Wiesel however is a young jewish boy who did not know of the horrors that the Nazis brought down upon the jews. When the Germans occupied Wiesel's town, they were nice and compassionate, which lead the citizens to believe that the Germans would not do anything to harm them. While in the concentration camps, Wiesel lost his faith and realized what the world could come to; therefore, he matured extremely quickly. At the end of The Boy in Striped Pajamas, Bruno gets gassed because of one of the gas chambers his father ran. This caused great regret in his father as he now knows that he is responsible for all the jews and his son!
Imagine believing so strongly in something and then being let down, or thinking that you were wrong even to believe. In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie felt as though he had lost his religion and belief in God. We learned how strong his beliefs were when he says,“I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep of the destruction of the Temple,” (Wiesel, 14). But then he experiences the hardships of the Holocaust and it abruptly changed him.
Not knowing that their friendship was forbidden, he gives Shmuel a piece of bread while Shmuel is cleaning the glasses. When Lieutenant Koler finds out that Shmuel had eaten a piece of bread, he beats him. Because Bruno hadn’t known that the two boys were not supposed to be friends, he had gotten Shmuel beaten. Had his parents told him the truth from the beginning that he wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near Jewish people, he would not have had to see his friend hurt. The main message Ogden sends in “Hangman” is that silence is dangerous.
Brutal and horrific sites of babies being used as shooting targets and hangings of fellow Jews lead Ellie on his path of believing his God was not stronger nor more powerful than man. "For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless His name" It expressed Ellie beginning to question a man who once was his reason for being. Ellie’s reasons in believing continued to be shot down as he was forced to witness the hanging of an innocent child. "Where is he?
“During the day I studied the Talmud.”(pg1) In addition, Elie, at the age of 12 he was already interested in his religion. “One day I asked my father to find me a master to guide me in my studies of the Cabbala.”(pg1) In fact, Elie was trying to learn more by looking for a mentor to teach him about his religion. “One evening I told him how unhappy I was because I could not find a master in Sighet to instruct me into the Zohar.”(pg3) However, Elie was disappointed because he could not find a mentor. Elizer is attempting to understand about his customs and traditions of being a jew during the world war 2. In fact, Elie is trying to adapt to his Jewish traditions.
He eventually got so fed up with this that he died his hair purple “I just wanted everyone to call me something else” (316). This idea did not pan out the way that he wanted it too and everyone began to call him “The Purple Flee”. Finally, he had enough with the bullying all together and decided to skip town, to get away from everything that was bothering him. Arturo finds himself at the town church and befriends the church custodian named Johann. At first Arturo did not know what to think of Johann “Right then I started worrying about being locked up in a empty church with the old guy” (315).
After Blockalteste told Elie that he is in a concentration camp, he shouldn’t care about anyone else except himself even his old father. Elie began to thinks about what Blockaltest had told him, “Too late to save your old father----You could have two ration of bread, two rations of soup----“(111). When the SS officer was beating his father in front of Elie. Normally human been would protect his father getting hurt, but he chose to do nothing and just watched his old father getting whipped, because he was afraid to get hurt. Next morning when Elie found out his father got took away, he didn't weep anymore.
Children were to go to school. Sometimes in defiance, the Jews would remain close together on the train, and refuse to move. This act of defiance was immediately met with an open fire on them by the German guards. They would be coaxed out of the train saying that work awaited them, and when they stepped out of the train, the guards opened fire on them. This left very few Jews in a condition to enter the camp.
When Karl Seidl finished his story, he begged the Jewish forced-laborer to forgive him. Wiesenthal, however, rose and walked out. During the next two years, Wiesenthal shared this story with fellow camp mates, ending each time with: “Was my silence at the bedside of the dying Nazi right or wrong?” The incident and question so troubled Wiesenthal that, in 1946, he visited Karl Seidl’s mother in Stuttgart but left without telling the bereaved woman about her son’s misdeeds. A number of essayists chose to respond to Wiesenthal’s question thusly: “What would I have done [in Simon Wiesenthal’s place]?” Although Wiesenthal acceded to such a “paraphrase,” this writer agrees with responder Lawrence Langer that such role-playing about Holocaust reality trivializes the serious issues of judgment and forgiveness that The Sunflower raises. Forgiveness is, indeed, the essence of the debate that high scholars should enter into.
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Wojtyla was born on May 18th, 1920. In his youth, he wanted to become an actor, but when the Germans invaded Poland during World War II, they banned acting and anyone who continued to do anything considered artful was to be sent to a concentration camp. As well as that, they sent teachers with any rule-breaking Jew to concentration camps. Wojtyla fought in the underground movement, and around the same time his mother, father and brother died. Around that time, he then considered becoming a priest since his dreams of becoming an actor were ruined by the Germans.