Elie Wiesel's Hope

In Night, a memoir, by Elie Wiesel, tells about his life during the holocaust and how he begins to question his faith as he witnesses the brutality of the Nazis. The Nazis force them into concentration camps and murder them without mercy. In Buna, he witnesses God being hanged as he watched a young boy being executed in front of his eyes. Wiesel starts to question his faith in God when witnessing the horrific events he experienced during the holocaust.

The holocaust ended May 8, 1945 but it took the lives of millions of people with it. Depriving millions of innocent souls of basic rights we have today. In the book Night, we are shown the experiences and transformations of young Elie from the day he arrived in the ghetto, to his last day in a concentration camp. As a result of his experiences during the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel changes from a religious, sensitive little boy to a spiritually dead, unemotional man.

“I have not lost faith in God [despite] moments of anger and protest; sometimes I have been closer to him for that reason.” Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel explains the struggle of his changing beliefs in God during the Holocaust in his memoir Night. In Night, Elie Wiesel, a religious boy, is taken to several concentration camps along with other Jews, and separated from everyone in his family except for his father. He and his father live dangerous lives in the concentration camps, from being beaten, watching other prisoners die, and being close to death, until eventually Elie’s father dies and the camp is liberated. As Elie Wiesel’s time in the Holocaust lengthens, his devoutness in God begins to diminish.

In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, a boy named Elie explains his experiences throughout the Holocaust. His family and other Jews were expelled from Sighet and ended up in a concentration camp in Auschwitz. During this time, the only thing the Germans couldn’t deprive the Jews was their hope and humanity. Within the memoir, the theme presented is, “We must never forget, never forget...Human hope & faith must never die…”.

When one experiences that he cannot tolerate, he doubts his religion and his God's existence. Elie Wiesel's Night, a memoir of the author's experience of the Holocaust, shows that this hypothesis was true. In contrast to the beginning where Elie Wiesel considered praying as an unquestionable action, throughout his memoir, his faith in God gradually vanished as he experienced the "Hell". Elie Wiesel confided his change of the faith in God by the usage of dialogue, repetition, and irony.

After experiencing life similar to hell on earth for nearly a year very few people could truthfully say that their faith is unscathed. Even in the modern world, people who have not been starved and pushed to work beyond their limits find themselves questioning whether or not there is a god, and if he is a just one. Throughout Night, a Holocaust memoir, it is shown that faith does not only refer to religion, but also the belief that humanity is sympathetic and warm-hearted. Elie Wiesel, author of Night, demonstrates how he loses his faith and watches those around him lose their confidence in God, and each other. Wiesel shares his thoughts with the readers writing how from a very young age he believed profoundly yet within a few months Wiesel finds himself questioning “Where is God?” (61). Loss of faith only propels Wiesel to find the strength within himself to persevere until his day of liberation.

In class we previously read the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel. This book told the story of young Elis’s life as he suffered through the holocaust. As we all know the holocaust was a very dark period, where millions upon millions lost their lives. Prisoners from all over were taken and jailed in concentration camps where they were tortured endless with no boundaries. Along the way to liberation many lost hope and gave up completely. Certain traumatizing events affected the prisoner's hope along with the inner and outer forces.

Wiesel is commenting on the fact that everyone was living with false hopes and not really paying attention to the problem. The Germans had put the Jews in the ghetto, but they didn't interfere with anything going on inside until it was decided that the people were to be sent away. With the Germans temporarily out of the picture, the Jews would be the likely ruling force. But their need for hope kept them from realizing that they were captive. Instead, they convinced themselves that the ghetto was a safe, secure place. They were living in a fantasy land.

In the book Night, author, Elie Wiesel illustrates how the Jews had their humanity crushed by the Germans by using detailed imagery. Wiesel’s purpose was to show how the Jews were treated during the Holocaust, so others could change their perspective on it. The main theme presented in this book is the loss of religion. In the beginning of the book, the main character, Eliezer stated that he “believed”, implying that he doesn’t anymore. All the Jews had some form of hope at the start, but due to the major death occurring, their hope started to fade away.

“Never shall I forget that smoke… Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever...Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams into ashes…”(page 34). Elie Wiesel, the author of “Night”, describes his experiences in the Holocaust. Elie experiences pain and suffering throughout his time in the concentration camp, Auschwitz, and he shares how he survived. In the book “Night” the main character, Elie, is affected by the events in this book such as loss of faith, emotional connections with his father, and his self changes mentally and physically.

Through its survivors, memories of the Holocaust live on today. During World War II, Nazi Germany was destined to exterminate all Jewish communities in occupied Europe in concentration camps. The remembrance of the Holocaust is resurrected in Elie Wiesel’s Night, where he proves to lose faith in God by evoking his feelings about the corruption of humanity.

As days went by in the concentration camp, many begin to lose their faith in religion just like Elie. The book, Night is written by Elie Wiesel, a winner of the Nobel Peace prize. In the book Night, Elie is the main character who is very religious at first. It begins with his family and him traveling to Auschwitz which his little sister and mother die. With only his father and him, they went through many hardships and moving from camp to camp. Unfortunately, Elie father did not survive the Holocaust but Elie did. By the end of the story, Elie did entirely lose his faith in God because he did not celebrate the important holidays, questioned God and his justice, and tries to forget his existence.

The Holocaust of 1933 to 1945 was a tragic period of time in history, killing more than 6 million Jewish people. One of its few survivors: Elie Wiesel, has written a book titled Night explaining his experiences as a prisoner of war. His novel is about young Elie Wiesel arriving in Auschwitz and beginning to labor under the Nazis’ unforgiving rule. Over the course of the book, Elie continually struggles with his relationship with God and feels conflict trying to decide between supporting his ever crippling father and his best chance at survival. Conclusively, because of his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s views of and relationship with God are challenged and his morals are changed.

In the memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel portrays the dehumanization of individuals and its lasting result in a loss of faith in God. Throughout the Holocaust, Jews were doggedly treated with disrespect and inhumanity. As more cruelty was bestowed upon them, the lower their flame of hope and faith became as they began turning on each other and focused on self preservation over family and friends. The flame within them never completely died, but rather stayed kindling throughout the journey until finally it stood flickering and idle at the eventual halt of this seemingly never-ending nightmare. Elie depicts the perpetuation of violence that crops up with the Jews by teaching of the loss in belief of a higher power from devout to doubt they

During the holocaust many people lived in the concentration camps. In his book Night, Elie Wiesel tells about his experiences in a ghetto, concentration camps and death marches. At the beginning of the book Elie is a very religious person . Elie Wiesel’s view of God changes throughout the memoir along with his identity.