Loss is a
terrible thing no matter the circumstance. In the autobiography
Night by Elie Wiesel, written in 1958, loss is something Elie
cannot overcome. Elie suffers with the loss of his home, community,
town, family, respect and ultimately his God. You and I feel loss
when someone close to us dies because of sickness or accidents. We,
as a result, rely on our God to help pull us through. Elie has lost
everything including his trust in God. Is this loss temporary? Can
Elie find his way back or are the incidents he witnesses too harsh
for anyone to forget, let alone accept? Elie finds himself in a
situation people rarely recover from, however Elie, with persistence
and prayer finds his answer.
When Elie is
young God, is so important to him. Shlomo, Elie’s father, noticed
his devotion because of his son’s constant prayer.
He
watched me one day as I prayed at dusk.
“Why
do you cry when you pray?” he asked, as though he knew me well.
“I
don’t know,” I answered, troubled.
I
had never asked myself that question. I cried because….because
something
inside me felt the need to cry. That was all I knew.
“Why
do you pray?” Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I
breathe?
“I
don’t know,” I told him, even more troubled and ill at ease.
“I
don’t know.” (Wiesel,
Elie. Night.
1st. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. 4. Print.)
Thus we
recognize prayer is a way of life to Elie. Prayer sustains the young
Eliezar to his core because without praying to his God, Elie is
unable to be nourished and live. Elie feels the presence of God in
every pore of his body and loses control of mortal thoughts. Elie is
consumed by the love of a God he is openly spending his entire life,
to not only love, but to serve.
Serving God is
a passion that quickly fades with the loss of Elie’s home and town,
but his faith, although dented, remains just as strong. “It was to be the
last night spent in our house. I was up at dawn. I wanted to have
time to pray before leaving.” (18)
Elie knows with the
dawn of the next day, his life would change completely. Elie knows
all the comforts of home will be gone, but he could and would not let
the nazis take his faith to a deserving God. Elie believes that
wherever his family is placed, he takes comfort in the knowledge that
the one thing that will hold them together is their belief in God.
Elie holds on
to this amazing faith like holding on to a runaway train. Elie knows
the train, God, is testing him and he tries desperately to keep a
tight grip. However, the circumstances and experiences are horrific
and he finds his grip loosening with every passing day. Elie
questions God’s love constantly; in the death that surrounds him,
the anger in the eyes of his captors and even in the watered downed
soup he devours each night. Elie wants to keep hoping that God’s
love will prevail, but the train keeps moving faster and faster.
The train
filled with terrified Jews arrives at Aushwitz, “not a convelesant
home,” where they experience anger at its highest. Angry German
robot soldiers push, shove, and demoralize the horrified Elie. Ellie
needs to remain strong for himself and especially his father, but
Elie’s faith is tested in ways that are unimaginable. Ellie and
his fellow Jews experience sights of babies being shot and hangings
without cause, and no one utters a word in protest or even prays to
God openly to make it stop. Is Elie loosing his faith? The faith
Elie has always thought would follow him through life?
Why, but why would
I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused
thousands of
children to burn in His mass graves? Because He kept six
crematoria working
day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because
in His great might,
He created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other
factories of death?
How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master
of the Universe,
who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch
as our fathers, our
mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces? Praised be Thy
Holy Name, for
having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?
Elie is so blind
with anger, and that very anger is what drives him. Ellie gets swept
away with anger and allows himself to naturally question God and even
the presence of Him or the lack thereof. Elie cradles this anger and
holds fast which in turn makes him stronger. This strength is what
drives Ellie, but his anger troubles him. Elie refuses to let God
off the hook.
But now, I no
longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament.
On the contrary, I
felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes
had opened and I
was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man.
Without love or
mercy. I was nothing but ashes now, but I felt myself to be
stronger than this
Almighty to whom my life had been bound for so long. In
the midst of these
men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger.
As Ellie’s
anger grows he finds himself further and further away from God. The
only thing Elie has left to remind him of the days with prayer and
God is his father. Elie can survive anything knowing his father is
always with him. But, even that grace is taken away in the middle of
the night.
When I came down
from my bunk after roll call, I could see his lips trembling;
he
was murmuring something. I remained more than an hour leaning over
him,
looking at him, etching his bloody, broken face into my mind.
Then I had to go to
sleep. I climbed into my bunk, above my father, who was still
alive. The date was January 28, 1945.
I woke up at dawn
on January 29. On my father’s cot there lay another sick person.
They
must have taken him away before daybreak and taken him to the
crematorium.
Perhaps he was still breathing….
“No prayers were
said over his tomb. No candle lit in his memory. His last word
had
been my name. He called out to me and I had not answered.” (112)
No prayers are said either by a rabbi or even by Ellie. Shlomo, his beloved father,
is gone and now so is his God. Elie has lost the fight and wonders
if he will ever find his way back to God. How can a deserving God do
this to anyone and expect devotion? Ellie has to answer this
question before he is able to find his faith. Elizer Wiesel’s
faith is cremated along with his father and six million other Jews.
Elie’s faith
at this point is gone. Elie no longer mentions God’s name or even
prays to him. Elie is free from his human captors but not free from
the anguish they caused. Will he ever be whole? Will this broken
man feel alive again? “One day when I
was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror, a
corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me
has never left me.” (115)
Not only is Elie’s
human body the appearance of a dead body but also of a dead soul.
Elie sees nothing in the mirror of the spiritual being he once knew.
The eyes are hollow and sad with grief. Did God really allow this
all to happen?
Elie’s faith
dissipates along with the smoke above the crematorium’s smokestack.
Each day Elie watches it float away with the smoke he has learned to
hate. So hating God seems natural to him, but then he is reminded of
the little boy deep within, that devoted his entire life to God.
Could Elie really hate the God he had always relied on and depended
upon? Or could he just be angry? Elie decides that anger can eat
away at someone and without the help of God could destroy a person’s
sole reason for living. Elie understands that it is ok to be angry
as long as the anger doesn’t destroy you in the process. Maybe
being angry at God actually saved Elie’s life allowing him to
become stronger and fight his way through. So, Elie is willing to
let that anger and hate float away with that infernal smoke. Not to
be forgotten but to love his God once again who saved Elie from
eternal hatred. The God, who is with him always.
Wiesel,
Elie, Script. First
Person Singular.
Dir. David Grossbach. Perf. William, Hurt. PBS, 2002. DVD.
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