Eliezer Wiesel: The Theme of Religious Protest

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Table of Contents

Discussion
Conclusion
Reference

Discussion

Eliezer Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet town, Romania. Sighet is a mall Balkan town in the province of Transylvania. This province had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the end of World War 1. This province had the Romanian majority, and was therefore captured by Romania when Austria was defeated in the war. The province was again annexed by Hungary with the support of Germany in 1940.

The Jews community of Sighet had relatively good relations with Romanian and Hungarian neighbors up until 1944. The Jew community made up more than one-third of the people inhabiting Sighet when Wiesel was born. The majority of these people were poor laborers, artisans and shopkeepers. In 1944, many Jews from Sighet and outlying villages were deported to concentration camps, where majority were harshly massacred.

Wiesel’s father died at Buchewald of dysentery and starvation shortly before the camp was liberated by the American army in 1945. On liberation, Wiesel and other Jewish orphans were placed on a train heading to Belgium. Out of compassion for children, the French General Charles De Gaulle, had it diverted to France. While in France, he began secondary education and rapidly learnt French with the assistance of generous French tutors.

The French language became his language of freedom and literature. To find some philosophical meaning in what had happened to the Jewish people, his family, and himself, Wiesel undertook studies on philosophy, psychology, and literature in 1948. Wiesel got great encouragement from Francois Mauriac, the French Roman Catholic novelist and philosopher. In 1954, when Wiesel interviewed Mauriac, he began to talk about how Christians and Jews had in common. Mauriac then narrated the sufferings of Jesus on the cross. Wiesel was angered as he informed Mauriac that only 10 years before, so many Jewish children had suffered infinitely more than Jesus. Mauriac responded to Wiesel by encouraging him to speak about it. He was told that he had the responsibility to share his concentration camp experiences with the world.

Mauriac also told him that it was wrong for him to have maintained silence all this time. These sentiments encouraged Wiesel and he began to write about the Holocaust. Wiesel has received numerous a wards and prizes over the years including a Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The writings of Elie Wiesel can be grouped in the perspective for both literary and theology. His major works have tended to experiment with genres that are alternate. For instance, in the novels Souls on Fire (1970) and Messengers of God, Wiesel presents a Hasidic and Midrashic collection of stories. Wiesel also wrote cantata in Ani Maamin (1973).

Brief Summery of the Contents Novel Night

Wiesel has become a major spokesman in many literary works for religious protests. For instance, he portrays the evolution of his despair in his autobiographical novel, night. At the beginning of the novel, Wiesel describes himself as a youth preoccupied with the mystery of God. Wiesel’s story in the night starts in 1941, when he is twelve years old. Wiesel begins to relate the story of Moshe the Beadle. Moshe was a caretaker of Hasidic synagogue and was Wiesel’s mentor. Under Moshe, Wiesel studied the Talmud and delved in the world of Jewish mysticism through cabbala.

They were taken to the Polish territory where Gestapo killed all of them, except Moshe. Moshe returned to Sighet to tell his story, unfortunately no one believed him. The people thought he was trying to get sympathy or he was running insane. Perhaps the reaction of the people of Sighet to the story told by Moshe that informed Wiesel’s refusal to tell his story ten years after liberation. Wiesel tried to talk out his father to move to Palestine but he refused. The people of Sighet seemed to be leaving in denial figuring that the Nazis would stay at Budapest and would not reach their town.

By 1944, the Germans had arrived and took away rights from the Jews under pain of death. They were first herded into ghettos which were in deplorable conditions, then stripped of their belongings and packed into cattle cars. The majority of them did not make it in transit to the concentration camp. Wiesel feels that his father and Jews of Sighet conceded to their sufferings by obeying every German decree. The suffering of the Jews people is avidly described by Wiesel as they are transported to the concentration camps.

The Wiesel family and other community were members were deported to Birkenau, a death camp adjacent for Auschwitz. As they were brutally rounded up, not a single neighbor or friend, not a single gentile came to assist the Jews of Sighet. Most stood by the pitiful and tragic exodus. This scene repeated almost everywhere else in German and the area it occupied in Europe. This fact has haunted Wiesel for most of his life. When the train arrived in Birkenbau in the first night, Wiesel sees coils of smoke billowing from a large oven, and the first time in his life Wiesel inhaled the scent of burning human flesh:

“Never shall I forget that night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreathes of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself (Wiesel, 41).”

Wiesel witnessed his mother and sister forced into an extermination gas chamber the very first night. He witnessed children hanged; babies pitch forked; prisoners killed by fellow cell mates over food; and the rest of his family members become slave workers. Wiesel was fortunate that he was able to stay with his father in the camp. Wiesel begins to lose his faith at this point. He questions God:

“Some talked of God, of mysterious ways, of sins of the Jewish people and of their future deliverance. But I had ceased to pray. How I sympathized with the job! I did not deny God existence but I doubted His Absolute justice (Wiesel, 55).”

As the novel progresses, Wiesel’s religious rebellion deepens further. He is perplexed by the incongruity of the Jewish liturgy that gives praise to God and the events of the concentration camps that indict him. He is dismayed by the new prisoners who recite the Kaddish prayer when they sense the nature of their plight. This leaves Wiesel consumed with anger:

“Why should I bless his name? He asked. The Eternal Lord, of the universe, the all powerful and terrible was silent. What had I done to thank him for” (Wiesel, 43).

Wiesel’s anger continues to intensify. At the New Year service, he refuses to bless God and praise the universe in which there is mass murder:

“This day I had ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused” (Wiesel, 79).

On the year Kippur, Wiesel refuses to fast:

“There was no longer any reason why I should fast. I no longer accept God’s silence, as I swallowed my bowl of soup, I saw in the gesture an act. In the depths of my heart I felt a great void” (Wiesel, 80).

This void is Wiesel’s loss of faith, the recognition that God had forsaken his chosen people, leaving them to die in the elaborate machinery of concentration camps.

Conclusion

In sum, this paper has discussed the theme of religious protest against innocent and senseless suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. The author witnesses first hand the gruesome evil being committed against the Jews community. This shatters his belief and faith in God as he laments why the suffering people had been forsaken. Wiesel feels betrayed by God especially at the moment his people needed him most.

Reference

Wiesel, E. Night. New York: Avon Books, 1960.

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Eliezer Wiesel: The Theme of Religious Protest

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