What Is Elie's Journey

The Holocaust was a very terrible time in history over six million Jews perished in concentration camps. Even though in every tragedy there are survivors. Elie Wiesel was a little boy when all of this happened. He experienced all of the terrible things that happened during this time frame. While suffering in the terrible condition of the camp Elie and his father’s relationship goes through a drastic change.

From the time where Elie had to decide to fight for his father’s life, to the time where he questioned his beliefs, Elie has had to make many life-changing decisions. As some of his decisions left negative consequences, some were left a positive outcome. In the end, all the decisions Elie had made in the camps has made his life miserable or at its best. For better or for worse, the events that Elie encountered makes his life unforgettable as realizes there was more to life than he had thought of

This book interested me because it is a great example of what so many people went through in concentration camps throughout Europe in World War II. So many books have been written about personal accounts of war hardships suffered by the Jews but so few capture the true problems faced by prisoners. The impossible decision between survival and family was a difficult one faced by many during this time. Elie had an unfaltering will to live when his father was alive with him but once his father died the reason for living disappeared. But he once was faced with the decision of helping to keep his father alive or let him die and have an extra ration of food. How can one be stuck with a decision like this and not choose survival? Only true unselfishness can cause you to help someone

Elie first recalls Dr. Mengele’s “eight short, simple words” (Wiesel 27) when he enters the camps: “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Wiesel 27) In this part of the book, Elie and his father are separated by his mother and sisters. This metaphorically kills Elie because he is very attached to his family as are they to him. A piece of Elie has been taken away from him forever. Later in his memoir, he mentions the cruel hanging of the Pipel. Previous hangings that day did not phase Elie, but when the young, angelic Pipel was hanged, Elie said his once flavorful soup “tasted of corpses.” A man near Elie was saying “Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer him: “Where is He? Here He is- He is hanging here on this gallows…”(Wiesel 62) This is a powerful quote that shows how Elie has also began to question his faith. This brings about the mindset of the death of God in Elie. Elie begins to show distrust and rebellion in his God. This is a sharp contrast to Elie’s former beliefs. When Elie’s father dies, Elie emotionally shuts his mind off. He says “After my father’s death, nothing could touch me anymore.” He had finally given up. His father was his rock tied to the balloon, his reason to keep going. Without his father, Elie gave up and became zombified like the rest of the broken souls. Elie fully turned into the emotionless man that he was set to become as a result of surviving

The Nazi army dehumanized the Jewish people by depriving them of love. Elie, along with most of the other people in the camps, aren’t really accepted socially by anyone. They weren’t accepted as a person, and no one even knew them by their names; furthermore, they were known by the number they had tattooed on their arms. On page 42, Elie says “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” By having their names taken away, the Jewish people had their social acceptance stripped from them. Also, their families were taken away from them, and they had to do whatever they could to stay with them. As Elie said on page 30, “My hand tightened its grip on my father. All I could think of was not to lose him. Not to remain alone.” By separating the Jews from their families, they lost the love from them. By depriving the jews of social acceptance and their families, they hardly felt any

Elie describes that night saying “never shall I forget that smoke, the small faces of children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky, and those flames that consumed my faith foe ever”. I think that reading what Elie says we imagine a difficult moment he is passing through because he as a child could be traumatize by looking at what he is saying. Also, looking how people get burned we might think that we could be next to get burn in death. In that moment to Elie this event results in a loss of faith, for he cannot fathom how his God would allow innocent babies to perish in such a way. We might think that in that moment Elie don’t trust in God because how can God let people to kill each other or Why does God not help those people who are getting killed. Another image to never forget from the book is when Elie and his father separated from his mother and sister. This moment is unforgettable to Elie and me because the relationship with a mother is strong that when we get separated from a mother in a bad way it’s like something on our heart breaks into pieces and because we don’t know if Elie will see her mother and sister again of if they are going to be burn in death. A sad image from the book is when the SS Officer hangs the little pippel. The little pippel was nice, young innocent kid, but he didn’t

He was questioning why God was treating them like that and why the people are dying and being treated so inhumane and where does he ,himself, stand with all this…which he thought it was all wrong. Elie was still trying to find his purpose and why he was on this Earth, and after everything had happened he questioned his identity and who he was as a person. “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!...

In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie wrote about his journey through the Holocaust and how it impacted his faith. Before the Holocaust, Elie became very passionate about Judaism, but his learning was stopped abruptly because the Nazis had arrived. The Nazis took away his teacher, along with his neighbors. Soon, the Nazis came back for the remaining citizens and loaded them into a train. This was the beginning of the Holocaust, in which Elie would experience many horrific events. Throughout Night, Elie’s faith decreases because of the harsh conditions of concentration camps and the declining health of his father.

