Night
Review
Page 3
• Moishe
– Beadle – caretaker of the synagogue
– No surname – no true identity, recognition as a man
– “jack of all trades” (master of none): he knew a lot
about many things, but no true religious education,
uneducated- Eliezer goes to him for education
– Why was he the exception to the rule regarding how
the poor were treated by the majority of the Jewish
community?
Continues
• Anaphora
– Repetition of a word, or phrase, for emphasis
– List of what he did that gave him acceptance
from the adult community.
• “He stayed out of people’s way”. “His presence
bothered no one”. “He had mastered the art of
rendering himself insignificant, invisible”.
– This is what the Nazi’s are counting on to destroy the
Jewish people.
– IRONY: Later when Moishe returns.
Eliezer’s view of Moishe
Softness in his tone. Childlike images
• Simile: “awkward as a clown” – circus
• “his waiflike shyness” – child who needs
protection; orphan; sweet; no conflict.
• “wide, dreamy eyes, gazing off into the distance” –
childlike imagination (this will later influence Eliezer
as to the credibility of Moishe’s claims)
• “He spoke little. He sang, or rather he chanted”
– Religious themes – Shekhinah in Exile; Kabbalah
• Eleiser – 13 years old; deeply observant; bar mitzvah
age. Influential age
• Following all the rules and laws of his faith.
Page 4
• Influence to begin independent thoughts; mysticism of the Kabbalah.
• His father wants him to be more educated. Protective father.
– “You are too young for that. Maimonides tells us that one must be
thirty before venturing into the world of mysticism, a world fraught
with peril. First you must study the basic subjects, those you are
able to comprehend.” “There are no Kabbalists in Sighet.” “He
wanted to drive the idea of studying Kabbalah from my mind.”
– A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Important to know the
basics before developing an intellectual understanding of religious
practices and beliefs that may be flawed. Prevents confusion – or at
least is a step in the right direction.
– (grandmother) (father – bird)
• Father well respected by the community; however, no father/son
discussion when questioned. Eliezer then goes on his own quest of
his faith through Moishe. Parents often make this mistake. “I am
your father/mother, trust what I say without question.” This
oftentimes causes rebellion. – good/bad.
• Maimonides –Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon – first to write a code of
Jewish law all must follow. Mishneh Torah
Page 4 & 5
• Begins to ask questions. Why? Why? Why?
– It is always good to ask questions. From that, we
attain knowledge; critical thinking skills; ability to
differentiate between what is truth and fallacy.
• Is challenged by Moishe. Why? Why? Why?
• “Why do you cry when you pray?” Challenges his faith.
Does he do it out of rote? – mechanical repetition,
without real understanding of its meaning or significance.
• Repetition of “Why did I pray? Why did I live? Why did I
breathe?”
• Eliezer accepts his ignorance. Hard thing to do for
anyone. We don’t like to admit that we are wrong.
Then, we must admit that we are NOT PERFECT!
• Moishe knows why he prays: “I pray to the God within
me for the strength to ask Him the real questions.”
Quick Write #2
• Moishe challenges Eleiser’s understanding of
his faith through the quote:
• “There are a thousand and one gates allowing
entry into the orchard of mystical truth. Every
human being has his own gate. He must not err
and wish to enter the orchard through a gate
other than his own. That would present a
danger not only for the one entering but also for
those who are already inside.”
– Analyze this quote. What does Moishe mean? What
is the orchard of mystical truth? What are the gates?
• 250 words
Page 6
• “Moishe the Beadle was a foreigner.”
• “Crammed into cattle cars.”
– Hungarian police
– Influence of Germany over Hungary so far
– “cried silently” - try to be insignificant; invisible, don’t
fight back….accept…accept.
– Not happening to us..just the foreigners…value?
– “What do you expect? That’s war..” too accepting
•
•
•
•
USA – Japanese
Long Beach
For their safety
Paranoia
Hungary’s Part
• While anti-Jewish legislation was a common phenomenon in
Hungary, the Holocaust itself did not reach Hungary until
1944.
• In March of 1944, however, the German army occupied
Hungary, installing a puppet government (a regime that
depends not on the support of its citizenry but on the support
of a foreign government) under Nazi control.
• Adolf Eichmann, the executioner of the Final Solution, came
to Hungary to oversee personally the destruction of
Hungary’s Jews. The Nazis operated with remarkable speed:
in the spring of 1944, the Hungarian Jewish community, the
only remaining large Jewish community in continental Europe,
was deported to concentration camps in Germany and
Poland. Eventually, the Nazis murdered 560,000 Hungarian
Jews, the overwhelming majority of the prewar Jewish
population in Hungary.
Page 6
• Time gives way to forgetting what happened.
• Rumors – Galicia, working, content..yes. Went to
Galicia…BUT….
• Weather is pleasant; back to normal
• Moishe returns
– Tells them the truth
– “forced to dig huge trenches…..took place in Galicia.”
