Elie Wiesel, one of the many victims of the Holocaust, experienced a significant change from the beginning to the end of his journey. At the beginning of his story, Elie was known as religious and hopeful for his future. After being liberated from the camp, Elie became numb. The Holocaust camps had changed him both physically and mentally forever. He had gone from a religious boy who wished nothing more than to study Kabbalah, and a boy who was so sure of himself and his religion to a man who saw nothing but a corpse in his reflection. While living in Sighet, Elie had desired to study Kabbalah against his father’s wishes. His father had said, “You are too young for that. Maimonides tells us that one must be thirty before venturing into the world of mysticism, a world fraught with peril. …show more content…
Even though it was going against his father, Elie had met a man named Moishe the Beadle, who had later become his mentor. Moishe quickly became an important person in his life. Not long after meeting Elie, Moishe was one of the first Jews to be rounded up by the Germans. Moishe the Beadle and the others had been gone for so long that everything had gone back to normal. Months later, Moishe had returned to the town of Sighet and had tried to tell others of his escape and warn them of what was to come, but no one had believed him. Although Elie had doubts on whether Moishe was telling the truth or if he had just gone mad, Wiesel had seen a big change in him. Elie writes, “Moishe is not the same. The joy in his eyes was gone. He no longer sang. He no longer mentioned either God or Kabbalah. He spoke only of what he had seen” (Wiesel 7). This ultimately was the start of the