Chapters 4 and 5

Chapter 4 starts off with Elie and his father in Buna. The prisoners are put into different Kommandos. One Nazi came over to Elie and asked for his shoes in exchange for them being put in a good Kommando. Elie refuses, clinging to his shoes as the only remnants of his old life, one where he did not have to worry about death every day or suffer through horrible conditions. Later, he would have these shoes stripped of him, proving that the Nazis obliterated any chance of these prisoners having hope. Later, he goes for a medical checkup where the dentist notices his gold tooth. Both Elie and his father are put in the musicians block. They work in an electrical factory where they are able to work near each other. Elie, while at work one day, meets two brothers, Yossi and Tibi. They have no parents and the author states that they "lived for each other, body and soul". This shows what a significant role family can play in moments of grief and fear. The only thing they have to live for is each other. Soon, Elie is called to the dentist to get his gold tooth extracted. He feigns an illness to avoid this extraction and manages to keep his gold tooth, as the dentist is hanged for dealing gold teeth. It's a bit funny (as in morbidly unfair) how one man is hanged for stealing gold while countless others are praised for committing mass murder to millions of innocent victims. In the factory one day, Elie is attacked by Idek, the the Kapo, in one of his mad fits. When he huddles himself in the corner, beaten and bloody, the French girl he works next to comes over to him and offers him some bread as well as comforting words. Elie talks about how years later he met the girl on a Metro in Paris. She explains to him that she was a Jew with fake papers to make her look Aryan. She spoke German, but hid it because it would cause suspicion. She said that she spoke to Elie in German because she trusted him. Back in 1944, Idek has another mad fit, this time at Elie's father. Elie watched helplessly at his father getting beaten by an iron bar, and even got angry at his father for being unable to avoid Idek's wrath. This shows how Elie's emotions have been destroyed as a result of the concentration camp. Instead of initially feeling compassion, his instinct takes over and he feels disappointment at his father's mistakes. Franek, the foreman, asked Elie for his gold crown. Elie refuses, and as a consequence, Franek harasses his father. Elie eventually relinquishes his beloved gold crown. This gives evidence that he still loves his father and still looks out for his well-being. While wondering around the camp one day, Elie comes across Idek having sex with a Polish girl. As a result of this accidental discovery, Elie is taken in front of all the prisoners and whipped 25 times. Idek tells him that if he tells anyone of the affair, then he will receive the punishment again, five-fold. One day, the officers put out barrels of soup in the open. The inmates are too afraid to go out and take some soup and when someone finally musters up the courage to do so, they are shot. Immediately afterward, Allied forces begin to bomb the camp. This fills the prisoners with joy. Elie witnesses many prisoners being hanged in the gallows, but seems unaffected by all of them, except for one. Most of the victims do not cry when they are being hanged, they had "forgotten he bitter taste of tears". There was, however, a little boy who was the pipel, a prisoner in service to the leader. He was loved by all and had the "face of an angel in distress". When his master is found to have possessed weapons, the pipel is hanged in front of all the prisoners. While the noose is put around his neck, prisoners cry out for their merciful God to not abandon them. The boy was light and he hung from his noose for half and hour, choking and unable to die. When someone asks where God is, Elie thinks "Where He is? This is where--hanging here from this gallows".

In this chapter, Elie and his father are stationed at the musicians block. Here is a link to a description of music during the Holocaust http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/arts/MUSVICTI.htm . One stunning statistic was the fact that the musicians, who had to play music while they watched countless people, some whom they knew, walk to their death, had a higher suicide rate than other workers. The emotional anguish and utter hopelessness they experienced must have been to unbearable for many of these musicians.