– Character of the German soldiers
• Jews = animals, cattle, dogs, target practice
Page 7-8
• Moishe
–
–
–
–
–
Joy in his eyes gone
No longer sang
No longer quiet
“Jews, listen to me! That’s all I ask of you….
“They think I’m mad,” ….tears, like drops of wax…
• Simile; candle melting; moving from the light into the
darkness of Hell to come
• Christ-figure: Anaphora: “I was saved….I…I…I…only no
one is listening to me…” Light of the World – warning of the
evils of Satan. Do we listen? They refuse to see the light of
truth. They ostracize him; reject him totally as a member of
their community.
• Becomes silent.
– Beaten
– Eyes cast down; avoiding people’s gaze
Page 8- 1944
• False hope: Germany would be defeated; only a
matter of time.
• Anaphora: “The trees were in bloom. It was a
year like so many others, with its spring, its
engagements, its weddings, and its births.” – A
sense of normalcy. Trying to convince
themselves that all is ok.
• “The Red Army….Hitler will not be able to harm
us….” They refuse to see the truth. What about
all the millions who have already died?
• “so many millions of people….in the middle of
the 20th century?” Not possible….difficult to
accept the possibility of something so evil….do
we then doubt Satan’s existence?
Page 9
• Fascist party takes over Hungary
• They did not understand what that meant.
• Begin to hear stories. Worried…for a moment. “the
Jews of Budapest live in an atmosphere of fear and
terror. Anti-Semitic acts take place every day…”
• Simile – “news spread like wildfire”
– Flames fast and furious but burns out quickly...Rationalize
– No worry..won’t come to us…too far…again with
rationalizations…not us…therefore, no concern..
Page 9
• Jewish people refuse to see the signs:
– German soldiers enter their town.
– Officers stayed in Jewish homes.
– Attitude distant but polite…wolf in sheep’s
clothing….Satan hides well…keep those rosecolored glasses on as long as possible…then,
it is too late…
– “death helmets” – bringing death to all Jews
Death’s-head emblem on
German helmet- SS guards
Page 10
• Germans are waiting for the right moment. Keep
the Jewish people calm and unsuspecting.
“Three days after he moved in, he brought Mrs.
Kahn a box of chocolates…..There they are,
your Germans. What do you say now? Where is
their famous cruelty?” Refuse to see the reality
of what is going to happen.
• “The Germans were already in our town…the
Fascists…the verdict - (DEATH)…the Jews
were still smiling.”
– Very naive
10
• Passover – 8-day celebration
– The Jews celebrated their Passover Feast in
remembrance of God's deliverance from death
during the time of Moses.
– Sighet • Weather perfect – however, synagogues closed.
Acceptance? Don’t want to cause conflict…don’t
complain. Maybe they will go away.
• Celebrate during this time; but they are
pretending. Deep down they are concerned, but
they don’t want to admit it. Want the celebrations
to be over so they have no reason to celebrate.
Passover
Moses was instructed to lead God's people out of Egypt and
save them from the evil and ungodly Pharaoh. Because of
Pharaoh's disbelief in the power of the One True God, Yahweh
(God) sent a series of ten plagues upon the Egyptians: the Nile
turned to blood and at various times the land was filled with
frogs, gnats, flies, hail, locusts, and darkness. In one awesome
act of God's ultimate authority, He sent one final devastating
plague: every firstborn of every household would be
annihilated.
God would shield the Israelites from this judgment if they would
follow the instructions He gave to Moses and Aaron. The
specific instructions are outlined in Exodus 12:1-11. Each
family was to take a lamb and slaughter it at the same time at
twilight after a certain number of days. Then they were to paint
the sides and top of their doorways with some of this blood.
Once this was done and all the meat of the lamb was eaten in
accordance with God's instructions, God would spare the
Israelites from death.
10 still
• 7th day – “the curtain finally rose”
– The play is about to begin…HORROR is
behind the curtain.
– Arrested the leaders of the Jewish community
– Gold and all valuables taken; forbidden – help
from the Hungarian police.
– Metaphor – “The race toward death had
begun”
• Nazis want this done ASAP!
• Moishe confronts them…
Page 11
• Mom – tries to keep things together; job as
mom. Suffer in silence. Nurturer; worry about
her children.
• Yellow star – BRANDED LIKE CATTLE
• Reaction – no big deal; it’s just a patch; “it’s
not lethal.” IRONY – they have been marked
for slaughter.
• Ghetto
• Nazis are slowly killing the Jewish people’s
“being”. 1st step has been easy – to accept
the painless things being done to them. Baby
steps.
11-12
• Ghetto – enclosed within barbed wire. Cattle.
• Comfort zone. Away from the Germans. Safe…not
really…but let’s pretend… “in fact, we felt this
was not a bad thing.”
• Anaphora: “We would no longer have to look at
all those hostile faces, endue those hate-filled
states…No more fear….No more anguish…We
would live among Jews, among brothers.”
NO..NO..NO…this cannot be our reality.
