Wiesel’s Diminishing Jewish Faith Throughout Night In Elie Wiesel's Night, Wiesel describes his and his father's experiences in the concentration camps and how this affected his relationship with God. Wiesel explainses the psychological degradation that the situation had on him. Not only was he abused, but he was also worried that he would be the next one to go. Before the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel was a 15-year-old boy who lived with his mother, father, and sister. He worshiped God every day. Wiesel talked many times about how his relationship with God had altered over the few years in the camp. As well as Wiesel, many other men asked the same questions and were angry with God. Wiesel's experiences during the Holocaust impacted his identity with …show more content…
Wiesel believed God could always help him if he stood strong in his faith. When Wiesel is met with disaster, he calls upon God and expected his help and protection. Wiesel admitted that he cried when he prayed when asked why he responded, ¨I don't know¨(Wiesel 4). By this question he was troubled, he didn't know why he cried when he prayed. This shows him crying to God for something to happen or not. 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 …show more content…
In the camps, Wiesel amongst the other prisoners would get beaten, struck by whips, shot, and much more. When Wiesel and his father believed they were going to the crematorium his father began to pray. As Wiesel heard him he thought, ¨For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank him for?¨(Wiesel 33). Wiesel is expressing this because of the betrayal he feels from God and the anger he feels that his father still is loyal to God even after he didn't do anything to help them. During a solemn service, Wiesel watched the other men say the prayer, and he began to think, ¨Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled… He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves… He kept 6 crematoriums working day and night, including on Sabbath and the Holy Days… He created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death?¨(Wiesel 67). Wiesel is angry because listening to the men around him still glorify God, the one who had done nothing to help them escape from their suffering, was unfair and he thinks God is undeserving of praise. The Holocaust caused Wiesel's identity to change as he begins to lose faith in
At the beginning of the autobiography, the author describes himself as an extremely was religious youth, who was seeking to learn as much as he could about God and Judaism. After being taken from his home and most of his family, for the first time, he finds himself doubting that if God even exists. As Wiesel describes horrific acts of evil, readers are led through the emotional turmoil of what the author witnessed within the hellish camps. It leaves the reader to also question how a loving God could stand by while children were murdered in various ways such as babies thrown into the air to be used for targets for machine gun practice. How could human beings look in each other’s eyes and murder without any compassion or guilt?
Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement, had arrived and Wiesel questioned himself if he should fast or not. He believed that fasting was year-round, but many of the prisoners believed they should because they believed that they needed to show God that even being there they were capable of worshiping Him. Wiesel and his father decided not fast since they were going to need all the food and all the strength they could get to stay alive. By then Wiesel had lost faith in God and could no longer accept the silence of God, Wiesel protested against Him.(Wiesel 87). After a long day of working all the prisoners were sent back into their blocks and many would talk about God, Wiesel questioned why, why were they praying, begging, asking God for help and forgiveness, since God, Himself was making them suffer the worst thing possible to man kind.
Similarly, in the camps during the Holocaust, the Jews there faced so much abuse that they began to lose their sense of identity, especially in what they believed in. Even Wiesel, who was a devout Jew before being encamped, began to lose the worth of his God and religion, as did others in the camps. While imprisoned, Wiesel had to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. This prayer service included praising God, but even Wiesel, who used to spend hours reading Scripture, thought, “Why should I bless Him?”(Wiesel 64) This showed how by seeing all of the abuse around him, Wiesel couldn’t even put faith and hope in the one person he used to be able to.
He also believed what the people told him about the transportation to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp he thought it was going to be as it told them but when he reached there he realized it was not true and I believe that was the first signs of losing his faith because he prayed about the subject of the transportation but it was not only him he got transported. At the age of 15, Wiesel and his entire family were sent to Auschwitz as part of the Holocaust with 6 million more and not only was the change hard for him he got separated from his family and only his soon was able to come with him Wiesel was sent to Buna Werke labor camp, a sub-camp of Auschwitz III-Monowitz, with his father where they were forced to work under deplorable, inhumane
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.
Wiesel details his relationship with his faith early in his life to give context for the rest of the novel. Wiesel was once a man of great faith, a man of God. Auschwitz killed more than his spirit, Auschwitz killed Wiesel´s hope. Auschwitz is well known as one of the darkest places in all of human history, but little is known from a first-hand account of real people who lived through the horrors of the Nazi Regime. Elie Wiesel experiences a feeling of abandonment and disdain.
Wiesel was very religious and faithful growing up. He couldn't imagine living without being gracious to god. However, during the first night at the camps, Wiesel saw families being killed and thrown into mass graves and couldn't believe his eyes. He was wondering, where was god and how could he be allowing all of this to happen. “Why, but why would I bless him?...
After being separated from his mother and sisters Wiesel’s only sense of home was his father which led to a growth in their bond. Once his father discovered that he might be going to the gas chambers he wanted to give Wiesel everything he had to help him “My inheritance… “Don't talk like that, Father.” I was on the verge of breaking into sobs. “I don’t want you to say such things. Keep the spoon and knife.
All through out Elie’s life he followed God. By the time he turned 15 he didn’t realize his life would change forever. When Elie and his family boarded the train they had no idea that their faith in God and each other would be put to the test. By the time they entered Auschwitz everybody was exhausted, hungry and wasn’t sure what to think about themselves. Throughout “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the author himself shows how he struggled throughout his religious beliefs.
In 1948, Wiesel began writing for journals and other literary works. At this point, he and his family still did not want to revisit their terror of the death camps to speak about their experiences. Later in is journalism career, Wiesel interviewed Francois Mauriac for his journal. During Wiesel’s conversations with Mauriac, Mauriac spoke about Jesus and his suffering for the Jewish people, and this bothered Wiesel enough to speak up and say ”…ten years ago, not very far from here, I knew Jewish children every one of whom suffered a thousand times more, six million times more, than Christ on the cross. And we don’t speak about them.”
After seeing Jews continue to pray, Wiesel’s anger at God grows. He says to himself “‘Blessed be God's Name’… Blessed be God's name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled.
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
Why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies?”(Wiesel 68) Wiesel clearly is losing faith in God because he has seen babies burned alive, families killed together. Wiesel blames God for what has happened. Additionally, Elie Wiesel is not thankful for God anymore because he is not in Auschwitz helping him and the rest of the Jews. Wiesel feels anger towards God.
Wiesel doubted God’s absolute justice because God had not interfered with the Nazis, letting them commit horrendous acts in the camps. This is where Wiesel starts to rebel against God, as we can see here “Why, would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves.” (66). This shows how Wiesel is rebelling against God and blames Him for the Holocaust and for allowing it to happen in the first
In his book Night, the conditions were so inhumane that Wiesel, who had a strong and stable religion and relationship with God before the Holocaust. During the Holocaust, Wiesel began to doubt and hate God, which caused him to question "Why should I bless His name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for?" (Wiesel 31).