1. After the hanging of a child, Elie hears someone say, “‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows…’ That night, the soup tasted of corpses” (Wiesel 65). Though optimistic at first, Elie Wiesel, along with many others at the concentration camps, began to lose faith in God.
But look at these men whom you have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed and burned. What do they do? They pray before you” (68). Elie is loosing faith. He believes that God is not only betraying him but also all the Jewish people God is letting “die”.
When everyone in camp was crying and asking where God was as they all watched the boy struggle to cling on to life, Elie had thought to himself that God was there “hanging…from [the] gallows”, symbolizing his loss of faith in God. From then on, as Rosh Hashanah passed, Elie felt intense hatred for God as He did nothing to help the thousands of people suffering and being murdered. Elie refused to sanctify God’s name because of the immense pain He was causing, and felt angry that others in the camp continued to worship Him. Elie felt “terribly alone in a world without God, without man” and “without love or mercy”. As everyone prayed, Elie felt like “an observer [and] a stranger” because he had disconnected from God, and as he defiantly continued to eat instead of fasting for Yom Kippur, Elie “felt a great void opening” inside him as his last bit of trust in God faded.
Elie, once so faithful, is one of the first to lose faith in God due to the horrific sights he sees. After witnessing the bodies of Jewish children being burned, Wiesel writes, “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever” (34). He quite understandably has begun to doubt that his God is with him following the sight of the supposedly chosen people’s bodies being unceremoniously burned. Elie, though, was perhaps not a member of the masses with this belief; in fact, some men were able to hold on to their beliefs despite these horrendous sights. Also near the middle of the book, Wiesel reflects on the faith of other Jews in the face of these events, saying that “some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come.
Many Jews who considered themselves staunch believers in G-d, even in the face of tragedy, had their faith tested, and often destroyed, after experiencing the Holocaust. Many could not sustain faith in a G-d who would allow the Jews to suffer such horrific events on such a large and organized scale. The world knows Elie Wiesel, one of the most famous and prolific Holocaust survivors, for his brave and candid writings about the Shoah. His book Night documents his experience in Nazi concentration camps as a teenager during the Holocaust. Before the war begins, Wiesel is a devout Jew who refuses to defy or even question G-d. Throughout the novel, his faith stretches, morphs, and almost disappears.
Oftentimes, the effects of traumatic experiences can transcend the importance or the gravity of original beliefs. With every passing day, Elie is seeing more and more innocent infants, children, men, and women dying all around him, simultaneously. However, as the survivors around him congregate and continue to pray to God on their own volition he is thoroughly confused. With the amount of deaths around him, he questions everything, and thinks aloud.
At the beginning of Night, Elie was someone who believed fervently in his religion. His experiences at Auschwitz and other camps, such as Birkenau and Buna have affected his faith immensely. Elie started to lose his faith when he and his father arrived at Birkenau. They saw the enormous flames rising from a ditch, with people being thrown in.
Elie is losing faith in God because he has been able to create Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Buna, which kills many. He says, “But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament,” (68) demonstrating Elie’s full move-away from God. Elie’s identity is left insecure and he is now alone. Elie was not “terrible alone in a world without God, without men.”
And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed.” (Wiesel 91). This quote demonstrates the internal struggle between Elie and his faith. He is slowly losing his belief in God, who was once the meaning and center of his life. This quote shows how the extreme circumstances of the Holocaust can lead to the questioning and loss of once-strong bonds of faith, ultimately changing one's life forever.
The Bible states, “The Lord also will be a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble; And those who know your name will put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.…” [Psalm 9:9-10] Many believe one should turn to God in times of turmoil, but what should one do when death is everywhere and God does not anwser? This is the case in Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night. In this memoir Wiesel informs the reader of Eliezer’s, the protagonist, life in concentration camps during the Holocaust.
Religion is something that many people have consistently believed in and turned to in times of need and support. Some of these people rely on their faith more than their own family and friends. Their religion is their entire life and they can’t imagine their lives without it. Imagine a scenario that’s so terrible that God won’t take you out of it. These people will wonder where God is and pray for Him to come.
Elie was not able to preserve his faith in God when he struggled to survive in the concentration camps. He started to question his faith by saying, “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why should I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled.” In the midst of so much suffering, Elie finds it hard to bless God.
Unfortunately, for most people, faith is there to protect them from evil and guide them with a plan, but it may not always be that way. The fact that one can change their view on their god is very surprising. However, in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, Wiesel loses his faith and starts to question his God about the Holocaust. Although many people stay strong in
As a result of living in a concentration camp and the horrible experiences he lived through, it is evident that Wiesel begins to lose the faith that was once so important to him. Although Wiesel himself argues that he did not lose his faith, many would argue that the events that took place during the Holocaust caused Wiesel to resent God and lose his faith that was once so important to him. Growing up, Elie Wiesel’s faith
“I had new shoes myself. But as they were covered with a thick coat of mud, they had not been noticed. I thanked God in an improvised prayer for having created mud in His infinite and wondrous universe.” (Wiesel 38). In the Memoir Night by Elie Wiesel he makes it prominent that throughout dire situations you cannot lose your faith or religion.