• Euphemism: Nice way of saying something
uncomfortable, bad, etc… “Of course, there still
were unpleasant moments.” JEWS BEING
TAKEN AWAY.
• Personification: “The ghetto was ruled
by….delusion.”
Step 2
• Page 13
• German Officers – different mood; mother feels the
change
• News:
Transports; “The ghetto was to be liquidated
entirely.” Irony –The Final Solution: Liquidate the
Jewish people
• Now they are worried and want to know everything.
Secret on threat of death.
• Page 15
– Irony “Our backyard looked like a marketplace….All
this under a magnificent blue sky.” Irony – total
chaos – blue(peace and tranquility)
Page 16
• Exhaustion – “like molten lead”; total melt
down; brains slowly moving to inevitability.
• Pain of waiting… “there was joy, yes, joy.”
Irony…they think that this was hell...they
have no idea of the hell they are entering.
• Imagery: juxtaposition of Blazing sunny
day vs dead, empty houses
(personification) = darkness within the
hearts of the people- fear-despair
PAGE 17
• “There they went, defeated, their
bundles…They passed me by, like beaten
dogs.”
• Juxtaposition of good vs. evil
– A summer sun vs. an open tomb
– Life vs death
• Personification :
– “gaping doors and windows looked out into the
void.”
Simile – surreal image “…like a small summer
cloud, like a dream in the first hours of dawn.”
“The verdict had been delivered”….death..
Page 19
• “My mind was empty.”
– “I felt little sadness.”
– numb
• Father – emotion now
– cries
• Mother- strong, no emotion (MASK)
• Hungarian police
– First oppressors
– Hatred remains to this day
• Non-Jews
– Ignore the reality- hide their guilt for doing nothing
– Refuse to fight for their neighbors – condone ?
Page 20 - 21
• Move to small ghetto
– Still have faith
• “Oh god, Master of the Universe, in your infinite compassion, have
mercy on us..”
– Still have hope
• “..we were beginning to get used to the situation…miserable little
lives until the end of the war.”
– Verbal irony
• “…a big farce…just want to steal our valuables…easier to do when
the owners are on vacation…”
– Free will taken away
• “…we were all people condemned to the same fate-still unknown.”
Page 22
• Change of control – irony – worse
– “It had been agreed that the Jewish Council would handle
everything by itself.”
– Jews have been conditioned to go along with the program.
Comfort zone to have friends organize the march toward
death.
• Non-Jews
– Again – no one stands up for humanity
– “..behind the shutters, our friends of yesterday were
probably waiting for the moment when they could loot our
homes.”
• Plan has been successful
– “…cattle cars were waiting…cars were sealed…one
person...in charge...someone escapes…person shot.”
– “Two Gestapo officers…all smiles; all things considered, it
had gone very smoothly.”
One-page, typed reflection
• Does God exist? If not, why? If yes, and you
believe that He is the Creator of all things, did
He create evil? If so, why?
Or – did He create good but allowed evil to
exist? How? Why?
Give at least three examples from your personal
knowledge/experience.
DUE: WEDNESDAY/THURSDAY – 50 POINTS
Quick Write #5
– “ We should stop talking so much about the
Holocaust. What’s past is past.”
– 250+ words
– Agree or disagree
– At least 3 examples from your historical
knowledge/personal experiences
Page 23
• Juxtaposition of beauty vs evil
– “The lucky ones … could watch the blooming
countryside flit by.”
• Loss of sense of modesty, humanity
– “Freed of normal constraints….let go of their
inhibitions…caressed one another.”
• Human contact…love…necessary for survival of humanity.
• Metaphor
– “Our eyes opened. Too late.”
• Reality of their delusions of safety. No escape from Hell.
Page 24
• Inhumanity to humanity
– “…shot like dogs.”
– “The world had become a hermetically sealed
cattle car.”
•
•
•
•
Air-tight
Seal off the “contamination” of the Jews
Smothering
No one from the outside can help
Page 25 - 28
• Mrs. Schachter
–
–
–
–
–
–
Irony of sanity vs insanity
Insane – sees the truth – prophetess
Sane – refuse to see the truth
“Fire! I see a fire! I see a fire!” – pity
Simile – “…she looked like a withered tree in a field of wheat.”
Fear – “…we felt the abyss opening beneath us.” (abyssimmeasurable chasm/void; total darkness)
– Like Moishe, “Jews, listen to me!...” warning; rejection
– Rationalization: “She is hallucinating…thirsty…flames devouring her…”
(personification)
– Cruelty breeds cruelty
• “bound and gagged her”
• “…received several blows to the head that could have been lethal.”
• Approval of the rest to beat her
– “Keep her quiet! Make that madwoman shut up. She’s not the only one here…”
– Struck again
– “Jews, look! Look at the fire! Look at the flames!” And as the train
stopped this time we saw flames rising from a tall chimney into a black
sky.”
Quick Writes 6 & 7
For each quote, write a 250+ word response as
to your agreement or disagreement with the
statement. Include at least 3 examples from
your historical knowledge and/or personal
experience.
