Where is God? Hanging From the Gallows

In Elie Wiesel’s Night, Eliezer is a Jewish teenager, a devoted student of the Talmud from Sighet, in Hungarian Transylvania.  In the spring of 1944, the Nazis occupied Hungary. Increasingly repressive measures are passed, and the Jews of Eliezer’s town are forced into small ghettos within Sighet. Before long, they are rounded up and shipped out to the death camps of Burkenau, and Auschwitz.

Throughout this slim narrative, Eliezer reflects on the nature of God in response to the atrocities he witnesses. In one pivotal scene, he describes the execution of three Jews, among…