Eliezer

In the Beginning . . . 

Eliezer is a twelve-year-old boy.  He is a very observant Jew. He studies the Talmud during the day and the Kabbalah at night (2 Jewish Texts), trying to become closer to God. He becomes friends with Moishe the Beadle, who becomes a mentor and teacher to the boy. One thing Moishe taught Eliezer is that he can get closer to God by asking him questions. When Eliezer enters the concentration camp, he does not believe that the Germans could really kill the Jews, or that other people would allow it to happen. But upon arrival - holding his father's hand - he loses his mother and little sister and witnesses the murder of live babies dumped into fiery graves. At that moment childhood innocence is taken away, and his faith or belief in God is destroyed. During the rest of the book, he struggles to physically stay alive and keep his faith.

In the Middle . . . 

While at the concentration camps, Eliezer sees the worst in humanity and the worst in himself. He is starved, abused mentally and physically, and witnesses many horrible things. Because of his will to survive, he becomes very concerned with self-preservation and keeping himself alive, not worrying about other concentration camp prisoners. Eliezer confronts this side of his actions; he realizes that he is started to not protect his father out of fear of being beaten himself.  As his father becomes weak, Eliezer begins to feel his father as a burden limiting his own chances of survival. And at the end of his father’s life, Eliezer doesn’t stay with his father when he is dying and calling out his son’s name; after an hour of painful listening, Eliezer goes to bed. A guard hits him for not being quiet and by morning is dead. 

Eliezer doesn’t even tell us about his last experiences in Buchenwald because to him, nothing mattered once his father had passed away.

In the End . . . 

Our last view of Eliezer is as a corpse—the corpse he sees looking back at himself in the mirror. Though free, Eliezer is damaged by his horrific experience. His identity has been permanently altered—he’s no longer a child because of the horrors he has sad and the dark side of himself he’s seen in his actions, he is no longer a son because his parents are both dead, and he is no longer sure of who or what God is. He’ll now forever be a  concentration camp survivor, and a man well acquainted with death.