#6 “You can get used to anything.”
#7 “You should usually follow orders.”
Fair and Balanced
• It is important to understand that the majority of Germans were not
Nazis.
• Most of the concentration camps were not in Germany; this gave the
Nazi government the ability to convince the German people that the
camps that they did have were only work camps or training camps.
The idea of the reality of what was happening is something so
heinous, that the normal person could not comprehend the truth of
what was happening to the Jewish people.
• The camps in Germany were “work camps”. Why would anyone
think differently?
• March 22, 1933 - Nazis open Dachau concentration camp near
Munich, to be followed by Buchenwald near Weimar in central
Germany, Sachsenhausen near Berlin in northern Germany, and
Ravensbrück for women. These were the “work camps.”
• This era was not a time of television, internet, cable, 24-hour news.
The people only had radio and newspaper. These two media have
the ability to propagandize without question.
• The most of the free world was ignorant as well.
• Ex. We do not know what horrors may be happening 50 miles away
from our own homes, except for internet, 24-hour cable, the ability to
move about freely and quickly.
German Jews
•
•
•
•
At Wuerzburg, Germany, Jewish deportees carrying bundles and suitcases march
through town in columns behind Nazi officials riding in an open car.
The Jews of Wuerzburg were taken by police officials into the Platzscher Garten
hotel. In one room of the hotel, their luggage was inspected by Gestapo officials and
all valuables were confiscated. The luggage was then taken to a collecting area, from
where it would supposedly be taken to the deportation train. However, the deportees
never saw their luggage again.
In a second room, the deportees surrendered all their personal papers showing
ownership of securities and property. They were left only with their identification
cards, watches and wedding rings. In the next room the deportees underwent body
searches for concealed valuables. Even gold fillings were removed from their teeth.
Next, their identification cards were stamped "evakuiert" [deported].
They were then surrendered to an SS detachment until ready to leave for the railway
station. To facilitate the march through the city and the boarding of the trains, the
deportees were organized into groups led by Jewish ordners. The transport traveled
to Nuremberg, where it was attached to a larger Judentransport departing for ghettos
and concentration camps in the East, outside of Germany
Saviors
• Leaders and diplomats
• Per Anger, Swedish diplomat in Budapest who originated
the idea of issuing provisional passports to Hungarian
Jews to protect them from arrest and deportation. Anger
collaborated with Raoul Wallenberg to save the lives of
thousands of Jews.
• Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg - Swedish diplomat,
who negotiated the release of 27,000 people (a
significant number of which were Jews) to hospitals in
Sweden.
• Jacob (Jack) Benardout - British diplomat to Dominican
Republic before and during World War Two. Issued
numerous Dominican Republic visas to Jews in
Germany. Only 16 Jewish families arrived in the
Dominican Republic (the other Jews dispersed into
countries along the way e.g. Britain, America) and so
created the Jewish community of The Dominican
Republic
Saviors
• José Castellanos Contreras - a Salvadoran army colonel
and diplomat who, while working as El Salvador's Consul
General for Geneva from 1942-45, and in conjunction
with George Mantello, helped save at least 13,000
Central European Jews from Nazi persecution by
providing them with false papers of Salvadoran
nationality.
• Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, German diplomatic attaché
in Denmark. Alerted Danish politician Hans Hedtoft
about the imminent German plans deport to Denmark's
Jewish community, thus enabling the following rescue of
the Danish Jews
Saviors
• Frank Foley - British MI6 agent undercover as a passport officer in
Berlin, saved around 10,000 people by issuing forged passports to
Britain and the British Mandate of Palestine.
• Varian Fry - American journalist who saved 2,000 - 4,000 Jews,
including many prominent artists and intellectuals.
• Albert Göring - German businessman (and younger brother of
leading Nazi Hermann Göring) who helped Jews and dissidents
survive in Germany
• Paul Grüninger - Swiss commander of police who provided falsely
dated papers to over 3,000 refugees so they could escape Austria
following the Anschluss.
• Wilm Hosenfeld - German officer who helped pianist Wladyslaw
Szpilman, a Polish Jew, among many others.
• Prince Constantin Karadja - Romanian diplomat, who saved over
51,000 Jews from deportation and extermination, as credited by Yad
Vashem in 2005
Saviors
• Jan Karski- Polish emissary of Armia Krajowa to
Western Allies and eye-witness of the
Holocaust.
• Necdet Kent - Turkish Consul General at
Marseille, who granted Turkish citizenship to
hundreds of Jews. At one point he entered an
Auschwitz-bound train at enormous personal
risk to save 70 Jews, to whom he had granted
Turkish citizenship, from deportation.
• Zofia Kossak-Szczucka - Polish founder of
Zegota.
• Carl Lutz - Swiss consul in Budapest, managed
to provide safe-conducts for emigration to
Palestine to many thousands of Hungarian
Jews.
