Indifference to evil is evil.
During the early years of World War II, Sighet
remained relatively unaffected by the war.
The Jews in Sighet believed that they would
be safe from the persecution that Jews in
Germany and Poland suffered.
 Geno – from the Greek word genos,
which means birth, race, of a similar
kind
 -Cide – from the French word cida,
which means to cut, kill
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After the first World War, Germany was in chaos,
and Hitler was a strong leader who promised a
better life for Germany.
European fascism merged with anti-semitism.
During the Holocaust, 11 million people died in
concentration camps in Germany and Poland.
Hitler’s ideology called for the imprisonment of
Jews, gypsies, political dissenters, the mentally
ill, and homosexuals.
 Holo – from the Greek word olos,
which means “whole”
 -caust – from the Greek works
kaustos or kautos which means
“burnt”
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Appearing as early as the fifth century B.C.,
the term can mean a sacrifice wholly
consumed by fire or a great destruction of
life, especially by fire.
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Today, the term refers to the systematic
planned extermination of about six million
European Jews and millions of others by the
Nazis between 1933-1945.
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Wiesel’s story begins in Romania (now Hungary) in
1941 and ends in 1944. When Germans took over
this area, local Jews were persecuted.
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They were forced to wear
yellow stars. Weisel’s family was first sent to live
in a ghetto and then taken
to Auschwitz, one of the
most infamous concentration
camps.
man
Wiesel is the
seventh
from the left
on the
second row.
April 16,
1945
After surviving the Nazi
concentration camps, Wiesel
vowed never to write about
his horrific experiences.
He eventually changed his
mind and wrote Night in
1955. Wiesel won the Nobel
Prize in 1986
To try and understand the madness in history
As those who are left to tell the survivor stories of
the Holocaust pass away, he wants to leave behind a
legacy.
 He believes he has a moral obligation to prevent the
Holocaust from being erased from people’s
memories, to bear witness to what happened during
WWII.
 To keep history from repeating itself
 To help people understand how he dealt with life
and death and such a young age
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Exposition- Sighet
Moishe
External Conflict - Survival
Introduction of several themes:
 Silence
 Inhumanity towards other humanity
 Faith
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Sentence Fragments (sentence variety) (8,9)
Rhetorical Question- “Annihilate an entire
people? Wipe out a population dispersed
throughout so many nations? So many
millions of people! By what means? In the
middle of the twentieth century! (8)
Internal Monologue “(Poor Father! Of What
then did you die?)” (11)
Understatement - “Eight words…” (29)
Repetition
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Cattle Cars
Madame Schacter
 Foreshadowing
 Dark side of human nature
 Tension
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Motif – Fire
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Birkenau – The men are separated from the women
 Understatement (29) “Eight words spoken quietly”
 (32) questioning by the prisoner – effect?
 (33) Dramatic Irony – “Still, I told him that I could not believe that human
beings were being burned in our times; . . .”
 Repetition - (34) “Never shall I forget” (Anaphora – repetition of the same words
at the beginning of several consecutive sentences)
Internal Conflict – Elie’s Faith (33) “For the first time, I felt anger
rising within me. Why should I sanctify his name?”
”I thanked God, in an improvised prayer, for having created mud in
His infinite and wonderful universe.”(38)
(45) “I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I
doubted His absolute justice.”
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 contrasts with the faith of Akiba Drumer
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Motif – Night (34) “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in
camp, which has turned my life into one long night”
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Auschwitz
 Dehumanization
▪ Examples – (37) “In a few seconds, we had ceased to be
men.”
▪ “the child I was, had been consumed in the flames”
▪ (42) – A-7713
 Irony
▪ “Warning! Danger of death.” (40)
▪ “Work makes you free.” (40)
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Series of anecdotes:
 Arrival at Buna
 Chosen for Work (49- Juliek, Louis,50-Yossi, Tibi, 51-Akiba
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Drumer, 52-French Girl)
Father’s Beating (54) How has Elie changed from the first
anecdote of his father being beaten? What does this say
about survival and brutality?
Gold tooth – two parts (52)(54-56)
Idek and the Polish Girl(56)
Bombing of Buna (57)
Two separate hangings(61-65)
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Buna
 Internal monologue (48) – “(In fact , this affection was not entirely
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altruistic. . .”
Irony – (48) Elie’s shoes
(51) Dentist with bad teeth
Dehumanization – “They pointed their fingers, the way one might
choose cattle, or merchandise.”(49)
Narration (53) – Interruption for story in Paris, affect?
Faith– “Where is He? This is where-hanging here from this gallows
. . .”(65) (aposiopesis – a speaker deliberately stops a sentence short to leave
something unexpressed that is or should be obvious to the reader)
 (56) Figurative Language in the section beginning with “One
Sunday, as half of our group . . .”
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Rosh Hashanah – “Night was falling rapidly.”(66)
 Faith– But now I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer
able to lament...I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God,
without man.”(68)
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Yom Kippur –
 “As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol,
of protest against Him.”(69)
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The selection
 “I gave him back his knife and spoon.”(76)
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Akiba Drumer (76)
The Hospital
 “Here too there is selection.”(78)
 Rumors of liberation – “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone
else.”(81)
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Evacuation
 “So we were men after all?” (84)
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Evacuation – Germans maintain control through violence
and dehumanization
 “If one of us stopped for a second, a quick shot eliminated the
filthy dog.”(85) – Elie repeats the metaphor created by the SS,
prisoners begin to see each other as animals as well
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Zalman – another example of complete faith who
eventually succumbs
 “My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me.” (86)
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Surrealism – liberation of the mind to a dream-like state
where one can transcend reality
 How does the march take on a surrealist quality?(87)
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Story of Rabbi Eliahou
 “And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a
prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed. “Oh
God, Master of the Universe, give me strength never to
do what Rabbi Eliahou’s son has done”(91)
 “Sons abandoned their father’s remains without a
tear.”(92)
 How does all this contrast with Elie’s relationship with
his father?
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Story of Juliek and his violin (Gleiwitz)
 “I shall never forget Juliek” (93-95)
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Train to Central Germany
 Why does Elie briefly believe there is no reason
left to live or fight? (99)
 What is demonstrated in the scene where the
German laborer throws bread into Elie’s cattle
car? (100-101)
 What affect on the reader does the sentence “I
was sixteen.”(102) have?
 Why is the story of Meir Katz told? (102-103)
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Buchenwald
 Describe the relationship between Elie and his
father. Why has it come to this?(104-106)
 “Just like Rabbi Eliahou’s son, I had not passed the
test.” (102) Why?
 Elie’s father’s death (112)
 “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not
weep.” (112)
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Why does Elie have nothing to say of the time
between January 29th and April 11th?(113)
How is the writing different in this section?
What is the behavior of the liberated
men?(115)
“From the depths of the mirror, a corpse
gazed back at me.” (115)