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What I learned in Night regarding loss of faith
The estimated number of Jews killed in the holocaust is 7,800,000. One of the survivors of the tragedy named Elie Wiesel wrote a book about his experiences in the concentration camp called; Night. In the book, he and many others are forced to bare many harsh conditions. Elie starts to lose his faith in God after witnessing traumatic events when he first arrives at the camps. Other people like Stein of Antwerp, Moche the Beadle, and others also lose their faith at one time or another in the book.
The first character that loses to his faith in the novel is Moche the Beadle. In the beginning of the book, Elie would always pray in a synagogue with him. Moche and Elie develop a strong bond that resembled a teacher and an apprentice, but then he was shipped away to a camp with all the other foreign Jews. Months passed and Moche returned abruptly, with his faith stripped away from him. “Moche had changed. There was no longer any joy in his eyes. He no longer sang. He no longer talked to me of God or the cabbala, but only of what he had seen.”(17). By losing his faith, he also loses his will to live. When asked by Elie why he bothers to tell all the people of his stories he replies “…You can’t understand…I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death…To live? I don’t attach my importance to life anymore. I’m alone.” (17). As the Germans take control of Sighet, Moche the Beadle flees and is not heard of for the rest of the book.
The next person who starts to loss their faith is the main character, Elie. After the Jews got off the train in Birkenau, they were separated into the men’s group and woman’s group. Elie was then staring at piles of children’s bodies in the crematory. All the people started reciting the prayer for the dead when revolt first started to rise up in him. “Why should I bless his name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent.”...