Faith In Elie Wiesel's Night

Night is a dramatic book that tells the horror and evil of the concentration camps that many were imprisoned in during World War II. Throughout the book the author Elie Wiesel, as well as many prisoners, lost their faith in God. There are many examples in the beginning of Night where people are trying to keep and strengthen their faith but there are many more examples of people rebelling against God and forgetting their religion.

When Elie Wiesel was a kid, he had extreme faith in his religion. Moshe the Beadle is the first person to question Wiesel’s faith. Moshe the Beadle asks Elie Wiesel why he prays; after pondering the thought, Wiesel replies, “I don’t know why” (p. 2). Elie Wiesel does not know the reason why he prays to God when he doesn’t receive anything back. His faith now seems weaker, despite the hours he devotes to God. God gives him Moshe the Beadle when he wants to study the cabala, and his father won’t help him, but once Wiesel arrives at the concentration camp, God shows no such help as he did at that time. Although God may have left Wiesel, his father stepped up to take care of him and show him that all

What Wiesel witnessed in the concentration camps, caused him to lose his faith in God, Wiesel stated: “My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy. Wiesel rebels against God and he does not understand why God is letting all of these horrible things happen to the Jewish. The Jews praised God first, even as all these horrible things are happeming to them. “But look at

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said “If in my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be just the one” (Wiesel, Preface to the New Translation). Growing up he experienced many hardships that he'd never expect to go through. In his book Night he recounted his experiences and depicted everything that was going on during the Holocaust. Elie’s experiences shaped him into a completely different person and caused him to view things differently. As Elie spent more time in camp he saw a lack of justice which caused him to change his perspective of God; he was not denying God’s existence, but questioned his absolute justice, still he did not lose all faith.

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

The holocaust unleashed unparalleled cruelty and suffering to a great number of people; Elie Wiesel survived these hardships, but his innocence was shattered. For this reason, he wrote Night to share his personal memories of his time spent in the concentration camps and details the transformation of his faith and understanding of God. Each person Elie writes about attempts to reconcile their agony with their faith, albeit many fail or have their faith transformed. In this paper, I will describe how Wiesel’s understanding of God transforms as he experiences tragedy and how the various prisoners come to terms with their faith.

During the Holocaust 6 million Jews were thrown into systematic camps designed to tear them apart. There were a handful of survivors and of these Jews, one of them is Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel is a survivor of the Holocaust and shares their experiences in their novel Night. A major topic that Elie Wiesel talks of in Night is his transformation of his belief in God. Elie before the Holocaust is praying on a regular basis and takes part in Kabbalah. However, as the Nazis advance and Elie is thrown into a concentration camps he loses faith. In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel portrayed how Nazis performed acts of hatred towards the Jews that physically and spiritually ripped them apart causing Jews to question their God and eventually lose faith.

The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel shows how strength helps one survive through the most horrendous of events. This strength is achieved by the Jews through religion. Religion is based on structure and the Nazis took this structure away from the Jews, making many of them lose faith in God. Elie, being quite young, was influenced by the entire event, which causes his to question his faith, just like many other Jews during the holocaust. As a quite innocent boy, he was introduced to the concentration camp with a pure heart, and originally was a person who truly was the definition of religious. In the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, however, Eliezer's faith falters by witnessing the painful death of many innocent lives, the harsh conditions of the

In the book Night, the author Elie Wiesel, talks about his experience in the Auschwitz concentration camp. In the beginning, he is a religious young man with very faithful morals. As the book goes on, he experiences situations where he questions his faith and belief in God but also gains maturity without realizing it. The setting of these situations will change his life. Throughout the whole book, Elie Wiesel’s faith gets tested as he endures extreme events within the camp. The three main concepts are; faith is a constant battle, it’s never lost just shaken, and maturity come from challenges.

Drastic events may change the way we view the world. It may cause us to lose our belief in God, family, and humanity. Loss of faith is displayed in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”. “Night” follows Elie’s teenage life in a Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Initially Elie has a great faith in family, humanity, and God. As days gone by inside the camp, he witnessed and experienced countless cruel acts by humans against humans. This acts have made Elie question his beliefs. In the memoir people have questioned their faith in humanity, family, and lastly God.

Many people turn to God when there is something good is going on with their lives and it is customary to give thanks to God for that specific good thing that they are living through, but why do people turn their backs on him when the tables turn. A good example is the Holocaust against the jews, it is said that they are the people of God, yet many turned their backs on him when their entire race was under extreme genocide.

Throughout the story, readers see the struggles prisoners faced and the brutality of the camps. In the autobiography Night, the author Elie Wiesel embodies the idea that dehumanization can lead to a loss of faith through the cruelty and horrors of the concentration camps during the Holocaust. The public hangings in the camp clearly show the dehumanization of the prisoners and cause their faith to falter. After three people are hanged, two

This indicates that his belief in God was strong and can guide with answers. However, Wiesel was soon to lose his optimism in God when he was sent to the concentration camp.

Elie had faith in God before he came to the camp, however his faith in God would change after his experience in the concentration camp. As a teenager growing up in the ghetto, his parents taught him that having faith in God was important and that no matter what happen in their lives, God will always be there to protect them from the evil that would manifest later on in life. For instance, when everyone made it back from the barber Elie and the others “were shouting thank God you are still alive” (Night pg. 35). As a result of this, Elie felt that he still had faith in God because those who were not sent to the fire was still alive. Because of this first time experience in the camp, this showed us that Elie believed that God was there protecting

For example, the prayers on Yom Kippur, the blessing that the victims are operating on Holidays (p.91-93), and in cases of death. However, on the contrary to what the tales are successfully presenting, in The Night (Wiesel, 2006) we have strong evidence of the opposite, the lost of faith, the inhumane way that the prisoner treats each other. Through his story, Elie Wiesel willingly confesses his path of losing his faith and even develops anger towards God for the things that he had to come across. He tells about Akiva, who was a true believer and a rabbi (p.70-87). He died from desperation, he felt the lack of God's intervention to some humanity, he didn't feel God's existence which assist in breaking his spiritual resistance and the human spirit in those most terrible conditions