Silence is power. How you choose to use that power can impact the lives of many. In the memoir Night, Wiesel's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, and Simon P. Sibelman's article The Theme of Silence, Elie's destruction of faith in himself, humanity, and God is expressed caused by silence. As a prisoner of the Holocaust, Elie struggled with his own silence, the silence of the world, and, above all, the silence of God. The result of this silence ultimately shaped the man Elie became. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Initially, faced with the harsh reality of the treatment of Jews in concentration camps, Elie learned that silence offered him the greatest chance for survival. Fear of persecution and violence leads Elie to choose silence at times when he would normally have spoken openly. Elie's constant struggle not to speak caused him to lose his self-confidence, which destroyed his pride. For example, when Elie's father Chlomo was brutally beaten by guards, Elie chose silence rather than help. He felt guilty for that silence, wondering: “What had happened to me? My father had just been shot, in front of me, and I hadn't even blinked. I looked and remained silent." He struggled with his silence but realized that it had become his survival mechanism. The ability to communicate is an essential part of life but the silence dehumanized him as a person. Even after he was liberated from the Holocaust, his voice was silenced forever. In the article The Theme of Silence, Simon P. Sibelman stated that “this loss of identity effectively silences the image that constitutes the human essence” (Sibelman 48). Sibelman explained how, by choosing silence, Elie and other Jews in the camps were stripped of their humanity which forever silenced their cries. Silence has its place, but often an opinion must or must be expressed. Otherwise, the aggressor will continue to wreak havoc, as Elie Wiesel said during his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech: “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Although his self-confidence was shattered, later in life Elie vowed to never remain silent again and to always make his voice heard. During the Holocaust, the world knew about the terrible crimes committed by the Nazis. Yet the majority chose to remain silent. Upon his arrival at Auschwitz, one of the first sights he would never forget was the piles of dead children burning in the crematoriums. Elie was in total disbelief that people knew about such atrocities, yet she chose to do nothing. He was so stunned that he thought, “Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women and children were burned alive and the world remained silent? (Wiesel 32). Elie began to think that the Jews must be useless to humanity. How else could they have allowed the Nazis to massacre millions of Jews? His faith and hope slowly shattered. He felt defeated, useless and abandoned. He still had doubts and declared to his father that he could not believe that the world would not act. His father replied, “The world? The world is not interested in us. Today everything is possible, even crematoria” (Wiesel 33). Elie realized that, due to the world's inertia, Hitler and the First Reich's power over the Jews would only grow stronger. Although the Allied forces ultimately defeated the Nazis and liberated the Jews,.