Religion In Night By Elie Wiesel

​ Cruelty. Faith. Survival. In the memoir, Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie, his family, and other Jews are tricked into concentration camps and made prisoners. Here they are treated cruelly, and struggle to survive. This marks the beginning of the Holocaust for Elie but the end for a endless amount of others. When life was normal, Eli had a strong belief in god but as the conditions become less bearable he starts to question his faith and ultimately loses it.

In the book Night, author, Elie Wiesel illustrates how the Jews had their humanity crushed by the Germans by using detailed imagery. Wiesel’s purpose was to show how the Jews were treated during the Holocaust, so others could change their perspective on it. The main theme presented in this book is the loss of religion. In the beginning of the book, the main character, Eliezer stated that he “believed”, implying that he doesn’t anymore. All the Jews had some form of hope at the start, but due to the major death occurring, their hope started to fade away.

In his home place, Eli has an inquisitive mind about his religion and wants to absorb as much knowledge as possible. In Night it says, “...I became convinced that Moishe the Beadle would help me enter eternity, into that time when question and answer would become ONE”(5). In this statement Wiesel has an unbelievably strong bond with God. He has a mindset to worship God while learning all he can about his Father. Notwithstanding, faith takes a tragic change for the worse for him. Eliezer states, “ I did not fast. First of all, to please my father…. And then, there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no longer accepted God’s silence. I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him”(Night 69). In Elie’s times of hardships his faith drastically declines to the point he tries to rebel against God. This kind of behavior begins when he enters the camps. Providentially, whenever Wiesel leaves the camps his faith starts to restore. Elie states in “The Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech”, “But I have faith. Faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and even in His creation.” This statement means he accepts God’s actions since the Holocaust leads to a solution towards indifference. Eliezer not only sees his faith as a test in change of setting, but also in the conflicts he

In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie wrote about his journey through the Holocaust and how it impacted his faith. Before the Holocaust, Elie became very passionate about Judaism, but his learning was stopped abruptly because the Nazis had arrived. The Nazis took away his teacher, along with his neighbors. Soon, the Nazis came back for the remaining citizens and loaded them into a train. This was the beginning of the Holocaust, in which Elie would experience many horrific events. Throughout Night, Elie’s faith decreases because of the harsh conditions of concentration camps and the declining health of his father.

People often begin to lose faith in God because of the results they faced from their life experiences. Some face things that seem cruel and unbearable while others are “confronted with the information presented from another viewpoint that rejects God” (Gospel Billboards). Elie was told by his father to never lose his faith in God, it would help him get through tough times and keep him strong. The faith is the only strong force that helped Elie Wiesel get through the Holocaust. Through experiences that involve cruel and unbearable moments, people start questioning whether God has the answers to life’s problems. This results in faith beginning to weaken, people stop communicating with God, which makes it easier for one’s faith to diminish. We encounter Elie questioning and refusing God, but also see his contradictory behavior he exhibits to praise. However, throughout the book, Eliezer witnesses and experiences things that leads him to lose his faith in his religion. The longer he stays in the concentration camps, the more he experiences and sees cruelty and suffering. Eliezer believes that people who pray to a God who allows their families to suffer and die are more stronger and forgiving to God. Elie was angry at God, he thought God didn’t deserve his praises or honors because he expected God to come save him but he never did. He observes people die and others around him slowly lose hope, starve, Elie ceases to believe that God could exist at all now. “Where He is? This

The greatest change to Elie Wiesel’s identity was his loss of faith in God. Before he and his family were moved to the camps, Wiesel was a religious little boy who cried after praying at night (2). When the Hungarian police come to force the Jews to move to the ghettos, they pulled Elie from his prayers (13). Even on his way to Auschwitz, stuffed inside the cattle car with other terrified Jews, Wiesel gave thanks to God when told he would be assigned to labor camps (24). After a few days in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel heard about the crematory and the fact that the Nazis were killing the sick, weak, and young. In his first night in the camp, Wiesel experienced his first crisis of faith: Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. …Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust (32).

Over the course of his time there, he is worked hard and witnesses horrific deaths. Because of all the traumatic events that occurred, he lost faith in the God he once believed in unconditionally. John Roth, author of In the Beginning, explained that the holocaust could only have happened if there was no God (35). However this is not true. In actuality, Eliezer explains that there is a God, he just does not believe in His power anymore. Elie does not say that he has become an atheist or that God had died as many people believe” (Brown 72). Elie simply does not believe in Him because of all the events that occurred while he was in the concentration camps.

