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Survivors of the holocaust essay
An account on the holocaust
An account on the holocaust
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Survivors of the holocaust essay
An account on the holocaust
An account on the holocaust
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Eleven million people were murdered in the Holocaust, six million of which were Jews who were killed solely for their beliefs. This terrible genocide is recounted through the eyes of Elie Wiesel in his memoir, Night. As the novel progresses, Wiesel's faith in his God falters, due to the physical and emotional suffering he endured as a Jew in the Holocaust. During the first couple of chapters of Night, Wiesel’s faith and dedication to his religion are very strong.
In Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, he shows his love for God is natural when Moishe the Beadle saw Eliezer in the synagogue and asked him “ Why do you pray?” and he responded “Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?”
Have you ever been through something traumatic or so life changing that you have doubt the truthness of your faith? Throughout Night, Elie Wiesel, the author shows several instances of his loss of religion throughout the book. Wiesel demonstrates his loss of faith through the experiences he has while in the Nazi concentration camps. Wiesel had many traumatic experiences while being held captive in the concentration camps. Those included his refusal to recite the Kaddish prayer for the dead.
It's hard to believe that innocent people were being tortured and killed based on their religion. During the Holocaust about 6 million Jews were killed. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, Elie, a young religious boy who wrote about his experience during the Holocaust. Throughout his experience Elie’s relationship with God develops from being strong prior to the Holocaust, to weakening when arriving at the camps, and completely losing his faith in God at the end.
“Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” This quote explains how traumatizing the first night of the next two years would be like for Eliezer. In Elie Wiesel’s book, Night, he retells his horrific story about him and his father enduring the challenges of multiple concentration camps. Eliezer changes throughout this book by, questioning his faith, learning self-preservation, and realizing that evil is worse than he could imagine. Primarily, Eliezer believed in an all powerful God, but after he experienced the tragedy of the concentration camps, he questions his faith.
The Holocaust affects Jews in a way that seems unimaginable, and most of these effects seem to have been universal experiences; however, in the matter of faith, Jews in the concentration camp described in Elie Wiesel’s Night are affected differently and at different rates. The main character, Elie, loses his faith quickly after the sights he witnesses (as well as many others); other Jews hold on much longer and still pray in the face of total destruction. In the beginning, all of the Jews are more or less equally faithful in their God and religion.
Eliezer couldn’t understand why God would let such horrible things that he faced during the holocaust happen. Eliezer would sometimes question God’s existence because he was taught God was everywhere, so good was everywhere as well. Eliezer loses his faith in God, but still believes there is one at the end of the book. Sources and Methods Elie Wiesel didn’t use any sources in his book Night, it was written about his own experience during the holocaust.
“You don’t understand... You cannot understand. I was saved miraculously. I succeeded in coming back. Where did I get my strength?
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. ”(Wiesel 32). Author Elie Wiesel uses metaphor and hyperbole, to exaggerate Eliezer’s loss of God and Eliezer’s dreams. Elie also uses the form of repetition, repeating “Never shall I forget” after every thought to highlight an emotion or concept or develop a sense of intensity.
According to mahatma gandhi the word “Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into” (“Mahatma”). This can be seen in Elie Wiesel's memoir night through himself. As the memoir opens we learn that he was 15 during ww2 and that him and his father were put into a concentration camp. Elie Wiesel's, night, i belive experiences his loss of faith through this holocaust.
“It isn't fair how I doubt him, and I wonder if he'll ever gather that my loss of faith extends further than I'd ever known it would, severing lines of trust and leveling my confidence like a city-flattening tornado.” This is the quotes which from Tammara, Webber. Have you imagined stay in a horrible environment like camp and got injure all most every day and Lord still being generous to those German who hurt them? As government started an act to kick out all Jew, no one believed what would happen to them next.
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie has to face many problems during the Holocaust. He lost his identity and his faith towards God. Elie is focusing on surviving and saving his father while they are in camps, and marching through the cold winter snow. Elie has to live through the trauma and tragedy of the Holocaust that had a major impact on Elie’s identity and his faith. His identity changed as time went on and on, he had lost sight of himself and his faith.
“I want to know how you keep holding on and believe again or how you never stop believing to begin with.” These words by Jessica Watson perfectly accentuate the battle that Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, struggles with throughout the novel. In the village of Sighet, Romania, a young Wiesel is enthralled by Jewish mysticism and believes the existence of an omnipotent God. One day, however, the Jewish people of Sighet are forced to live in supervised ghettos, and later brought to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Wiesel suffers with the physical torture of forced labor and hunger, as well as the mental and emotional torture of losing his family.
Diminishing Faith The Nazis enforced horrendous cruelty upon Elie Wiesel and the rest of the Jewish people, therefore causing Elie’s faith in God to go from complete, to partial, to absent. The German soldiers chipped away at the Jews’ needs one by one, breaking them down to precisely bodies. In the beginning of the story, Elie shares his remembrance of being completely devoted to God, and even wanting to learn more about the Kabbalah religion than his father allowed.
Elie Wiesel is not only a talented author but a survivor of the holocaust who documented his horrific experiences in his memoir “Night”. In the beginning of the book Elie Wiesel was one of the most religious people in his town of Saghet who had a dream of living a monastic life. However, as a result of the harrowing injustices he endured he continuously lost faith in his religion. Within the book the reader is reminded again and again that when extreme adversity is experienced, faith is often lost.