Eliezer begins to lose his faith in God when he first arrives at the concentration camp in Auschwitz. After Eliezer arrives in Auschwitz he catches people praying to God: “ 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 to thank Him for” (33)? Elie and his father have just been separated from the rest of their family, and are quickly losing the little hope they have that they will be able to get out of there alive. EIie sees a truck full of babies being unloaded and thrown into a fire, and he wonders why God is doing absolutely nothing to stop it. Later in the book on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, “What are You, my God? I thought angrily… Why, but why would I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because he caused thousands of children to burn in his mass graves (66-67)? In this quote from the book, Eliezer is questioning God and asking him why he should praise him. Elie has lost his faith in the idea that God will save the Jews from their horrible imprisonment. Elie starts to believe that man is stronger and greater than God, and that he is alone in a world without God.
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, he tells his story of the Holocaust and how the Nazis tried to destroy the jewish race.. In the Holocaust, the Nazis thought the Jews were less than them. Elie tells the story of how the Nazis tried to eliminate the Jews. . The Naizs treated the Jewish people badly because they dehumanized them, they treated them as they were nothing, and the Nazis destroyed the Jews from the inside out.
When looking through the history of humanity, an alarming pattern begins to emerge: the pattern of oppression. Since the beginning of civilization, humans have constantly sought to oppress one-another and establish superiority over another group of people. In the book Nights, Elie Wiesel details his petrifying experience of oppression in Nazi Concentration camps, perpetrated by the Nazi Regime and its collaborators. What happened to Wiesel and the rest of Europe’s Jews was a hate crime like the world had never seen before. But where exactly could so much “evil” come from?
While Elie was in the concentration camp he changed the way he acted. This new behavior led him to develop new character traits. While Ellie was in the concentration camp he became angry at many things. For example “I would have dug my nails into the criminals flesh” (Wisel 39). Elie shows extreme anger when the Nazi officials are beating Elie’s father. Elie was angry because the Nazi soldiers were not treating them nicely and keeping them in poor conditions. Elie was usually not a person to display anger, but he shows this when his family members are being hurt. Elie wants to stand up for what is right and for his family members. Despite his studying, Elie wavered in his belief in Kabbalah while he was at the camp. Elie was a religious boy before he went to Auschwitz, but while in the camp, he became angry at God. In the book Elie says, “‘Where are You, my God?’” (66). Elie is wondering why God is not helping the Jews. Elie had complete faith in his religion until he experienced and witnessed such horrible suffering. He had been taught that God will punish evil and save the righteous. However, when Elie saw that God was not helping the Jews situation,
People often begin to lose faith in God because of the results they faced from their life experiences. Some face things that seem cruel and unbearable while others are “confronted with the information presented from another viewpoint that rejects God” (Gospel Billboards). Elie was told by his father to never lose his faith in God, it would help him get through tough times and keep him strong. The faith is the only strong force that helped Elie Wiesel get through the Holocaust. Through experiences that involve cruel and unbearable moments, people start questioning whether God has the answers to life’s problems. This results in faith beginning to weaken, people stop communicating with God, which makes it easier for one’s faith to diminish. We encounter Elie questioning and refusing God, but also see his contradictory behavior he exhibits to praise. However, throughout the book, Eliezer witnesses and experiences things that leads him to lose his faith in his religion. The longer he stays in the concentration camps, the more he experiences and sees cruelty and suffering. Eliezer believes that people who pray to a God who allows their families to suffer and die are more stronger and forgiving to God. Elie was angry at God, he thought God didn’t deserve his praises or honors because he expected God to come save him but he never did. He observes people die and others around him slowly lose hope, starve, Elie ceases to believe that God could exist at all now. “Where He is? This
Elie was deeply devoted to his faith at the beginning but as the story progresses he loses that devotion and barely believes that there is a God that exists. The first signs of him losing his faith was when he arrived at the first camp and saw the horrible things people were doing to the Jews. Other people around him had already lost faith in God and Elie was beginning to doubt God due to Him allowing people to do this to others. “His
Elie loses complete faith in god in many points where god let him down. He struggles physically and mentally for life and no longer believes there is a god. Elie worked hard to save himself and asks god many times to help him and take him out of the misery he was facing. "Why should I sanctify his name? The Almighty, the eternal, and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent..."(page 33). Elie was confused, because he doesn’t know why the Germans would kill his race amongst many others, and he does not know why god could let such thing happen to innocent people. "I did not deny god's existence, but I doubted his absolute justice..."(page 42). These conditions gave him confidence, and a courage to
Elie has not stopped believing in God. But, for him, the God whom he loved and adored has been hung and executed. His innocent
The face of true evil is highlighted in the personal accounts of Elie Wiesel in the memoir Night which details the crimes of the Nazis in concentration camps and the mistreatment and murder of over 6 million innocent civilians. His haunting writing allows people to grasp the most horrifying experience a person or an entire race can endure. According to Elie Wiesel, he writes to transmit the messages and give voices to the millions of dead. So they can show not only how the reader should feel but also how they felt. All the emotions of those who were lost and the personal emotions of the author are transmitted through Elie Wiesel's writing to allow the reader to feel the frustration and sadness of all those six million people.
