Elie Wiesel God Quotes

Context of the Quote Eliezer and his father are on the march to Gleiwitz. They are being evacuated from Buna while in the middle of a freezing blizzard. While on this march, anyone who stops running or is falling behind will be shot or trampled to death. When the “order to rest” (83) finally comes, Elie and his father seek shelter in a shed. They then see Rabbi Eliahou find his way into the shed and make his way across all the men to where Elie and his fathered is resting.

Fire represents a lot of the things in this novel. A woman name Mrs. Schachter was howling, pointing through the window. “Look! Look at this fire! This terrible fire! Have mercy on me!” (pg 25) Elie said him and the other saw a real fire this time. “This time we saw flames rising from a tall chimney into a black sky.” (pg. 28) Elie said they stared at the flames, “We stared at the flames in the darknes, A wretched stench floated in the air.” (pg. 28) And in front of them the the flaming smoke was the smell of burning flesh.

Elie Wiesel’s renowned autobiography, Night, describes the numerous atrocities faced by concentration camp inmates during the holocaust. He explains that prisoners whom were not immediately murdered were subject to severe physical and psychological brutalities, all of which left lasting trauma. Like many others in these circumstances, Wiesel found it difficult to hold onto his Jewish faith when such cruelty surrounded him, going as far to question God’s very existence. These ideas are found in the excerpt: “Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘Where is God now?’And I heard a voice within me answer him: ‘Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows,’” (Night, pg. 65). This is Wiesel’s account of one of his most horrifying experiences

Elie and his father are taken to Auschwitz where they are separated from the rest of the family and first hear about atrocities such as the incinerators and gas showers. In the beginning Elie believes that everything is a rumor, a lie, that humankind cannot perform such crimes, but he soon is forced to witness the demise in front of his eyes. This is when his outlook on his faith starts to waver. While watching the smoke billow up from a crematory, Elie hears a man standing next to him begging him to pray, and for the first time in his life Wiesel turns away from God. “The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank him for?” (31).

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

Not yet exposed to the horrors of the concentration camp, Elie enters Birkenau with his innate senses of compassion and altruism intact. Soon after his arrival, Elie witnesses the burning of children, women, and men alike. In response to this horrific sight, Elie becomes doubtful of the reality of this situation and questions, "How was it possible… that the world kept silent?" (32). As seen in the creation of Night and this question, for Elie, silence is unthinkable. At this point, Elie still holds faith in the power that people hold. However, the only hope to save these people from their fates is if the silence breaks. Along with this thinking, his tone of disbelief contributes to Elie's demonstration of one of man's most primitive instinct: compassion. This compassion is still strong in Elie—for if this was false, why would he have questioned this so passionately? However, after submitting to oppression from the concentration camps' officials, Elie's

This shows Elie’s change in his thoughts on God and having faith. At the beginning of the story, Elie strives to be a spiritual kid and is fascinated by learning about God. He goes behind his father's back to learn about God with Moishe the Beadle, and has intense prayers everyday which he cries during. However, he becomes bitter towards God, angry about all the pain he has inflicted on the Jewish race. This change in perspective was brought on by the torture, abuse, and inhumane treatment by the Nazis. It causes Elie to question how God, who is supposed to be helpful and good, could ever allow such horror. This connects to loss, and how the traumatic

Faith is like a little seed; if you think about the positive aspects of a situation, then it will grow, like a seed grows when you water it. However, if the seed does not receive water anymore, it will die, which serves as a parallel to the horrors and antagonism of the concentration camps that killed Elie’s faith. After the analysis of the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the reader can visualize the horrors and slaughter of millions of innocent people that occurred in concentration camps. Throughout the book, Wiesel explains how his faith in God was tested, as he was forced to leave his home, separated from his family, and observed the death all around him; he even witnessed children being thrown into huge ditches of fire alive. Elie felt abandoned, betrayed, and deceived by the God that he knew who was a loving and giving God. It was then he started to doubt His existence. Elie tried to hold on to his faith, but the childhood innocence had disappeared from within him, and he lost his faith in God completely.

Another time Elie questions God and his faith is around Rosh Hashana, the new year. All the Jews gathered together to say prayers to God. He questions God for allowing all these terrible things to happen to them when they live their lives for Him.

When Elie and his family are sent to a concentration camp, he is fortunate enough to not be separated from his father. At first, this is a relief, and is father is his will to survive. “The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot… My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running next to me, out of breathe, out of strength, desperate. I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his sole support.”(86)

Alongside with witnessing the death of his father and wrath of the SS officers, Wiesel also experienced the evil of other prisoners. Within the community of the concentration camps, stealing was not uncommon. For example, after it was revealed that he had a golden tooth, Wiesel’s foreman at Buna, Franek, made many attempts to steal it. “'Let me have your crown, kid.' I answered that I could not because without that crown I could no longer eat.... 'If you don't give me your crown, it will cost you much more!' All of a sudden, this pleasant and intelligent young man had changed. His eyes were shining with greed” (“Night” 55). This quote reveals the time Wiesel had first-hand encountered the greed of others. Franek could care less if Wiesel could not eat; he wanted to

The thoughts of condemnation and lack of self-preservation wouldn’t have ravished his mind. Page eighty-six later reveals how Elie “soon forgot him” and became more selfish by “think{ing} of {himself} again. ”Throughout much of the book, Elie writes on his selflessness towards protecting and caring for his father, but after facing so much he grows more and more selfish. This quote shows the insensitive nature that Elie developed through his time spent in the concentration camps. Lastly, Elie continually confesses his personal conflict with emotional dormancy through his

Good triumphs over evil because the prisoners never think to get revenge on the Nazis. In the last few pages of the book, Elie’s camp, Buchenwald, is liberated by the Americans. He explains what everyone does immediately following liberation and how no one speaks of violence towards the Nazi regime. “And even when we were no longer hungry, not one of us thought of revenge. The next day, a few of the young men ran into Weimar to to bring back potatoes and clothes… But still no trace of revenge” (Wiesel 115).

“Blessed be Gods name? Why? But why would I bless him?” Elie says that on page 67 of this book. To me, when Elie says this, he shows his anger towards God and about everything that he is letting happen. He began to wonder, if he was God, why he was letting all the Germans do horrible things to them. However, this never made any sense to Elie. He was always contemplating the existence of God. On page 69 while supper

Eliezer was taught that God is supposed to be filled with good, yet as he goes through the Holocaust, he thinks that maybe God doesn't exist at all . As he and his father are walking through Auschwitz, he sees the Nazi's burning babies in a large pit. While his father began whispering to himself the prayer for the dead, reciting "may his name be blessed and magnified...," Eliezer asks himself, thinking that he would be burned as well, "Why should I bless his name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe...was silent. What had I to thank him for?"(Page 31) This is the beginning of his lack of faith in god. As Eliezer and his father were together in Buna, an occasional public hanging would take place. Hangings were executed not only for those that committed a crime, but also for the prisoners of the camp, in order to learn a lesson from the accused. In Buna, one of three prisoners who were hung was a little boy, who was a servant of a member of the resistance group in the camp. Once the boy was publicly hung, the boy was still alive, just hanging there on the noose for about half an hour. As the prisoners in the camp were forced to watch the hanging, they began to cry. Eliezer said that even though there were so many hangings, this was the first time everyone was crying. At that moment, a prisoner asked out loud "Where is God now?"(Page 62) and Eliezer answered to himself "Where is he?