“Ahead of you lies a long road paved with suffering”(Wiesel, 38) . In the novel Night ,by Elie Wiesel, he explains about his experiences and suffering as a young boy during the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a systematic persecution of millions of Jews. Elie Wiesel and his family were apart of this horrific event. Elie was a very religious boy that loved studying the Talmud and spending time at the Temple until his life was forever altered by the Holocaust.
In the story “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he gives us his perspective on the holocaust. The holocaust was a horrible time for the Jews. Adolf Hitler hated them and treated them with so much cruelty. Most were separated from their families, and others would be praying to stay alive. During that time they had to keep a lot of faith in their God because if they didn't they would fall apart.
In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, the theme of faith impacts Elie's experiences throughout the Holocaust. One time when faith impacts Elie’s experiences is when he believes that God is the reason he gets to keep his shoes. Elie writes, “I thanked God, in an improvised manner…” (Wiesel 38).This quote shows Elie's initial belief in God and his faith during the early times of the Holocaust when he expresses gratitude for his shoes not being taken.
Throughout different types of tragedies, people’s reactions also differ. Many people turn to religion as a way to cope with daily life, a guide on how they’re supposed to live, or even a way to justify their way of thinking to the world. Others may turn to more physical forms. In the book Night, Eliezer Wiesel chronicles the progression of his stance on faith in humans as well as religious during the Holocaust. Elie, when confronted with a traumatic event, turned against his faith, one of the main aspects of his life and chronicled how it decayed throughout the book until it finally gave out when his father died.
“All we like sheep have gone astray;we have turned -everyone - to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:6. Everyone in life falls short of faith and walked away from what is most important to us. The novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel is a true story about Elie who was taken away from his home during the holocaust and brought to many concentration camps. In the story elie takes us on his horrible steps to survival.
“To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community. After years of rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler’s “final solution”–now known as the Holocaust–came to fruition under the cover of world war, with mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of occupied Poland.” (“The Holocaust”). Many Jews did happen to survive the Holocaust and many decided to share their story with the whole world. Elie Wiesel’s story Night is an autobiography about his experience as a Jew back when the Holocaust was taking place.
“ Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow”. Even though everyone was being abused, no one said anything about it. The abuse continues. After a substantial amount of time spent in the concentration camps, many Jews lost faith, especially after enduring the brutality of the camps. While in the concentration camps, the Jews went through many horrific beatings.
For many, faith symbolizes a profound and trusting connection embedded within the existence and wisdom of a higher power. In Elie Wiesel's Night, the protagonist Elie witnesses the horrifying brutality of humanity during the Holocaust. At every turn, he is constantly surrounded by death, violence, and savagery. Witnessing and enduring such tragedies causes Elie and other Jews to lose their faith. Despite the atrocious circumstances that are inflicted towards the Jewish people, the concept of faith remains a reoccurring theme within this novel.
At the beginning of Night, Elie was someone who believed fervently in his religion. His experiences at Auschwitz and other camps, such as Birkenau and Buna have affected his faith immensely. Elie started to lose his faith when he and his father arrived at Birkenau. They saw the enormous flames rising from a ditch, with people being thrown in.
In the memoir Night, the narrator Elie Wiesel recounts a moment when he questioned God, ¨Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled, he caused thousands of children to burn his Mass graves?¨(Wiesel 68). Overall, Wiesel does not follow the words of God and is not believing in him anymore because he thinks God is the one thatś letting all the inhumanity occur. One theme in Night is that inhumanity can cause disbelief or incredulity.
Elie Wiesel once said, "I pray to the God within me that he will give me the strength to ask him the right questions.” Elie Wiesel was once strongly devoted to God, but throughout his journey in the Holocaust, his faith was challenged frequently. There are many times in the novel Night, where his change in faith commenced. Elie Wiesel went through traumatic events upon entering the concentration camp. He lost his family and saw monstrosities that caused a change in his identity.
God’s perceived silence during a time of desperate need can lead to the lost of faith or doubt within oneself. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, the narrator struggles to maintain his faith and his identity he witnesses the dehumanizing acts being inflicted upon him and many other Jews. As he experience more and more atrocities in the camps, Elie begins to rebel against his religious upbringing. Elie survives the Holocaust through a battle of conscience: first believing wholeheartedly in God, then resisting that faith, and finally reclaiming that faith.
In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel does a good job explaining just how hard it was to maintain faith in a place like Auschwitz. Elie also made it clear that it was crucial to remain hopeful if one was planning to survive for very long. Only the strong remained reasonably healthy, despite the harsh conditions they were put through in the concentration camps. It was explained as being a situation where it was every man for himself, and you couldn’t remain emotionally attached to your old life and people you care about. Only few survived, and the ones that did stood out from the rest.
In Night by Elie Wiesel wrestles with the theme of faith during his experiences in the Holocaust. Before the Holocaust began, Elie had a very passionate and devoted relationship with God. At the beginning of the story, Elie claimed that he lived and breathed to pray to God when he said “Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live?
The Holocaust affects Jews in a way that seems unimaginable, and most of these effects seem to have been universal experiences; however, in the matter of faith, Jews in the concentration camp described in Elie Wiesel’s Night are affected differently and at different rates. The main character, Elie, loses his faith quickly after the sights he witnesses (as well as many others); other Jews hold on much longer and still pray in the face of total destruction. In the beginning, all of the Jews are more or less equally faithful in their God and religion.
