A traumatic event like the Holocaust, the slaughter of millions of Jews, would certainly leave some scars behind. It can also change one's personality: their beliefs, their morals, etc., usually for the worse.
The same happened to Elie Wiesel, along with countless other Jews.
The first notable change that happens to him is the shift in his beliefs. After he bare witness to the horrors at Auschwitz during his first night, he begins to believe that God is dead. Elie used to be a very religious person, who aspired to be a cabbala, one who studies the Torah. Seeing was believing for him then: but not in God.
"Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust."
Later on, he admits that he does not doubt God's existence, but doubts His overall authority.
While spending time in camp, Elie and the other prisoners are quickly stripped of their humanity. They are malnourished, only being given 1,700 calories worth every day, while being forced to do labor. Additionally, they are forced to sleep in cramped bunk beds with no blankets. Their clothes are thin and itchy. Living conditions at the camps weren't all that great, and that's an understatement. By the end of the book, many of the prisoners think only of survival, while many others give up, sleep, and never wake up. The survival-minded would step on their own parents to accomplish their goal. Elie falls victim to these feelings, but his bond with his father does not break. He regains his emotions whenever his father gets in trouble (is on the brink of death). This changes when his father finally dies from weakness caused by dysentery combined with a single bludgeon from a truncheon. Elie no longer has anything to connect to being human other than his emaciated body until the liberation.
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