Surviving Hitler: a Comparison of Night and the Pianist in the Portrayal of the Holocaust

In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel uses his change in faith to show that extreme conditions, such as the Holocaust, will drastically alter how one sees and takes the world in. Elie’s faith in God started out strong and prominent and was quickly questioned as the horrible experiences of the Holocaust carried on which, in the end, resulted in the death of his beliefs in God and religion.

“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.

Ian Kershaw empathetically states that “The Holocaust was the systematic, extermination of six million Jews by the Nazi government and their allies during World War II.” He further add that it wasn’t until after Adolph Hitler “became Chancellor of the German government, he began targeting the Jews as racially inferior to the German people (Kershaw, 1985).

Faith is like a little seed; if you think about the positive aspects of a situation, then it will grow, like a seed grows when you water it. However, if the seed does not receive water anymore, it will die, which serves as a parallel to the horrors and antagonism of the concentration camps that killed Elie’s faith. After the analysis of the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the reader can visualize the horrors and slaughter of millions of innocent people that occurred in concentration camps. Throughout the book, Wiesel explains how his faith in God was tested, as he was forced to leave his home, separated from his family, and observed the death all around him; he even witnessed children being thrown into huge ditches of fire alive. Elie felt abandoned, betrayed, and deceived by the God that he knew who was a loving and giving God. It was then he started to doubt His existence. Elie tried to hold on to his faith, but the childhood innocence had disappeared from within him, and he lost his faith in God completely.

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.

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.

In his memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel writes of his struggles for survival in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. He devotes a lot of his writing to a discussion of his experience in the loss of faith in God. He does this because he wants readers to realize how fragile one's belief can be. In the book, Elie starts off religious but loses his trust in God at the camp. He loses his trust but still prays to God when he has nothing to rely on. When God does nothing for him, he again stops believing in Him.

The holocaust was a terrible period of punishment and abuse for many who were discriminated against, especially the jews. One of these jews was Elie Wiesel. He is the author of the book Night a autobiography on his life as a Jew in the Holocaust. Throughout the book Elie displayed many traits. Elie’s traits include loyalty, determination, and religiousness. The characterization of Elie the protagonist and the other characters plays a role in creating and supporting a theme in the novel Night. From reading the novel we can tell that Elie Wiesel's night shows that the holocaust was a very difficult time for jews and that it made them lose faith in god.

Night, by Elie Wiesel, showed the devastation of Eliezer’s childhood and illustrated the loss of innocence through the evil of others. Elie Wiesel expressed to us that one’s own faith and beliefs can be challenged through torture and ongoing suffering. The novel, Night, allowed the reader to witness the change in Eliezer from one of an innocent child who strongly adhered to his faith in God into a person who questioned not only his faith and God but of himself as well. The cruelty is shown to him while in the concentration camp forced him to wonder if there was a God and if so why would he put him and the others through such torture. Through his suffering, Eliezer’s beliefs dramatically and negatively changed his faith in God and compelled him to experience a transformative relationship with his father.

As they arrived at Auschwitz, a prisoner told Elie and his father to lie about their age in order to avoid the crematorium (Wiesel, 2008). Those deemed fit to work were sent to the labour barracks, whereas children and the elderly were sent to the gas chambers

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

At the beginning of Night, Eliezer describes himself as someone who believes “profoundly”. Throughout the book, Elie’s faith slowly fades away until it’s gone. His experiences during the Holocaust severely affected the way he views God and his faith.

The holocaust, or Shoah was a systematic, planned program of genocide to exterminate all Jews. This government based program was carried out by Hitler, and its allies in the Nazi army during world war two. Approximately 6 million Jews were killed, and if the murder of the Romani, Soviet civilians and prisoners, the disabled, homosexuals, and others who apposed to Hitler’s religious, political and social views were counted, this number would be more like 11 to 17 million. The holocaust is generally described with two periods, 1933-1939, and 1939-1945, the end of WWII.

The Holocaust is defined as destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war. Following 1945, the word has taken on a new meaning referring to the mass slaughtering of millions of European Jews as well as other persecuted groups (gypsies and homosexuals), by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War. In Europe the Jews experienced anti-Semitism (hostility or prejudice against Jews) which dated back to the ancient world, to the time when the Jewish temples were destroyed and they were forced to leave Palestine by Roman authorities. This wide-spread hatred of the Jews augmented the virulent mindset behind the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was an ultimate abomination of Nazi racism that occurred between 1938 and 1945. The word Holocaust derived from the Greek word holokauston, which stands for a burnt sacrifice that is offered whole to God. The word was chosen for this occurrence because of the amount of dead bodies that were cremated in open fires by Nazis. The Holocaust was known for the mass murders of European Jews that took place during the Second World War. European Jews were the fundamental victims during the Holocaust and seemed to be the most targeted. In 1933, approximately nine million Jews lived in Europe and settle in 21 different countries. It eventually would be seized by Germany during the Second World War. By 1945, around five or six million European Jews had been brutally murdered. A majority of them died in concentration camps that were build primarily for Jews. However, Jews were not the only victims that were persecuted by Hitler’s and his Nazi regime. A half million Gypsies, mentally or physically disabled persons, and Soviet prisoners from war were also discriminated victims to Hitler’s Nazi genocide. Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals were also persecuted in Europe.