How Did Elie Wiesel Change In Night

During the Holocaust, over 6 million Jewish people were murdered. Elie Wiesel is one of the few people who managed to survive the severe persecution Jewish people faced during World War 2. Throughout his memoir Night, he recounts his time in concentration camps and reflects on the experiences he endured throughout his time in Nazi Germany. Fighting through death, pain, and confusion of faith, Elie manages to avoid becoming yet another name on the list of victims of the Holocaust. In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel uses Eliezer’s change in faith to show how the hardships Jewish people endured during the Holocaust put a strain on their beliefs. Throughout their time in concentration camps, the way Jewish people interpreted their faith changed. In one scene from Night, Elie is in his bunk listening to his bunkmates sing praises, pray, and talk of God. He thinks to himself, “But I had ceased to pray. How I sympathized with Job! I did not deny God’s …show more content…
In one scene from Night, two men and a child are hung in front of the other prisoners, including Elie, in the concentration camp. The other inmates were forced to walk by the hanged men and look them in the eyes. The child, weighing so little, could not properly suffocate and was hanging there, between life and death, for more than half an hour before he died. When a person behind Elie asks “Where is God?”, Elie responds by thinking “Where is He? Here He is-- He is here hanging on this gallows…” This quote shows that the image of God Elie had is no longer with him. The normalcy of a child’s murder is so disturbing and unsettling to Elie that it causes his preconceived notion of God to be shattered. When those men were murdered on those gallows, the caring, loving God Elie believed in was murdered along with them. The horrifying experiences Elie and many other Jews endured during the Holocaust caused a negative shift in their perception of God to