Night Elie Wiesel Essay

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” - Elie Wiesel. Wiesel was a Jew, Holocaust survivor, professor, and writer. As soon as Elie stepped out of the concentration camps after being liberated, he could not find the words to portray what he had just witnessed. Speechless, Elie took the next few years to recollect his thoughts and opinions, and find the right words to describe the horrors beyond the walls of the many concentration camps he was put through. He had beard witness and he thought it was his obligation to speak for the few left living, and the millions dead. By writing books and speaking publicly, Wiesel expresses the dreadful experiences Jews went through. He questions God, and how He could let the Holocaust occur, and

His father whispers, “May his name be celebrated and sanctified.” Elie then thinks, “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 thank him for” (Wiesel 33)? To Elie, these horrors standing in front of him were unrecognizable. Elie, a religious boy, a student of the Talmud is blown away. How could God possibly allow these atrocities to happen? He now characterizes God as a silent master of the universe. For a boy who had so much faith in God, believing He had the power to manipulate anyone or anything, why has he not done so to stop the Germans, and to stop their creations. Elie’s anger and confusion obviously shows a loss of faith immediately after arriving in Birkenau.Another example of Elies loss of faith in God would be the hanging of the pipel. One day, the pipel’s Oberkapo was caught sabotaging the Nazi’s central electric plant. The Oberkapo’s punishment was to be tortured in order for the Nazi’s to get the names of the other people involved in the sabotage with him, but he would not say, so he was then transported t Auschwitz and never heard from again. Now, left was his young, stranded pipel who