out is survival: "Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. we thought only of that. Not of revenge, not of our families. Nothing but bread" (109).
The story of Wiesel cannot be understood without u=trying to understand the boy's relationship with God. He is a very religious Jew, a young man who has a great passion for the mysteries of God. He does not question the goodness of God or the special connection between God and the Jews. When a religious friend is taken away by the Germans and returns with stories of the mass slaughter of Jews, Elie and others do not believe him. They do not believe him in part because such stories do not fit into their picture of what God is. The man himself on some level knows that what is happening is beyond God's control: "He no longer talked to me of God or of the cabbala, but only of what he had seen. Peop
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