Chapter 5 puts a large emphasis on how this Holocaust experience has deformed Elie's faith. He blames God for the suffering that he witnesses around him on a daily basis and even refuses to fast of Yom Kippur, as a sign of rebellion. Although it seems wrong to blame God for this horrible injustice of man, who can blame him. If there is a God, especially the God he used to believe in, why would He abandon them? Why would he allow this to happen to those who believe in Him? These are the questions that perturbed the very belief that Elie once held so strongly. Another selection soon takes place. Dr. Mengele stands by to determine who was fit to work and who was to be sent off to the ovens. Elie is spared from death, but his father, he finds out a few days after selection, was not so lucky. Elie parts with his father in what he thinks is their last moment together. Elie's father even gives him a knife and spoon as inheritance. However, that night, Elie finds out that his father was saved from death. It was a glimpse of heaven from their hell on Earth. Elie is not the only prisoner who has lost his faith. Many, like Akiba the Drummer and a rabbi from Poland, lost their faith and even go so far as to say "God is no longer with us". Akiba, who had given up hope, asked for the prisoners to say the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, for him in three days. They forget. This shows the insignificance of death in that environment. Elie's foot begins to swell from the cold, and he has it operated on, without anesthesia. While he is recovering, he hears rumors that the Red Army was close to the camp. His neighbor assures him that Hitler will annihilate all of the Jews, just like he promised. When Elie accuses this man of treating Hitler as a prophet, the man responds, "I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people."This quote truly reflects the hopelessness of the Jews' situation. The only man who has kept his promises to the Jews is Hitler, and he promises death and genocide to the Jews. Elie, fearing that the sick in the infirmary will be put to death before the camp flees from the Russians, decides to leave the infirmary. He finds out that the sick were not executed, and they were liberated by the Russians. The camp leaders begin to lead the prisoners to an unknown destination. Elie trudged through the gathering snow with an open wound and an empty soul.

Chapters 2 & 3

Chapter 2 chronicles the journey of the Jews of Sighet in the cattle cars to the concentration camps. They are shoved into the small cattle cars with little room to breathe and no source of light or fresh air except for a small window. Later, they stop and a German officer stops the cattle car and threatens to kill anyone who tries to escape. The train continues as the passengers are forced to endure inhumane conditions. One of the passengers, Madame Schachter, begins to shout hysterically about a fire she sees in outside. The others passengers call Madame Schachter crazy and tie her up and gag her to stop her from talking. Eventually, she breaks loose of her bonds and begins to scream again. They beat her to the relief of the other passengers. A couple of passengers are sent to go get water and they come back with some information from the locals. They tell the other passengers that there are good conditions at the camps and that families would not be separated. The passengers become confident and relieved, but their moment of happiness is interrupted by the sharp cries of Madame Schachter who points at a chimney and screams about the fire. The fire she is pointing at was the human furnace at Birkenau.

Here is a video about a Holocaust survivor's tale about his escape from the cattle car. It is a very heart-wrenching story.

Here's a link to a website that has some pictures and descriptions of Birkenau/Auschwitz:
http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/AuschwitzEng.html

This was the crematorium where the corpses were burned. This caused the smell of burning flesh that Wiesel described.

Chapter 2 offers a stark contrast between the two views of ignorance. The town is faced with people like Moishe the Beadle or Madame Schachter who offer the possibility of a horrid event happening at these concentration camps. This is, of course the reality, but the townspeople refuse to even consider it. They follow the philosophy of "ignorance is bliss". They make excuses, such as calling Madame Schachter crazy, to fuel their own self-delusions of safety and happiness. This has even gone so far as to hinder their chances of escaping.

Chapter 3 describes the prisoners' first experiences in the camp. When they arrive, Elie and his father are separated from his mother and the sisters. This was the last time Elie would see his mother and youngest sister They are forced to face the notorious Dr. Mengele (who is described in more detail below) and are separated into two groups, one that will die and another that will live. Elie is put in the same group as his father and they head in the direction of the crematoria. In the distance, Elie sees huge flames rising from a ditch. He witnesses a truckload of babies being thrown into this pit of fire. As the line of people approach the pit of fire, he becomes "face-to-face with the Angel of Death". Everyone thinks they are going to die. They begin to recite the prayer of the dead. Just as he can no longer bear the agony of looming death, the line turns to the right into the barracks. They have their clothes removed, their hair cut, and are disinfected by gasoline. They are soon told by the Nazi officers that they can either work or be killed in the crematorium. When Elie's father asks where the bathrooms are located, he is struck in the face. Elie stands there motionless and is stunned at his own inaction. His father reassures him by saying that the hit didn't hurt. While at the camp, Elie meets up with one of his relatives. He asks whether his wife and kids were alright. Elie lies and says that he heard from them. The man is relieved, but later finds out the truth. This scene conveys the repeating theme of ignorance. For him, ignorance is bliss in that he finds hope in the fact that his family is still safe. When the truth comes out, however, his hopes become shattered and he loses the will to live. This is an example of ignorance being a good thing, in delusions fueling a man's will to survive. Elie, his father, and numerous other prisoners are transported to Buna, another concentration camp.

