Night

by Elie Wiesel

On the change Wiesel went through during the time of his stay at Auschwitz.

Night: A Journey of Change

by Katy Z. 

10 October 2012

The first night Elie arrived at Auschwitz, he delineated his first impression of the concentration camp, “We looked at the flames in the darkness. There was an abominable odor floating in the air” (Wiesel 25). Elie Wiesel would never come to forget that first night, the first of the horror-filled nights that would alter his life forever.  Throughout his stay at the three concentration camps: Auschwitz-Bierkenau, Buna, and Buchenwald, Elie would come to witness countless numbers of humans being massacred and taken to the crematory. His view on Death would be dramatically changed. As young Elie beheld the sights of injustice toward his Jewish race, he began to question his loyalty toward God and whether God was divinely just. The abhorrent experiences Elie endured shaped his character and mind to become emotionally strong to the point where he has become numb. In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel witnesses numerous killings and inhumanity that transforms him to become a morally strong person and causes him to lose faith in his religion.

Already, from the first night he spent at Auschwitz, Elie had begun to become desensitized to all the heinous events going on in the camps. He says, “We had already lived through so much that night, we thought nothing could frighten us anymore” (Wiesel 36). He adjusted to his surroundings fairly quickly in order to be able to survive the Holocaust. Death became the norm at the concentration camps. Auschwitz alone housed 52 crematories, each of which was capable of incinerating 4,756 corpses a day. As his stay in the concentration camps went on Elie was no longer troubled by the deaths, “The thousands who had died daily at Auschwitz and at Bierkenau in the crematory ovens no longer troubled me” (Wiesel 59). Death was more commonly found than life in the camps; the living walked with sunken cheekbones and jutting ribs. Death became a constant term that hung in the air; one must always be on his toes or be vulnerable to death.  

Elie’s faith in the good of God was stripped away slowly, piece by piece from him every time he witnessed a despicable crime. Before going to the concentration camps, Elie was an extremely devoted follower of the Cabbala and the Talmud, “I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue” (Wiesel 1). He spent his nights pondering questions of the scripture with Moshe the Beadle, and planned to grow up and serve a religious occupation. He never once questioned God’s justice or authority. After his experiences in the concentration camps, however, he felt rebellion rise up in him against God, “What are You, my God…Why do You still trouble their sick minds, their crippled bodies” (Wiesel 63). After the Holocaust, Elie viewed God as unjust and cruel. His faith was greatly diminished                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 once he understood the impure side of humanity.

All of the dying, agony, and horror Elie witnessed led him to become emotionally hardened, resisting to any fears of death. The only thing that kept his mental motivation alive was the fact that this father needed him. He could not betray his father as did Rabbi Eliahou’s son did, “he had wanted to get rid of his father! He had felt that his father was growing weak…to free himself from an encumbrance which could lessen his own chances of survival” (Wiesel 87).  Elie was disgusted when he realized the betrayal human beings were capable of. He prayed to God that he, himself, would never abandon his own father as Eliahou’s son had. Although Elie is more righteous than the other boy, naturally selfish instincts emerge later in the novel. In a passing thought, he thinks to himself, “Don’t let me find him! If only I could get rid of this dead weight [his father], so that I could use all my strength to struggle for my own survival, and only worry about myself” (Wiesel 101). Elie was very ashamed at himself. Although he quickly pushed the thought aside, it showed the true wicked, selfish character of humans which was something he could not fully exterminate from his nature.

In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel experiences a journey of changes that that robs him of his faith in his religion and transforms his view on death radically. He witnesses sons, killing their fathers with their own bare hands and the unimaginably inhumane crimes humans are capable of. For the first time in his life, Elie questioned the authority and goodness of his God. It was unreal, to him, that such evil and torture was allowed by a just God. In total, the Holocaust took the lives of 6 million or more innocent people. And it was his first night that changed it all. The night he’d never forget.