by Kelley Gecik

Created on: July 04, 2008

In his heartbreaking memoir Night, Elie Wiesel recounts to the world the injustice, cruelty and suffering that Jews had to bear during World War II. Elie was fifteen years old and living in a time where common decency still prevailed. Religion was at the forefront of many lives, with family and community coming in close behind. Elie lost not only his mother, father and little sister, but his innocence and understanding of humankind.

Elie longed to learn more about his religion, Judaism, and was hoping to venture into the teachings of Kabbalah. He spent a lot of time with his religious mentor, Moshe the Beadle. Moshe was taken, along with thousands of other Jews, into the woods where he witnessed hundreds of people killed my machine guns. He faked his own death and rushed back to the town to warn his people. But they would not listen. They thought he had become crazy and soon, he was cut off from the community. This was Elie's first loss of innocence: the loss of respect for his religious mentor and the ostracism of him by the community.

Later, as Elie is fighting to survival day by day in the concentration camp, he starts to question if there even is a God. As he sees people killing without discretion, smells the odor of burning flesh, and feels the ache of hunger ravage his body, he wonders how a merciful God could ever let these things happen. Why hasn't God intervened? Here he loses his sense of innocence regarding religion, as the doubts and challenges have opened his eyes and made him think in a way he never had before. If God couldn't save them-who could?

It is the natural order in life, that a parent takes care of a child. Parents protect their children from the earliest stages in life: making sure they are fed, teaching them about how to cross a busy street, helping them with problems they may encounter. By age fifteen, we can assume the Elie had already been helped by his father in many tasks. His father was a well respected man in the community and certainly he had taken time to make sure that Elie was doing well in his studies and his behavior, as well as making sure Elie had all of the basic necessities that one needs. In the concentration camp, however, the tables were suddenly turned. Age was an enemy of a prisoner, and Elie's father was older. His body was weak and his spirit broken. He had seen his wife and daughter led away to the gas chamber. He was helplessly watching his own son fade away before his eyes. Elie had to become the parent to his father. He found food and clothing for him, made sure he didn't fall asleep in the cold snow during a death march, and gave him words of comfort when times seemed to be at their bleakest. This was another loss of innocence: the belief that your parents can always protect you. Certainly it is humbling to see our parents struggle and flail. For Elie, given the circumstances, it must have been terrifying.

When we watch Elie Wiesel in interviews today, we do not see a broken man who has lost touch with the world, or one who has forgotten how to trust. Though, through his many horrific experiences, he has lost his innocence, he has gained something through it: perserverance.

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