HolocaustEssay Preview: HolocaustReport this essayVictor MusciaHolocaust Class8/2/05NightBy: Elie WieselI believe “Night” shows the religious view of the Holocaust and how many Jews including Elie lost their faith in God while going through such the nightmare of Auschwitz and the other camps. I think the main reason why Elie stayed alive as long as he did was because he didnt want to leave behind his father not because of his faith in God. Throughout the book Elie speaks of his loss of faith in the Lord and doesnt understand how, if there was a God, he could allow such dreadful and inhumane actions by the Nazis continue or even happen in the first place.
This is one topic that I believe Botwinick does not cover in her book. She talks of Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing squads, in which in “Night” Moshe the Beadle miraculously escapes from. She talks about how the Hungarians Jews were sent to Auschwitz for annihilation, and she even speaks about “the death march” in which the remaining survivors at Auschwitz were forced to march mile after to mile in the snow leaving many dead behind them. All of which were obstacles that Elie faced throughout the book. Yet Botwinick never discusses the many Jews who lost their faith in God while trying to survive in Auschwitz or any other concentration camp. Maybe because there were some Jews who still held on to their religion, but it seemed to me after reading “Night” that many wanted nothing to do with God after seeing their own people being burnt alive and the other atrocities that happened in the camps. Also in Primo Levis book “Survival in Auschwitz” there are very few references made about God and Primos religious faith. Maybe that was mainly because Levi and Wiesel came from two totally different areas with very different religious backgrounds. Being from Italy Levi I believe was more a liberal Jew as to Elie he and his family were more the traditional Orthodox Judaism. Or maybe it was just that Levi believed that there was no place for God in Auschwitz. But “Night” definitely paints the picture of how Auschwitz, a living hell, strips Elie and many others like him of their dedication to their religion and their devotion to God.
In the beginning of the book Elie goes on to describe his profound belief in the Jewish religion and how he studies the Talmud endlessly. How he spends hours in the synagogue praying and searching for the secrets of Jewish mysticism. He consults with Moshe the Beadle, who works at a Hasidic synagogue, and soon becomes Elies master to guide him in the studies of the cabbala. Soon after Moshe is rounded up with all the other foreign Jews in Sighet and taken off into Polish territory, there the Gestapo makes them dig their own graves and slaughters all the prisoners. Moshe miraculously escapes and when he comes back to the town he no longer speaks to Elie about God or the cabbala only of what he has seen. He says that he came back to Sighet to tell the story of his death, that he doesnt attach any importance to his life anymore and, that he is alone. This is the first instance in the book that shows how the carnage of the Nazis, kills a person from the inside, stripping away their beliefs. Elie doesnt believe Moshe, but soon enough he too will feel the same loneliness.
When Elie arrives in Auschwitz, him and his family are led through the selection process, which happens to be the last time he sees his mother and sisters ever again. From there him and father, along with many others, were marched down towards the pits where he sees people, children and even babies being cremated. As they draw closer to the pits he hears the people around him starting to recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. Elie says to himself, that in the history of Jews he has never heard of people reciting that prayer for themselves. This is where Elie first starts to lose his faith, he rises up against God, asking himself why should he recite a prayer that blesses and thanks the Lord, how could he thank God at this time when he was about to burnt alive. When they were about two steps away from the pits they were told to march towards the barracks. This is when Elie says to himself, “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.” After that first night in the camp Elie sees how much him and father have changed, how the student of his religion, who led a life devoted to his Lord, had been burnt up inside of him. “There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it.”
While working in Buna, Elie witnessed many hangings but there was one in particular that he would remember forever. It was one day when they were coming back from work they saw three people in chains waiting to be hanged in the assembly area, one these people was a little boy who Elie said had the face of a sad angel. As they stood there to watch the three waiting for their deaths a person standing behind Elie said, “Where is God? Where is he?” Then the chairs were tipped, the two adults were dead immediately but the boy dangled on the rope. Then the workers were forced to march past three, the boy was still alive as Eli passed him, the same man from before then said, “Where is God now?” Eli then heard a voice inside of him then say, “Where is He? Here He is-He is hanging here on this gallowsД This is another piece of
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Hilary, S-15.
The woman’s funeral was arranged for September 30, 1940-October 1, 1940. She was one of only one girl who stayed in a dorm at Hermitage in San Antonio. She was a little boy named Sarah. After one or two days the young girl’s mother had been shot. Her father was killed in the blast when his brother John was in the town about the same time. A few months later Sarah, aged ten, received a letter from her sister Ann. She gave anniversaries, giving the date and address of the last year of her life as September 30, 1940. The letters she gave to them were signed “No. 31.” According to a recent version, Sarah’s father was killed in the explosion; the town is listed on her parents’ Social Security card, but it was destroyed for the following summer. In 1930, a man with a mental illness became eligible for a pension. His name was David Davis and, over the years, many of his relatives and friends, many of whom had no financial ability to live, had decided it was their duty to support him. The one boy who was left in a dorm was John Davis who was taken to the hospital for outpatient evaluation that day with what was believed to be a lethal gunshot wound on his arm. It was after he recovered that, he became ill. “The doctor said no; he was just too sick to walk anymore,” he told Newsweek. Davis, a very gifted student, was in trouble again and went to a different college and was a graduate of the School of Medicine of Texas. “I’ve never seen any doctors or nurses ever walk into a room in my life,” he says now. “I’m always on the outside outside of the hospital like in an old movie. The outside is not safe for me because I’ve never seen a doctor or nurse on any hospital floor. I was the oldest medical student in school and I couldn’t keep myself that way, so I didn’t want to show the doctor any kind of physical problems.” (Davis worked for San Antonio Municipal Railway as an Electrical Engineer and he has been cited by the city for using heavy machinery on a number of buses; it is widely believed to have been the same as that for the same number of times during his time at San Antonio.) He was soon hospitalized in the emergency department and then was brought back to the hospital to begin the day’s operations. It is possible, however, that the bullet did not penetrate the hospital’s walls but instead fell on Davis’ head and was lodged in his forehead, so we can assume that Davis was not alive from his infection and was taken to the intensive care unit the following day. In 1945, during World War II, Davis was sent to Berlin for surgery. Upon arrival in Berlin he was taken to a room in the intensive care unit by a physician named Heinrich Weber. His symptoms were initially good but his brain activity was severely impaired. He had no memory. The doctor asked about him because “he didn’t know one of us.” Weber thought Davis could understand and he said he’d heard of him once somewhere before. However, as soon as