Why?

"His face seemed paler than ever and his eyes expressed the dumb, eternally unanswered question: Why?" p.68

Wiesenthal calls the question of why this terrible thing happened 'dumb' and 'eternally unanswered'.  How can such an important question be described as 'dumb'?  How can such an important question never have an answer?  I think that you have to think about the way that these adjectives were used in order to fully understand what Wiesenthal was saying.  By calling the question dumb, Simon is referring to the actual asking of the question, not the answer; and the reason that the question is stupid, or dumb, to ask is because the question can never truly be answered.

The way that Wiesenthal describes this also very different than what I would expect him to. Eli, who was described as a smart kid that understood more than he should have at his age and was a child that understood danger, would be expected to have a thoughtful question that had a smarter more intellegent depth. The simpleness of his eyes shows the raw emotion that Simon saw. I believe that this shows significance in the way that Simon used to see people and how he saw them now. Simon described Eli as having a 'little face' that he was fond of, which changed after he went through the story until he saw Eli as having a dumb expression.