In Night, Elie Wiesel details his horrific experience being persecuted, as a Jewish person, by the Nazis and suffering horribly at the German concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

While both secular and religious Jews were targeted by the Nazi regime, the Jewish religion itself was also persecuted as Nazis burned synagogues and Jewish religious texts. Elie Wiesel makes it clear that the Nazi regime used the Holocaust to not only attempt to kill the physical Jewish people but also their faith in their religion, in humanity, in each other, and in hope itself. The Jews were meant to be degraded into mere shells before being executed by the Nazis.

In addition to being denied freedom of religion, Jews were also systematically denied freedom of political belief and participation in political society, as the Nazi party banned Jews from voting. Non-Jews who were against the Nazi regime were also denied freedom of personal/political belief as many supporters of the Jewish people were imprisoned and killed for their anti-Nazi stances.