Focus Question: How do Elie's experiences during the Holocaust change him as a person?
Before Elie went to the concentration camps he was a very sympathetic and kind person. When Moishe the Beadle returns from being deported Elie writes, "I often sat with him, after services, and listened to his tales, truing to understand his grief." Elie was a very kind and sympathetic person and sat with Moishe after he returned. Although he could not believe what Moishe was saying, he still tried to be kind to him. Elie was a very kind person, to all people. Elie was also very religious. He says that when he was a child, "By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple." Elie was very religious and used this to guide his decisions. He thought that everything that God did was for the good of humans.
Elie undergoes great changes throughout the Holocaust. He becomes much less sympathetic through his experience. When his father is beaten he says, "What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked." This shows that Elie cared very little about the conditions others were in and only cared about himself. He had only been in the camps for one day and already had lost much of his caring and kindness. The camps had began to make him a completely different person. Elie also lost his faith in God in the concentration camps. When he had just arrived and seen babies being burned he said, "Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?" Elie thought that god had abandoned him and the other prisoners. He became very angry at God because of this. This was the start of him abandoning his religion.
Elie's experiences during the Holocaust make him much less sympathetic than he was before he was put in the ghetto. When Elie's father dies in the camp in Germany Elie says, "If I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!" He was not upset that his father had died and even felt free from the burden of supporting him. Before the Holocaust Elie was very kind to his father and even during the beginning of the Holocaust he grew even closer to his father. The horrors of the Holocaust caused Elie to not feel sadness when his father died. Elie's experiences also made him doubt God. When Jews would normally fast Elie says, "And then there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no longer accepted God's silence." He was very angry at God. He did not fast to show his respect towards God because he felt that God was being unfairly silent. He thought that God was allowing these Jews to die and that he should not respect or honor him. At the beginning of the book, before the Holocaust, Elie was very religious and would even cry when he prayed. His opinion towards God was changed by the Holocaust.
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