Though faithful as they enter the horrific camps of Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, Buna, Birknau, Dachau, and Buchenwald, the Jews become capricious. They start losing grip and begin falling down the slippery slope of death the Germans set up for them as more horrors of the camps become unveiled. Soon after arriving in the camp and being told about the crematoria, he felt “anger rising with me [Elie]. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent” (33). This is the first time that his faith is challenged. After a few days in Auschwitz he “had ceased to pray. I [Elie] was not denying His existence, but doubted His absolute justice” (45). As seen, Elie is beginning to have doubts about God and therefore his belief and faith in him. Finally, when Elie is looking for God to come though he doesn’t and he asks,
When Elie endured and witnessed so much aggression, he began to express anger towards God. For the first time, Elie felt “anger rising within [him]. [He questioned], 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). By including the words, “sanctify” and “terrible”, Elie advocated that God did not deserve holy recognition and significance that people still gave him. The specific words create a powerful meaning, which imply how Elie’s positive view towards God had changed. Before the Holocaust, Elie respected and honored God, but had reflected a change in his beliefs when God remained silent despite the amount of sufferings he had created. Elie felt that God should have been capable to save the Jews from their unfair persecution. Additionally, he doubted God’s defined character when he arrived at the Birkenau concentration camp. Elie thought, “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” (Wiesel, 34) He says that God has died in his eyes. Elie was traumatized by the horrific events that God had allowed to happen to human beings, which caused Elie’s faith to shatter. Particularly, Elie doubted God’s justice because he let millions of Jews and other prisoners die in concentration
Throughout the entire book, we see Elie’s internal conflict with his faith. At the beginning of the book, Elie’s faith is undoubted, but as he encounters the hardships his Holocaust experience offered he questions the presence of God, and thinks that God is dead because if God were alive he wouldn’t be letting this happen. This is seen in the quote, “Where He is? This is where- hanging here from the gallows. Another internal conflict Elie faces is his father.
Because in His great night, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death?” (Wiesel, pg 67) Elie believed he was witnessing God’s true colors in not helping the Jews. This was just the beginning of Elie’s rebellion against the God he thrived to praise and worship earlier in his life. The silence of God influences Elie’s decision to second guess his devotion to his religion and question God.
A tragic event can change someone’s life forever in a good way or a bad way. The holocaust shaped people's lives into a way where they can never go back. In “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the main character, Elie, changed as a person due to his experiences at Auschwitz. Elie was a victim of the holocaust and it changed his life forever as a person and a Jew.
At the beginning of the story, Elie devoutly follows Judaism and its religious customs, strongly desiring to learn more about his faith. On the opening page of the novel, Elie says the following about himself: "I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple. One day I asked my father to find me a master to guide me in my studies of the cabbala" (Wiesel 1). This passage intends to demonstrate the zeal Elie had for his religion. The phrases believed profoundly, studied the Talmud, and ran to the synagogue all reveal Elie's excitement. He is not grudgingly following his father's instructions but yearns to learn more about Judaism. He strives to reach a new level of understanding, asking his father to find someone to guide him through the Talmud. It is evident that religion plays an important part in Elie's life and that he fully trusts in his God; otherwise he would not be focusing on it "during the day […] and at night" (Wiesel 1). This all changes for him after witnessing the horrors of Auschwitz. Elie vehemently cries out to God, "'What are you my God' I thought angrily, ' Compared to this afflicted crowd, proclaiming to You their faith, their anger, their revolt? What does Your greatness mean, Lord of the universe, in the face of all this weakness, this decomposition, and this decay? Why do you still