Before Elie went to Auschwitz, he possessed many positive character traits, such as being curious, responsible, and disciplined. Weitsel writes, “Together we would read over and over again the same pages of the Zohar. Not to know it by heart but to discover the very essence of divinity” (5). Studying with his tutor and mentor was something Elie loves to do. He grew up in a small town as a strict Orthodox Jew. He loves to learn and read about religion, but he longs to gain a deeper understanding of God and spent many hours with his tutor Moishe, which shows his curiosity for knowledge and discovery. Elie also shows great responsibility in these miserable and anxious times. “Go and wake the neighbors, said my father. “They must get ready…” (Weisel,14). His father asks Ellie to go warn the others in the Ghetto that they must pack their belongings and be ready to leave. Elie’s father trusts him and treats him as an adult. He is often asked to help

One night, the leaders of Buna had left a cauldron of soup out, no one had dared to go near it but one man. The man was so hungry and was on the brink of madness and he no longer cared if he was going to die, he just wanted food and this is what led him to being killed. “Then, for no apparent reason, he let out a terrible scream, a death rattle such as I had never heard before and, with open mouth, thrust his head toward the still steaming liquid.”. During the first selection, Elie was terrified of being selected and getting killed. This led to him thinking about all the reason why he should be killed and how he was most likely going to be selected. “ My head was spinning: you are too skinny…yo u are too weak…yo u are too skinny, you are good for the ovens …”. When Elie’s father died, he didn’t cry or show any sadness whatsoever. Elie was so numb with the pain he had gone through that he was no longer capable of feeling. “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble

Elie is brave enough to tell us in details about what is happening. He became an instrument for us to know everything. Elie’s voice helped a lot for us to know how it feels to be an innocent person that is imprisoned. During the marching and in the situation of the Jews inside the camps, they were abused, the Nazis’ took their stuffs and they have nothing to wear. They didn’t even given the opportunity to have a bath and they also suffered from hunger that resulted to malnutrition.

Before Elie went to the concentration camps, he had many good character traits such as loyalty, Religious, and Impatient. For Example, on page 33, it says “If that is true then I don’t want to wait. I’ll run into the electrified barbed wire. That would be easier than a slow death in the flames” (Wiesel). During this part of the book, Elie and his dad had just arrived at Auschwitz and were being put in a line that was leading to death. Nevertheless, this shows that he is being impatient because he was facing death head on and knew that he might die so he was choosing a quick death rather than burning and slowly dying. Another trait Elie showed before the concentration camp was loyalty. For instance, on page 36, Elie stated “Please sir I’d like to be by my father” (Wiesel). In this part of the book Elie and his family were being separated at the camp and Elie lied about his age so he could stay with his dad. In contrast Elie showed loyalty to his dad by not going with his mom and sister and staying with his dad. This was a very big decision by Elie because he chose the hard way by staying with his dad even if that meant death.

At the young age of 15, Elie was forcibly moved into a ghetto and soon after taken to a concentration camp. Human minds do not fully develop until a person reaches about 25 years of age. (Sandra Aamodt, Brain Maturity Extends Well Beyond Teen Years, National Public Radio) Comprehending the Holocaust is impossible for anyone, which makes it that much more unimaginable and unbelievable to a child. It is quite simple for one to lose sight of himself when faced with a scene of pure death. It is fair to say that most people will do anything in return to live a while longer with loved ones. Therefore, morals are thrown out the window and traded

After 3 weeks at Auschwitz, they get deported to Buna, which is a turning point for the relationship between Elie and Chlomo. The camps influence Elie and give him a crooked mind focused on staying alive and nothing else. This leads to him disregarding his father. This twisted way of thinking, due to the camps, is making Elie cheer during bomb raids at Buna. He states his thoughts “But we were no longer afraid of death, at any rate, not of that death” (57). This shows that he is willing to die to see the camps destroyed. The most horrifying event that demonstrates his twisted mind is when Eliezer pays no heed to his father while he was being repeatedly beat with an iron bar. Eliezer, rather than acting indifferent and showing nothing, actually feels angry with his father. “I was angry at him for not knowing how to avoid Idek’s outbreak” (52). The new lifestyle of the camps affected Elie and his relationship with his father for the worse.

In the book, our narrator, Elie, is constantly going through changes, and almost all of them are due to his time spent in Auschwitz. Prior to the horrors of Auschwitz, Elie was a very different boy, he had a more optimistic outlook on life. During the first few pages of the book, Elie tells us a bit about how he viewed the world before deportation, “ I was almost thirteen and deeply observant. By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the temple.” ( 3). Elie was, as he says himself, deeply observant and devoted most of his time to his faith. He spent almost all of his time studying and worshiping. At this point, Elie’s faith is the center of his life. Elie is also shown to do a few other things and has a few more early character traits aside from being dedicated to what he believes in. Elie also sees the best of people, a few pages later he says, “The news is terrible,’ he said at last. And then one word: ‘transports’ The ghetto was to be liquidated entirely… ‘Where will they take us?” (Wiesel 14). This is one of the only time we hear about Elie being worried or scared because of the Germans before Auschwitz, and still, despite the warnings that were given and the rumors circulating, Elie doesn’t think that the Germans are actually going to do all of those terrible things. Around this time in the book, Wiesel starts to become more emotionally weighted, but none of what has happened takes full effect until much later. There are multiple instances in the book where Elie is given reason to distrust or even hate the Germans, he talks about how the Gestapo treated him and his family on page 19 “‘Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings!’ the Hungarian police were screaming.”. Yet he then goes on to say, on that very same page, that “Still our first