Saviors
• Luis Martins de Souza Dantas - Brazilian in charge of the
Brazilian diplomatic mission in France. He granted
Brazilian visas to several Jews and other minorities
persecuted by the Nazis. He was proclaimed as
Righteous among the Nations in 2003
• George Mantello (b. George Mandl) - El Salvador's
honorary consul for Hungary, Romania, and
Czechoslovakia - provided fictive Salvadoran citizenship
papers for thousands of Jews and spearheaded a
publicity campaign that eventually ended the deportation
of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz
• Paul V. McNutt - United States High Commissioner of
the Philippines, 1937-1939, who facilitated the entry of
Jewish refugees into the Philippines
• Helmuth James Graf von Moltke - adviser to the Third
Reich on international law; active in Kreisau Circle
resistance group, sent Jews to safe haven countries.
Saviors
• Delia Murphy - wife of Dr. Thomas J. Kiernan, Irish
minister in Rome 1941-1946, who worked with Hugh
O'Flaherty and was part of the network that saved the
lives POWs and Jews from the hands of the Gestapo
• Giovanni Palatucci - Italian police official who saved
several thousand.
• Giorgio Perlasca - Italian. When Ángel Sanz Briz was
ordered to leave Hungary, he falsely claimed to be his
substitute and continued saving some thousands more
Jews.
• Dimitar Peshev - Deputy Speaker of the Bulgarian
Parliament.
• Frits Philips - Dutch industrialist who saved 382 Jews by
insisting to the Nazis that they were indispensable
employees of Philips.
Saviors
• Witold Pilecki - the only person who volunteered to be
imprisoned in Auschwitz, organised a resistance inside
the camp and as a member of Armia Krajowa sent the
first reports on the camp atrocities to the Polish
Government in Exile, from where they were passed to
the rest of the Western Allies.
• Karl Plagge - a Major in the Wehrmacht who issued work
permits in order to save almost 1,000 Jews (see The
Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews, by
Michael Good)
• Eduardo Propper de Callejón - First secretary in the
Spanish embassy in Paris who stamped and signed
passports almost non-stop for four days in 1940 to let
Jewish refugees escape to Spain and Portugal.
Savior
• Traian Popovici - Romanian mayor of Cernăuţi
(Chernivtsi): saved 20,000 Jews of Bukovina.
• Manuel L. Quezon - President of the Commonwealth of
the Philippines, 1935-1941, assisted in resettling Jewish
refugees on the island of Mindanao
• Florencio Rivas - Consul General of Uruguay in
Germany, who allegedly hid during Kristallnacht and
later provided passports to one houndred and fifty Jews
• Gilberto Bosques Saldívar - General Consul of Mexico in
Marseilles, France. For two years he issued Mexican
visas to around 40,000 Jews and political refugees,
allowing them to escape to Mexico and other countries.
He was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1943 and released to
Mexico in 1944
Saviors
• Ángel Sanz Briz - Spanish consul in Hungary. Saved,
together with Giorgio Perlasca, more than 5,000 Jews in
Budapest by issuing Spanish passports to them.
• Abdol-Hossein Sardari - Head of Consular affairs at the
Iranian Embassy in Paris. He saved many Iranian Jews
and gave 500 blank Iranian passports to an
acquaintance of his to be used by non-Iranian Jews in
France.
• Oskar Schindler - German businessman whose efforts
to save his 1,200 Jewish workers were recounted in the
book Schindler's Ark and the film Schindler's List.
• Eduard Schulte - German industrialist, the first to inform
Allies about the mass extermination of Jews.
• Irena Sendler - Polish head of Zegota children's
department: saved 2,500 Jewish children.
Saviors
• Ho Feng Shan - Chinese Consul in Vienna, who freely
issued visas to Jews.
• Henryk Slawik - Polish diplomat, saved 5,000-10,000
people in Budapest, Hungary.
• Aristides de Sousa Mendes - Portuguese diplomat in
Bordeaux, who signed about 30,000 visas to help Jews
and persecuted minorities to escape the Nazis and The
Holocaust.
• Chiune Sugihara - Japanese consul to Lithuania, 2,140
(mostly Polish) Jews and an unknown number of
additional family members were saved by passports,
many unauthorized, provided by him in 1940.
• Selâhattin Ülkümen - Turkish diplomat who saved the
lives of some 42 Jewish Turkish families, more than 200
persons, among a Jewish community of some 2000 after
the Germans occupied the island of Rhodes in 1944.
Saviors
• Raoul Wallenberg - Swedish diplomat, saved up to
100,000 Jews. Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of
thousands of Jews condemned to certain death by the
Nazis were thus saved. All inhabitants have been
honored by Yad Vashem.
• Moissac, France There was a Jewish boarding home
and orphanage in this town. When the mayor was told
that the Nazis were coming the older students would go
camping for several days, the younger students were
boarded with families in the area and told to treat as
members of their immediate family and the oldest
students hid in the house. When it became too
dangerous for the students to stay there any longer they
made sure that every student had a safe place to go to.
