Ethos In Night By Elie Wiesel

“God must have been on leave during the Holocaust.” quoted Simon Wiesenthal. Simon Wiesenthal was a survivor of the Holocaust, which gives him a great amount of ethos in his quote. Another survivor of the Holocaust, Eliezer Wiesel, had the same thoughts. Eliezer, Elie as he is referred to, published a novel titled Night, which showed his struggles throughout the Holocaust. Elie was a Jewish boy who had wished to study Kabbalah prior to the Holocaust. According to Oxford Dictionaries, Kabbalah is “the ancient Jewish tradition of mystical interpretation of the Bible.” Knowing that Elie wished to study Kabbalah shows how important religion was to his life, but his views on religion would soon change. Elie shows a great amount of belief in God at the beginning, a great amount of doubt in the middle, and a great amount of confusion at the end of his imprisonment. Some children born into families are very fond of their religion, while others are not so fond; Elie Wiesel is a prime example of being fond of his beliefs. Before taken prisoner Elie was asked if he knew why he prayed by Moishe the Beadle, to which he began to question why he did (Wiesel 4). Moishe goes on to …show more content…
Elie can greatly relate to Wiesenthal’s quote, because Elie had felt that God had abandoned the Jews during the Holocaust. At the beginning of Elie’s life, before he was forced to mature, he had a great mentality of learning religious practices. His doubt in God would turn to hatred as he endured the harsh realities of the Holocaust. Once Elie was liberated from the camps, he would never “forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams into ashes” (Wiesel 34). Suffering the tragedies of the Holocaust would impact any being physically, mentally, and religiously, therefore Elie’s wounded faith in God is