Wiesel's Loss Of Faith In Germany And The Holocaust

After World War I, Germany, forced to take responsibility for the war, was in political and economic turmoil. During this time, an infamous Adolf Hitler rose to power, promising a new and prosperous Germany and accused the Jewish population for causing Germany’s problems. Hitler’s rise to power marked a shift from mere discrimination to outright violence against the Jewish people (Wiener). Hitler and the Nazis proceeded to take measures to strip Jews of their rights to create a Germany free from "racially inferior" people. The 1935 Nuremberg laws banned German Jews from marrying or having relations with the German “master race” (“The Holocaust”). In an event known as Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, Germans destroyed Jewish businesses and property overnight and blamed the Jews for the damage, claiming it as an act of Jewish ‘hostility towards the German people’ (“Nazis launch Kristallnacht”). In 1941, Jews in German-occupied territory were required to wear a yellow star on their clothing so Germans could easily identify them in public (“The

Wiesel loses his humanity and sense of purpose and finds himself constantly questioning, “Here or elsewhere, what did it matter? Die today or tomorrow, or later?” (98). Considering the dire circumstances that he was in, his loss of faith was inevitable when survival came first. The surrounding men had also lost their humanity while fighting to survive. Food, especially during the death march, “became more important than freedom or even faith” (McCarthy). Even after reaching Buchenwald, his last destination before being liberated, Wiesel does not attempt to restore his lost faith. His father, weak with dysentery, is one day thrown into the crematorium while Wiesel was asleep. Wiesel awakes emotionless to this realization and has completely transformed into a dejected person who no longer knows what to believe