If the students again had to move the counsellors from
the boarding house arranged for a new place and even
escorted them to the new housing.
Saviors
• Sir Nicholas Winton - British stockbroker who
organized the Czech Kindertransport which sent
669 children (most of them Jewish) to foster
parents ln England and Sweden from
Czechoslovakia and Austria after Kristallnach.
Sir Nicholas has been nominated for the 2008
Nobel Peace Prize
• Namik Kemal Yolga - Vice-Consul at the Turkish
Embassy in Paris who saved numerous Turkish
Jews from deportation.
• Guelfo Zamboni - Consul General at
Thessaloniki who gave false papers to save the
lives of over 300 Jews residing there.
• Albert Battel - a German Wehrmacht officer.
Saviors
• Albert Bedane - of Jersey, provided shelter to a Jewish
woman, as well as others sought by the German
occupiers of the Channel Islands.
• Victor Bodson helped Jews escape from Germany
through an underground escape route in Luxembourg.
• Corrie ten Boom, rescued many Jews in the Netherlands
by sheltering them at her home. - was sent to
Ravensbrück
• Stefania Podgorska Burzminski and Helena Podgorska
at age 16 and 7 (Helena was her sister), they smuggled
out of the ghettos and saved thirteen Jews from the
liquidation of the ghettos.
Saviors
• Sgt.-Major Charles Coward was an English POW who smuggled
over 400 Jews out of Monowitz labour camp.
• Miep Gies, Jan Gies, Bep Voskuijl, Victor Kugler, and Johannes
Kleiman hid Anne Frank and seven others in Amsterdam,
Netherlands for two years.
• Alexandre Glasberg, Ukrainian-French priest who helped hundreds
of French Jews escape deportation.
• Friedrich Kellner, justice inspector, who helped Julius and Lucie Abt,
and their infant son, John Peter, escape from Laubach.
• Stanislaw Kielar – two girls from Reisenbach family
• Janis Lipke from Latvia, protected and hid around 40 Jews from the
Nazis in Riga.
• Heralda Luxin, young woman who sheltered Jewish children in her
cellar.
• Józef and Stefania Macugowscy, hid six members of the Radza
family, and several others, in Nowy Korczyn, Poland.
• Shyqyri Myrto, Albanian rescuer of Jozef Jakoel and his sister Keti.
• JUDr Rudolf Štursa, a lawyer, and Jan Martin Vochoč, an Old
Catholic priest, in Prague baptized Jews on demand and issued
over 1,500 baptism certificates.
Saviors
• Villages helping Jews
• Yaruga, Ukraine
• Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in the Haute-Loire département in France,
which saved up to 5,000 Jews.
• Markowa, Poland, where 17 Jews survived the war. Many families
hid their Jewish neighbours there and some paid the ultimate price.
– Wiktoria and Józef Ulm, their 6 children and unborn baby were shot
dead by the Germans for hiding the Szall and Goldman families.
– Dorota and Antoni Szylar - hid seven members of Weltz family.
– Julia and Józef Bar - hid five members of Reisenbach family.
– Michal Bar - hid Jakub Lorbenfeld.
– Jan and Weronika Przybylak - hid Jakub Einhorn.
• Tršice, Czech Republic, many people from this village helped hide
a Jewish family, six of them were given the honorific of Righteous
among the Nations.
• Nieuwlande, The Netherlands - during the war this small village
contained 117 inhabitants. They unanimously decided in 1942 and
1943 that every household would give shelter to one Jewish
household or individual during the war, thus making it impossible
that anyone in the small village would betray their neighbours.
Dozens of Jews
Saviors
• Religious figures
• Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Zante,[who, when ordered by the Axis
occupying forces to submit a list of all Jews on the island, submitted
a document bearing just two names: his own and the Mayor's.
Consequently all 275 Zante Jews were saved.
• Archbishop Damaskinos - Archbishop of Athens during the German
occupation. He formally protested the deportation of Jews and
quietly ordered churches under his jurisdiction to issue fake
Christian baptismal certificates to Jews fleeing the Nazis.
Thousands of Greek Jews in and around Athens were thus able to
claim that they were Christian and were thus saved.
• Archbishop Johannes de Jong, later Cardinal, of Utrecht,
Netherlands, who drew up together with Titus Brandsma O.Carm. (†
Dachau, 1942) a letter in which he called for all Catholics to assist
persecuted Jews, and in which he openly condemned the Nazi
German "deportation of our Jewish fellow citizens" (From: Herderlijk
Schrijven, read from all pulpits on Sunday 26 January, 1942).
Saviors
• Alfred Delp S.J., a Jesuit priest who helped Jews escape to
Switzerland while rector of St. Georg Church in suburban Munich;
also involved with the Kreisau Circle. Executed February 2, 1945 in
Berlin.
• Rufino Niccacci, a Franciscan friar and priest who sheltered Jewish
refugees in Assisi, Italy, from September 1943 through June 1944.
