Eliezer Wiesel’s view of human nature and understanding of God radically changed due to his experience of the Holocaust. In 1941, Wiesel was a religious, twelve-year-old boy, living peacefully with his family in Sighet. He believed in the goodness of human beings and revered God above all else. However, all of this changed when his family, neighbors, and other Jews were expelled from their homes. These people spent the next three years trying to survive torture, starvation, and death. Night recounts Wiesel’s experiences and the accompanying changes in his belief system.
Initially, Wiesel believed that human beings are innately good and always treat each other with kindness. He knew that people had the responsibility to help others, even if they did not like them. In the introductory paragraph, he remarks, “As a rule, our townspeople, while they did help the poor, did not like them” (Wiesel, 2006, p. 3). However, in the concentration camp, Wiesel was a firsthand witness to human greed. He encountered a fraudulent dentist who sold prisoners’ teeth for his personal benefit (p. 52). People fought and killed each other for bread rations even when they had their own share. During hardship, kindness was rare, and sharing was a suspended practice.
Aside from greed, Wiesel saw that human beings had the capacity for cruelty. In disbelief, he laments, “How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept quiet?” (p. 32). He expected an uproar from the rest of the world because, according to him, such cruelty was against human nature. Wiesel saw that adversity revealed the worst of humanity, and this changed his belief that people are intrinsically good.
Wiesel’s view of human nature also changed as a consequent of his own actions. Before the genocide, he was a pious boy in pursuit of righteousness. He comments that, “I became convinced that Moishe the Beadle would help me enter eternity” (p. 5). However, his thoughts and actions during the Holocaust surprised even him. For instance, when his father was slapped for addressing the Gypsy, Wiesel is unfazed. He says, “My father had been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked… Only yesterday I would have dug my nails into this criminal’s back” (p. 39). Wiesel kept quiet because he did not want to encounter the same fate as his father. Later on, when his father contracts dysentery and becomes too weak to care for himself, a part of Wiesel wished his father would die. He thinks to himself, “If only I were relieved of this responsibility, I could use all my strength to fight for my own survival” (p. 106). Although he is ashamed of these thoughts, Wiesel realizes that all human beings, including himself, prioritized self-preservation.
The Holocaust also changed Wiesel’s understanding of and relationship with God. When living in Sighet, Wiesel was a staunch believer in God. He wanted to model his behavior after the teachings of the Talmud, which he spent countless hours reading. His Holocaust experiences left him angry with God. After witnessing people being burned, “For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why would I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the chose to be silent” (p. 33). He is resentful because he felt that God had abandoned His people. Although Wiesel did no doubt His existence, he questioned everything he thought he knew about Him. As the captives talked about God in the camp one evening, Wiesel quietly thinks, “I was not denying His existence, but I doubted his absolute justice” (p. 45). Later on, he mourns that he “felt alone in a world without God” (p. 68). Wiesel’s faith in God gradually weakened and eventually faded as he witnessed the evil that God had presumably permitted.
During his experiences in the concentration camps, Wiesel stopped believing that God answered prayers or was even worthy of them. Prior to this, he prayed incessantly and spent a lot of time at the synagogue because prayer was akin to living and breathing (p. 4). However, when he witnessed people being burned alive in crematoriums in Auschwitz, he questions, “What was there to thank Him for?”(p. 33). During a solemn service to say prayers for the dead, Wiesel refused to participate. He blamed God for the atrocities that happened in the camp. “He kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death?” (67). Wiesel stopped praying because He did not think God listened to or answered prayers, which was contrary to his earlier understanding of God.
In conclusion, Wiesel’s life was completely changed by the Holocaust. Prior to this, he believed that human beings were kind. The atrocities that the Germans committed against the Jews showed him that people could be evil. His own struggle to stay alive at all costs was a testament to the how adversity can change a person. Through this harrowing experience, Wiesel’s faith in God dwindled, and in the end, he was no longer the innocent, pious boy he was in Sighet.
Reference
Wiesel, E. (2006). Night. (M. Wiesel, Trans.) Hill & Wang/ Oprah’s Book Club.