In times of hardship and strife it can be difficult to hold onto faith and religion. So imagine being taken from home at the age of 15 and being thrown into a concentration camp immediately separated from friends and family and being forced to work around the clock in harsh conditions hardly being fed and witnessing countless deaths at every corner. Well the main character in the novel Night by Elie Wiesel had to face this exact thing and many more which made him change spiritually and faith wise over the course of the of the novel going from being completely devoted to God to hating him during his horrific time in the concentration camp which drastically changed him as a person and shaped the story as a whole regarding the fact that it's easy to lose your spirituality in times of trials and tribulations.

Elie’s faith is very tight at the beginning of the memoir, he had faith in God when he and the other Jews of Sighet were taken to the ghettos. “And we, the Jews of Sighet, were waiting for better days, which would not be long in coming now'' (5). This show that Elie’s faith was strong enough to believe that life would get better and the hardship would soon be over. It was not easy for Elie to have doubt in God when the Nazis were brutally oppressing the Jews in the ghettos. Once Elie and all the others were transported to Auschwitz, Elie was separated from his father and was tortured and forced to work. In the camp Elie was in, some of the youth with him were planning to take down the Nazis and said "We must do something. We can't let them kill us like that, like cattle in the slaughterhouse. We must revolt."(31). Then an

Three days later, optimism still present, the Jews still refused to believe that God would let dreadful things occur to them even when “German army vehicles made their appearance on their streets” (9). The towns “impressions of the Germans were rather reassuring” (9) at that time, on the contrary of the bloodcurdling conceptions they later gained when the reality of the terrors of Germans had cropped up. Months later, Elie and the other Jews’ faiths become warped when they come back down to earth and the Germans true intentions strike as they enter their long expedition in the death camps.

In the memoir Night By Elie Wiesel, was a boy who gives his story of his experience during the Holocaust .The Nazis had complete control over everything like how they could have just taken children and thrown them into a fire and burned them alive. While at the beginning of the story Eliezer's Faith in god was that he believed i the beginning and did not at the end. Therefor, Elie Wiesel faith in god changed throughout the memoir.

In Night, many people, when put into camps, completely lose faith in their religion and become separated from what they were first holding onto. Elie’s faith was only made up his studies where he was taught that God was the only thing that was important in the physical and spiritual world. Wiesel shows readers what his doubt turned into when studying his religion, “Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (4). At first, when starting his studies, he is very skeptical about faith, but is changed into a true believer as he grows older. As the book and his journey goes on, the hope that was placed in him, starts to fade and he loses the faith that he once gained. For many others that were placed in the camps and

In times of distress many people turn to their faith to help guide through the situation. This book Night by Elie Wiesel is a sorrowful memoir of Elie Wiesel’s experiences in the Holocaust. Through his experiences as a teen in concentration camps with his father, Elie struggles to find his faith and will to live another day. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses Eliezer’s change in faith to demonstrate that in order to survive he needs to either have faith in god or humanity.

After Elie’s first night in camp, he believes God is dead; “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God himself.” (pg 34). Here in the Holocaust, he witnesses the ‘death’ of God, or he rather recognizes it, and he thinks that he and God would never have died together. Wiesel thinks He is dead, and does not think he can escape. Then Elie realizes he is alone, “alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy… I felt myself to be stronger than this Almighty to whom my life had been bound…” (pg 68). It dawns on him that only he can help himself, no God, not another man, he then feels significantly stronger, than his God, as only he can save himself. Akiba Drumer, another victim of the Holocaust, who is in Elie’s camp, who is a very religious man, who begins to doubt God, and finally gives up. This is proven when Mr. Drumer was talking to Elie one day, and he uttered such cold, dry words, “It’s over. God is no longer with us.” (pg 76). Akiba was finally broken, after staying faithful with no reward, he willed himself into believing God was gone. Elie, along with many others, faith was gone, and God was

The book Night, by Elie Wiesel, is about Elie’s own experiences as a Jew in the Holocaust. The events he experiences during his time in the concentration camps has, many of times, shaken his faith. Elie, in his story, loses faith in God, the one he has been studying, and prays to for protection. Elizer experiences multiple conflicts with faith; not only with himself. One could realize that faith is a reoccurring theme in his story.