In Night, Elie tells the tale of how he and his fellow Jewish people lived and died, brutally and extremely inhumanely in the German death camps during World War 2 with very vivid imagery and a mesmerizing choice of words. This story was very captivating and hard to put down. It allowed me to truly understand the difficulties faced by Jews during this time. Something I find very intriguing that also happened to be an important theme for Elie’s experience is religion. I am not religious, but I believe in a Creator, and the multitude of possibilities behind the existence of one. I find truth in the similarities of seemingly different religions, and base my beliefs around those similarities. Elie’s first experience with his short-time mentor of Kabbalah, Moishe the Beadle, Moishe asks Elie a question that he had never thought about before, “Why do you cry when you pray?” (4) Elie’s mental response of not knowing, but understanding that he felt a need to cry and did so seems very human to me. After finishing the story, I find it ironic how different being human can be, depending on the experiences one has. The awful things that happened to and around Elie changed his humanity. Being treated as inhumanely as he was affected that characteristic he had before the Holocaust.