Throughout the book, a man named Dr. Mengele is mentioned. I was curious as to who this was, so I did some research on him. He was a cruel, deranged, and merciless monster who performed medical experiments on many of the concentration camp prisoners. He had a special fascination with twins because he believed if he could discover the genetic reason why twins were born, he could double the Aryan race. When the Jews arrived at the camp, he would pick out the twins and take them to his own building. The sets of twins would be treated nicer than the other prisoners initially, but then would be taken to the medical experiments he performed. One example was injecting one twin with a deadly disease and when the disease killed the twin, he would murder the other one and perform an autopsy on both bodies to compare results. He would also perform amputations, surgeries, and even put chemicals in the eyes of the children. Here is the link I used to get this information: http://isurvived.org/2Postings/mengele-AUSCHWITZ.html 

Night: Preface and Chapter 1

In the preface, the author describes why he wrote this book. He wanted to prevent the enemy from having "one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory". The courage from people like him in recounting these traumatic events is what prevents history from repeating itself. Books like this are why history is important. It reminds us of the cruelty capable of our fellow man, and helps us to prevent this cruelty from becoming prominent in society. Another purpose the author states for writing this book is to try and get us, those who did not have to live through these atrocities, to understand. He tells of his troubles in publishing the book and even mentions some sections that he had to cut out of the newest version. In one passage, he tells of the heart-wrenching story of his father's death. He does not honor his father's last wish for his son to be by his side out of fear. The merciless treatment from the Nazi's had deformed theauthor so much that it consumed the love that was inside him. It is one thing to kill someone physically, but another to kill him emotionally, leaving him a shell of a man. The author concludes the preface with insightful words, "He does not want his past to become their future".

Chapter 1 describes the authors life before the Holocaust. He lives in the small town of Sighet in Transylvania. He lives with his mother, father, two older sisters, and his younger sister named Tzipora. He has a teacher named Moishe the Beadle who, although poor, was widely liked. Eventually, all of the foreign Jews, one of whom was Moishe, were deported in the cattle cars to work camps. Months later, the author sees Moishe again. He seemed more cold than the Moishe that the author had come to know and love, and starts talking about how the cattle cars were stopped at the borders and the Jews in them were forced to dig their own graves and were immediately shot. None of the villagers believe him. This is the first instance of the chapter in which the villagers exhibit complete ignorance. This ignorance is caused by their isolation from what is happening in these camps as well as their own denial. It is almost frustrating to read about all of thechances that the villagers had to stop this terrible fate, but denied them. Moishe's tales begin to seem more and more true as anti-Semitic laws begin to come into effect. The Jews have to wear golden stars of David and are trapped in ghettos. If these sort of laws came into effect today, there would be and uproar of protest, but the Jews in the story accepted the laws and even supported them. Many advocated Zionism which was the belief that he Jews should form their own Jewish community. Then, the Germans decided to deport all of the Jews. The author is forced to go to the individual's homes and tell them the news. This is a terrible thing to ask a child to do, but in the atmosphere of the Holocaust, all Jews go through the same amount of pain, regardless of age. The author compares in to the captivity in Babylon or the Spanish Inquisition. However, he failed to realize that the Holocaust would come to be an event that was completely unprecedented. They are forced to pack littlepossessions and are shoved into the cattle cars. The family's former maid offered them a safe shelter, but the father refused. Another frustrating instance where the Jews denied a chance to be saved from this horror. The cattle cars begin to roll and they head towards their hellish doom. 


Picture of a Jews in a ghetto in Warsaw: 

Already the narrator is forced to witness events of extreme emotional anguish, and the reader can tell that it is deforming his personality. His innocence is already breaking, and soon it will completely shatter. One thing that the Germans have failed to break, however, is the faith among the people. Although their ignorance plays into this resilient faith, the Jews still know that they have tough times coming. But they still pray and keep their faith. They trust that God will save them, a trust that will soon be tested as they witness and experience the true horrors of the Holocaust. 


Throughout the passage, many Jews, including Elie Wiesel, advocate Zionism. This is the idea that the Jewish people should be allowed to form an exclusively Jewish community in their homeland. Wiesel intrestingly states that the ghettos were similar to Zionism. This raises a question of whether Zionism is a racist movement. I found a link that addresses this question http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/Zionism_Is_Not_Racism.html . For anyone commenting, do you think Zionism can be compared with the ghettos? Is Zionism racist? Why or why not?