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Faithful
"I was almost thirteen and deeply observant. By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple."
At a young age, he would focus strongly on learning about his faith. -
Devout
"Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?"
He compares his faith to the essential aspects of life like living and breathing. -
Questioning faith, crematoria
"For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. 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?" -33
Elie again questions the Almighty of the universe alongside his faith. -
Fear was greater than hunger
"Jealousy devoured us, consumed us. We never thought to admire him. Poor hero committing suicide for a ration or two or more of soup...In our minds, he was already dead." -59
The people did not get a sufficient amount of food, but the fear of dying and being punished was greater than their hunger. When one tries to get more food, everyone knows that that person is dead. -
Happy
"I began to laugh. I was happy." -72
Strange happiness because Elie was not chosen for the selection because he was running too fast. -
Hatred towards Hungarian police
"That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death."
Elie traces his hatred back to this moment when he recalls the treatment they faced upon being deported. -
Questioning faith
" I looked at my house in which I had spent years seeking my God, fasting to hasten the coming of the Messiah, imagining what my life would be like later. yet I felt little sadness. My mind was empty."-19
Elie begins to question his earlier faithfulness. -
Elie separated from his mother and sister
"I didn't know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever." -29
The family was separated with Elie staying with his father and Tzipora staying with the mother. -
Elie witnesses the crematorium
"A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes... children thrown into the flames." -32
"Sleep tends to elude me."
Witnessing the horrendous acts have scarred a mental image into Elie. -
Returning faith, shoes
"I had new shoes myself, But as they were covered with a thick coat of mud, they had not been noticed. I thanked God, in am improvised prayer, for having create mud in His infinite and wondrous universe" -38 -
Elie stops praying and doubts
"I had ceased to pray. I had concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice." -45
Lost in his faith. -
Elie rebels during Rosh Hashanah
"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 had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death." -67
Faith is destroyed. Elie rebels because he reflects upon all the horror God has created. Everything is happening because of God, the Jewish faith. -
Pain
"I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip" -57
Elie has experienced tremendous amounts of emotional and physical pain to the point where only the physical pain from the lashes hurt. -
Where is God?
"Behind me, I hear the same man asking: For God's sake, where is God? And from within me, I hear a voice answer: Where He is? This is where--hanging here from this gallows..." -65
"That night, the soup tasted of corpses." -65
The food reflected the hanging and death of the prisoners who possessed weapons. And the child who remained alive was more torture than death. God is hanging from that child. -
Yom Kippur
"I did not fast. First of all, to please my father who had forbidden me to do so. And then, there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no longer accepted God's silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him." -69
Lost faith in God. Rebellion against God. -
The bell
"The bell regulated everything. It gave me orders and I executed them blindly. I hated that bell. Whenever I happened to dream of a better world, I imagined a universe without a bell." -73
The bell was the symbol of oppression that Elie had to endure. -
Where is God of Mercy?
"I am not a saint. I am a simple creature of flesh and bone. I suffer hell in my soul and my flesh. I also have eyes and I see what is being done here. Where is God's mercy? Where's God? How can I believe, how can anyone believe in this God of Mercy?" -77
Loss of faith in God. -
Powerlessness
"I considered jumping him [the doctor], stranging him. But I had neither the courage nor the strength. I was riveted to my father's agony. My hands were aching, I was clenching them so hard. To strangle the doctor and the others! To set the whole world on fire! My father's murderers! But even the cry stuck in my throat." -109
Although Elie wants to kill the doctors who refused to help his father and do all these bad things, he does not have the power over them or himself. -
Reflection in corpses
"I saw myself in every stiffened corpse. Soon I wouldn't even be seeing them anymore; I would be one of the." -89
The corpses were a reflection of everyone because has lost faith. -
Despair and indifference
"Our minds numb with indifference. Here or elsewhere, what did it matter? Die today or tomorrow, or later? The night was growing longer, neverending." -98
The night is a symbol of despair. There is no reason to live. -
Father's death
"I climbed into my bund, 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." -112 -
Gratitude
"I shall never forget the gratitude that shone in his eyes when he swallowed this beverage. The gratitude of a wounded animal." -106 -
Unable to cry
"I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recessed of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!..." -112
After his father's death, Elie feels pain but fails to express it. -
Faith in Hitler
"I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people." -81
Hitler has achieved all he has promised while God is not helping the Jewish people. There is more faith in Hitler than he will continue what he promises over God. -
Inhumanity
"They had orders to shoot anyone who could not sustain the pace. Their fingers on the triggers, they did not deprive themselves of the pleasure. If one of us stopped for a second, a quick shot eliminated the filthy dog." -85 -
Losing strength
"I sometimes closed my eyes and it was like running while asleep."
"We were exhausted, we had lost all strength, an illusion."
"Our legs moved mechanically, in spite of us, without us." -87
After running twenty kilometers, Elie has completely lost physical strength. -
Words of encouragement
"These words of encouragement, even coming as they did from the mouths of our assassins [SS officers], were of great help." -92
Any sort of positive encouragement was helpful because they have been so belittled. -
Rebel against death
"I knew that to sleep meant to die. And something in me rebelled against that death." -89
Elie battled against death, he did not want to die in vain. -
Shame
"Yet at the same time a thought crept into my mind: If only I didn't find him! If only I were relieved of this responsibility, I could use all my strength to fight for my own survival, to take care only of myself...Instantly, I felt ashamed, ashamed of myself forever." -106
Elie thinks about giving up on his father and just focusing on himself. But he feels guilt and shame for even thinking of that after everything he and his father have been through. -
Idleness
"Since my father'd death, nothing mattered to me anymore."
"I spent my fays in total idleness. With only one desire: to eat. I no longer though of my father, or my mother. From time to time, I would dream. But only about soup, and extra ration of soup." -113
Elie has completely changed after his father's death. Nothing mattered to him anymore except food. -
The End
"From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me." -115
Although Elie survived, the lasting image is one of death. After witnessing so much death, the weak and starving Elie has come to look like death itself. For Elie, death has replaced God, love, family, and community as the one all-powerful fact of existence.