Night2
Night, By Elie Wiesel is a devastatingly true story about one man's witness to the genocide of his own people. Living through the horrifying experiences in the German concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Elie sees his family, friends and fellow Jews starved, degraded, and murdered. In this essay I will address three important topics expressed throughout the course of the book. First, I will discuss the struggle and eventual loss of religious faith by Elie in his battle to maintain humanity in this de-humanizing environment, and what ultimately enabled him to survive. Second, I will show the established relationship between Elie and his father, and the impact life in the camp had upon it. And finally, give my personal opinion on why Elie Wiesel wrote this book. One of the main topics in this book is how Elie, a boy of strong religious faith, as well as many Jews lose their faith in God because of the atrocities that take place in the concentration camps. Elie Wiesel lived his early childhood in the town of Transylvania, in Hungary, during the early 1940's. At a young age Elie took a strong interest in Jewish religion as he spent most of his time studying the Talmud. Eventually he comes across Moshe the Bead
le, who would take him under his wing and instruct him more in depth of the ways of the Talmud and cabbala. Through Moshe's instruction, he is taught to question God for answers. Later Moshe is sent away to a camp and upon his return to Sighet presents the reader with a foreshadowing of what will soon come in the book. Elie recalls, "Moshe had changed....He no longer talked to me of God or the cabbala, but only of what he had seen."(4) Thus right away the reader is exposed a loss of religious faith in Moshe, the same loss that will soon plague Elie. Before forced evacuation into the concentration camps, Elie and his father were not very close emotionally. In fact, his father rarely showed emotion or concern toward family matters at all. Elie's father was one of the leading men that the community held in great esteem. Yet Elie's father did not approve of him wasting time with religion and readings of the cabbala, which formidably created a barrier of separation between father and son. The only bond between the two when they reach the camp is the desire to stay with each other," family". I believe that Elie Wiesel wrote this book as a living testament, being one of the few survivors of the Holocaust. He felt it was his duty to justify how so many of his people could be allowed to die while the world remained silent. He and his people did not create the Holocaust, but rather the Holocaust created them. As a survivor, Elie has no choice but to tell all who will listen what the silenced victims would tell if they could speak for themselves today. Having lost his entire family to the aftermath of the Holocaust, one can only hope that the world can learn from the Jewish people's suffering and prevent history from repeating itself. Each day at the German concentration camp further and further deteriorates Elie's belief in God. The final moment, where he renounces all belief in the existence of God comes at the funeral of three Jewish males who were hung the day before, one of which was merely a child so light in
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Approximate Word count = 1378
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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