How Did Elie Wiesel Lose His Identity

As a child, a large part of Elie Wiesel’s identity was his religion. Praying, asking questions, and learning about Judaism was an important part of his life and who he was. However, as the Holocaust progressed, it changed his character and he became a completely different person than he had once been. Throughout the course of World War II, Wiesel was transformed physically, emotionally, and most significantly spiritually. The horrors of the concentration camps made him question for the first time in his life the existence of God, or if, like nihilists believe, God had died. This existential conflict of Elie losing his faith in God and overall losing his identity can be seen from his behavior with Jewish rituals, his change in moral code, and

As Wiesel’s first Yom Kippur in a concentration camp was approaching, he was struck with the conflict of whether or not to fast. Although one reason not to was because of all of the prisoners’ extreme hunger and starvation, Wiesel in the end eventually decided not to fast just to spite God for all he had done to the Jews. He declared, “As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him” (Wiesel 69). Wiesel’s act of eating during a time of fasting showed his fading religious beliefs and changing identity. However, Elie was not the only one who lost his faith in God during this terrible time. Israeli Supreme Court Justice Haim Cohen proclaimed about the Holocaust, “If there is Auschwitz, there is no God”. It was hard for many Jewish victims to believe that any God could exist if the absurdly horrific events of the Holocaust could

Once a loyal and selfless person, he had to start becoming selfish and thinking of himself. One example of this can be seen in his relationship with his father. At the start of the Holocaust, Wiesel’s only goal was to stay with his father no matter where he went. Wiesel never wanted to be separated from him and tried to make sure they were always living near each other. However, as the war went on and circumstances changed, Wiesel started to view his weak father as a burden. As his father was dying he thought to himself, “You could have two rations of bread, two rations of soup” (Wiesel 111). Before the Holocaust, Wiesel would have never thought anything like this about his father, but the horrible conditions made each person have to fight for their own survival. Similarly to in Breaking Bad how Walter would have never even thought of killing anyone in his ordinary life, things changed once he became a drug dealer and it was how he had to act based on his situation. Moral codes definitely were altered during the events of the Holocaust, leaving huge amounts of guilt on the survivors for decades