In the novel Dawn, by Elie Wiesel, a young Jewish boy is also pictured as the main character and although the problems he faced did not necessarily affect his religion’s beliefs (as with Asher Lev), his religion did play a role in the way he handled those problems. Elisha, the main character, was a survivor of the Holocaust and was fortunate enough to get out of Auschweitz with his life. However, his parents and friends were not quite as fortunate and so Elisha, only 18, was forced to carry the pain associated with those deaths on his back, constantly reminding him of the evils of the world. After becoming affiliated with a Jewish freedom fighters group and after being dubbed as the executioner, Elisha was forced into a role that was all too familiar to him. However, instead of being a possible victim of an unjustified slaying, he was now the enforcer of an unjustified slaying, something that he had a hard time dealing with. Although his partners kept saying, "don’t torture yourself, Elisha. This is war," the thought of killing a man who did not deserve to die was too much of an unsettling thought. Killing John Dawson, the man condemned, would be hypocritical in the sense that the Jews had been fought for to be taken away from arbitrary killing and yet now they were the ones doing the killing.
Hence, through killing Dawson, the ghosts of the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust who were guiding Elisha through the novel, left him because he had betrayed them and their Jewish heritage. Because the heritage of the Jews is so important to them, even the spirits of his own parents were disappointed. The disappointment came because Elisha, by being affiliated with a group who killed, was throwing away everything that his family had died for. All of the cries for help from the Jews during the Holocaust might now be seen in vain because of the fact that despite seeing so many deaths come to their race, the Jews still did not understand the value of a human life.