences during the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel changes from a religious, sensitive young man to a spiritually dead, unemotional man. Elie was young, and religious. Elie's faith was very important to him, it was one of few things he held dear to him.
Religion has always been controversial, throughout history there have been hundreds of wars fought over religion. World War II may not have been solely based off of religion, but it had a major part in the war. During World War II Jews and other ethnic groups throughout Europe were harshly persecuted by Nazi Germany. Elie Wiesel, a Hungarian Jew and holocaust survivor recount the tragedy, he endured during the holocaust in his memoir, Night. With only 109 pages, Wiesel manages to write about almost every horror he faced, one of the worst being his loss of faith.
Each day, people all across the globe pray to the God they believe in and they rely on Him to ensure the safety and of themselves, their loved ones and others they know. But when their prayers fail, people start to wonder if they were even considered by God Himself. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie encounters these questions first hand while experiencing being a prisoner during the Holocaust. As he is sent through the processes of concentration camps, he experiences so many unwanted sights that one would automatically be astonished by.
“My father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental. He rarely displayed his feelings, not even with his family, and was more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin.” (pg. 4) Although this quote shows a weak bond between Wiesel and his father, it also shows how due to the war, they were brought much closer by working to keep each other alive. After marching for miles in the dead of night, Wiesel collapsed in the snow, not wanting to go any farther.
Wiesel changes vastly throughout the book, whether it is his faith in God, his faith in living, or even the way his mind works. In the beginning of his memoir, Wiesel appeared to be faithful to God and the Jewish religion, but during his time in concentration camps, his faith in God wavered tremendously. Before his life was corrupted, he would praise God even when he was being transferred to Auschwitz, but after living in concentration camps, he began to feel rebellious against his own religion. In the book, Elie
As for me, I had ceased to pray... I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice” (45). It is apparent here that the effect of the Holocaust on the Jewish people’s faith was delayed on some level. Elie refuses to pray to the God that apparently abandoned him. This is personified when he says he doubts that God has absolute justice.
In which millions of Jews were innocently killed and persecuted because of their religion. As a student who is familiar with the years of the holocaust that will forever live in infamy, Wiesel’s memoir has undoubtedly changed my perspective. Throughout the text, I have been emotionally touched by the topics of dehumanization, the young life of Elie Wiesel, and gained a better understanding of the Holocaust. With how dehumanization was portrayed through words, pondering my mind the most.
They had no idea that all of this was going to happen, because life was good and they were living it. Wiesel’s personality, faith with God, and relationships changed as a result of the Holocaust. Throughout the text, Wiesel’s personality changed a lot. In the beginning, he said that he was a “deeply observant” person (Wiesel 3).
Memory Blessing or Curse Religious wars fought over beliefs were always fought between two sides and one is thought to have a winner and a loser victor and victim. In Elie Wiesel’s Noble speech “Hope, Despair, and Memory” he describes his experiences during a religious war that were more of an overpowering of people than a war no clash of metal, no hard fought fight, just the rounding up and killing of people with different beliefs that barely put up a fight. Elie Wiesel the author of the Noble lecture “Hope, Despair, and Memory” implores us to respond to the human suffering and injustice that happened in the concentration camps by remembering the past, so that the past cannot taint the future through his point of view, cultural experiences, as well as his use of rhetorical appeals. Wiesel uses his cultural experiences and point of view sot that he could prove he spent time and survived the concentration camps in order to communicate that the past must be remembered that way it cannot destroy the future, he spent time in a concentration camps and he