• Maximilian Kolbe - Polish Conventual Franciscan friar. During the
Second World War, in the friary, Kolbe provided shelter to people
from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews. He was also active as a
radio amateur, vilifying Nazi activities through his reports.
• Bernhard Lichtenberg - German Catholic priest at Berlin's Cathedral.
Sent to Dachau because he prayed for Jews at Evening Prayer.
• Hugh O'Flaherty - an Irish Catholic priest who saved about 4,000
Allied soldiers and Jews; known as the "Scarlet Pimpernel of the
Vatican". Retold in the film The Scarlet and the Black.
Saviors
• Pope Pius XII - during the German occupation of Rome he
organized that Italian Jews would be concealed in convents and
monasteries. Up to 1,000 Jews were even concealed at the Pope's
Summer Residence Castel Gandolfo. His distribution of false
baptismal certificates helped save the lives of over 860,000 Jews.
• Sára Salkaházi - a Hungarian Roman Catholic Sister who sheltered
an estimated 100 Jews in Budapest.
• Andrey Sheptytsky - Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek
Catholic Church, harbored hundreds of Jews in his residence and in
Greek Catholic monasteries. He also issued the pastoral letter,
"Thou Shalt Not Kill," to protest Nazi atrocities.
• The Sisters of Social Service, nuns who saved thousands of
Hungarian Jews; included Sister Sara Salkahazi, recognized by Yad
Vashem as well as beatified.
• Archbishop Stefan of Sofia - Bishop of Sofia and Exarch of Bulgaria.
• André and Magda Trocmé - A French pastor and his wife who led
the Le Chambon-sur-Lignon village movement that saved 3,0005,000 Jews.
• Omelyan Kovch - Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest who was deported
to Treblinka camp for helping thousands of Jews. He was canonized
by Pope John Paul II
Saviors
• Prominent individuals
• Khaled Abdul-Wahab administrator of Mahdia,
Tunisia, under German occupation; first Arab
nominated for "Righteous Among the Nations"
• Maria Leenderts and Petrus Johannes Jacobus
Kleiss, Dutch merchants in her "Selecta
Schoenenwinkel" (located at 248 Dierenselaan
in Den Haag) with the cooperation of personnel
of the "Quick Steps" soccer club (located on the
corner of the Hardewijkstraat and the
Nijkerklaan in Den Haag) and the pastor of the
"Sint Thersia Van Het Kind Jesus Kerk" (located
across the street from the Selecta shoe store
and on the corner of the Apeldoornselaan and
the Dierenselaan) accommodated many Jewish
families throughout the war.
Saviors
• Dorothea Neff, Austrian stage actress, who hid her
Jewish friend Lilli Schiff.
• Algoth Niska Finnish gentleman rogue and alcohol
smuggler; smuggled Jews via the Baltic.
• Irene Gut Opdyke, Polish hid twelve Jews in a German
Major's basement.
• Jaap Penraat - Dutch architect who forged identity cards
for Jews and helped many escape to Spain.
• Tim Pickert rescued dozens of Jews from the ghettoes of
Kraków, Poland to hide them in his windmills located on
his estate 23 km northwest of the The Hague,
Netherlands.
• Nicolaus Rossini, helped many Jewish orphans - was
executed in Kraków-Płaszów.
• Irena Sendler, Polish social worker who saved about
2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Saviors
• Suzanne Spaak, wealthy socialite who saved Jewish children in
France.
• Marie Taquet-Martens and Major Emile Taquet hid some
seventy-five Jewish children in a home for disabled children
they were running in Jamoigne-sur-Semois, Belgium.
• Ilse (Davidsohn Intrator) Stanley, herself a German Jew living in
Germany until 1939, made many trips to German concentration
camps and secured the release of 412 people. After Kristallnacht
when she could no longer make those trips, she continued helping
German Jews leave the country legally, until her own departure in
1939.
• Gabrielle Weidner and Johan Hendrik Weidner, escape network
rescued 800 Jews.
• Bertha Marx and Eugen Marx assisted in saving Jews through the
Resistance forces.
DEATH
•
•
•
•
•
Death 1: (page 7) One day, Moshe the Beadle, who had been deported, comes
back to Sighet to tell the story of the extermination of the Jews by the Gestapo.
Although Moshe begs desperately to be heard, no one believes him. He tells
Elie, "'I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death.'"
Moshe the Beadle considers himself as already having gone through death. As
someone who has experienced death and miraculously lives, he wants to save
others from having to go through that same death.
Death 2: (pages 9- 17) Elie identifies the German soldiers by their steel helmets
with the emblem, the death's head. It is the first impression Elie has of the
German soldiers.
The Jews are not allowed to leave their houses for three days-on pain of death.
The term, "on pain of death" is used several times in the narrative to emphasize
the harsh reality of the German's threats.
As the Jews are forced to wear the yellow star, Elie's father replies, "'The
yellow star? Oh well, what of it? You don't die of it....'" Elie responds, "Poor
Father! Of what then did you die?" The yellow star symbolizes the mark of
distinction that sends many Jews to their deaths. In retrospect, Wiesel feels
that his father and the Jews of Sighet conceded to their deaths by submitting
to every German decree. With each submission, they die a bit more.
