Elie's internal conflict revolves around his image of God. Earlier in the book he proclaims that his God had been murdered after he witnessed children being thrown into a pit of flames. For the remainder of the book, he questions how God could have done such a thing to the Jews. In the opening of section five, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, "thousands of silent Jews gathered" for prayers. It is during this blessing that Elie reels off a litany of questions and condemnations of God:
Why, but why should I bless Him? In every fiber I rebelled. Because He had had thousands of children burned in his pits? Because He kept six crematories working night and day, on Sundays and feast days? Because in His great might He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death? How could I say to Him: "Blessed art Thou, Eternal, Master of the Universe, Who chose us from among the races to be tortured day and night, to see our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end in the crematory?
Rather than believing that there is no God, Elie accuses God of creating the Holocaust on purpose to persecute the Jews. He says that he witnessed the prayer meeting like a stranger and that he actually felt stronger than God and "terribly alone." This realization of God's abandonment and his own inner strength may have been a contributing factor to Elie's eventual survival.
During Yom Kippur, the "Day of Atonement," when it is required for Jews to fast for 25 hours, the Jews of Buna are in a quandary. By fasting for so long they would only be hastening their own death, since rations were at a starvation level. Some argue "that even in here, in this enclosed hell, we were capable of singing His praises." Elie, however, ignores these words and believes the act of eating in the face of Jewish law to be an act of rebellion:
As I swallowed my bowl of soup, I saw in the gesture an act of rebellion and protest against him.
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