Elie Wiesel Loss Of Faith In Night

Religion has always been controversial, throughout history there have been hundreds of wars fought over religion. World War II may not have been solely based off of religion, but it had a major part in the war. During World War II Jews and other ethnic groups throughout Europe were harshly persecuted by Nazi Germany. Elie Wiesel, a Hungarian Jew and holocaust survivor recount the tragedy, he endured during the holocaust in his memoir, Night. With only 109 pages, Wiesel manages to write about almost every horror he faced, one of the worst being his loss of faith. In the foreword by Francois Mauriac, he writes, “Have we ever thought about the consequence of a horror that, thought less apparent, less striking than the other outrages, is yet the worst of all, those of us who have faith: the death of God in the soul of a child who suddenly discovers absolute evil?” (ix) This is exactly what happens to Wiesel, at the young age of 15. With his sudden realization that god has abandoned him, Wiesel loses all faith. However his loss of faith enables him to survive longer than those who still believe in God.

To Wiesel, his faith is everything and he describes it with one simple sentence, “I believed profoundly” (1). It may not seem like much, but this one line perfectly explains Wiesel’s faith, strong and seemingly unbreakable. Wiesel was unlike most kids his age. He spent every night in the synagogue with Moshe the Beadle studying the Kabbalah, the ancient Jewish tradition of mystical interpretation of the Bible. To him faith was an everyday part of life, and he couldn't live without it, “Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (2) Soon though Wiesel would have to learn how to survive without his