Concentration Camps broke the will of many Jewish prisoners’ faith. They believed that their god had forsaken them, or that he never existed to allow such atrocities to be committed against his people. In Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, Elie’s faith deteriorates rapidly in the concentration camps. Elie’s faith changed in that as time went on and hope waned, he first accused God of his crimes against his people, holding theocratic debates within himself. By the end of the Novel, he no longer seemed to belief in God. This change was caused by the pain and suffering of living in concentration camps, which mentally and physically break most people. This change of faith helps conduct the message because even without the thing that in the beginning he acquitted to breathing, he managed to keep moving and not give up. …show more content…
In the beginning of the novel, Elie had been completely in tune with religion and likely even sought a religious career. He associated praying with breathing, his attachment was so great. When they get taken, some of the first sights he sees are the ones that started it all, the burning pits and truckloads of dead babies. As he mentions then, those are the flames that had burned his faith away from him forever. By the time a Jewish holiday came around, he refused to pray and had refused to fast. He did this mostly out of self-preservation, but religion still played a role in his decision. As the book goes further, Elie knew his faith was destroyed and the damage was irreversible. The lack of hope on the train car to Buchenwald was one of the final leaps, as full despair took over and threw whatever remained of his religiousness out. All of this was caused by what Elie witnessed or experienced at the concentration camps he had been