As the ghettos are emptied by the deportation of the Jews, rooms that were
once bustling with activity, lay open with the people's belongings still
remaining. It is like an "open tomb" in that there is no longer any sign of life.
DEATH
• Death 3: (p. 33)The crematories serve as factories of death. The
big, fiery furnace is where those who do not make the selection are
sent. The threat of being sent to the crematory is likened to being
sent to the grave.
• As the prisoners witness the burning of babies, they begin to recite
the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. It is a prayer that the living
offer up on behalf of the dead. "Someone began to recite the
Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I do not know if it has ever
happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have
ever recited the prayer for the dead for themselves." The threat of
death is so imminent that the Jews recite the prayer for their own
souls.
• Death 4: (p. 38)
• The SS officer who introduces them to Auschwitz is described as
having the odor of the Angel of Death. He tells the Jews that if they
do not work, they will be sent to the crematory. The idea of being
sent to the furnace becomes a firm reality.
• Elie realizes, as he settles in during the first night of camp, that he
has changed: the child in him is dead. It is the death of his old
identity-the death of his innocence.
• On the electric wires at Auschwitz, there is a sign with a caption:
"Warning. Danger of death." Elie considers it a mockery because
everywhere in the camp, there is constant danger of death.
MEMORY
• Memory 1: Although the whole of Night is a series of memories,
there are many cases where either "forgetting" or
"remembering" plays a significant role in the narrative. In the
first chapter, Moshe the Beadle and all the foreign Jews of
Sighet are expelled by the Hungarian Police. The Jews of
Sighet are troubled but soon after the deportation, the
deportees are forgotten and town life returns to normal.
• Moshe returns to Sighet and recounts the horror stories of the
Gestapo's extermination of the Jews. He tries to recall from
memory, the stories of the victims' deaths: "He went from one
Jewish house to another, telling the story of Malka, the young
girl who had taken three days to die, and of Tobias, the tailor,
who had begged to be killed before his sons....“
• The German army sets up two ghettos in Sighet. The Jews of
the "little ghetto" are deported first and just three days later,
even as they move into the previous occupants' homes, the
Jews of the big ghetto forget about them.
MEMORY
• Memory 2: During the train ride, the Jews try desperately to
silence the maddening screams of Madame Schachter. They
even go so far as to hit her. Just as the Jews are able to block
Madame Schachter out of their minds, they see the flames of
the furnace and smell the odor of burning flesh at Birkenau.
There, they are reminded of Madame Schachter's visions. (P 28)
• Memory 3: The first night of camp is forever etched into Elie's
memory. Repeatedly, he uses the phrase "never shall I forget."
Elie does not have to try to remember anything because even if
he tries to forget, the memories are eternal, forever.
• Upon arrival of Auschwitz, the SS officer in charge gives the
new prisoners an introduction to the camp. He says,
"'Remember it forever. Engrave it into your minds. You are at
Auschwitz.'" (p38)
• As the prisoners talk about God and wonder about their fate,
Elie finds that only occasionally does he think about the fates
of his mother and younger sister. The rigors of concentration
camp life have dulled his sense of memory.
TITLE “NIGHT”
• Wiesel's experiences during the holocaust, one of the darkest
periods in human history, are like a journey into a night of total
blackness. During his stay in the various concentration camps,
Wiesel witnesses and endures the worst kind of man's inhumanity to
his fellow men, as prisoners are beaten, tortured, starved, and
murdered. Darkness and evil reigned.
• When Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, he
condemned the silence and apathy of those who did not cry out and
condemn the criminal atrocities of Hitler and his dark forces.
• As a symbol, night does not merely represent physical darkness; it
also stands for the darkness of the soul. It was obvious that the
Nazis were dark and evil; but Wiesel also felt that his heart was
darkened by the evil around him. In the book, he says about himself,
"There remained only a shape that looked like man. A dark flame
had entered into my soul and devoured it.“
• Throughout the holocaust, Wiesel was living through a long "night"
of terror and torture, where he could see no light at the end of the
tunnel, only perpetual darkness.
NIGHT
• Night 1: Before the Germans arrive at Sighet, nighttime is for
Elie a time of spiritual and physical renewal. It is a time of
studying religious texts, of prayer, and of restful sleep. This
comforting sense of night is forever lost as Elie experiences
the horrible, dreadful nights of the concentration camps.
• Night 2: Elie describes how in the ghetto, as his father was
telling stories, "Night fell," foreshadowing the news of their
deportation. The notion of "night" falling on the Jews becomes
a running theme throughout the book. There are several
instances where the phrase precedes some dreadful event. (p
12)
• Night 3: Darkness characterizes the cattle train ride to
Birkenau-Auschwitz. In the darkness, Madame Schachter goes
out of her mind and yells incessantly about the fire, flames, and
furnace. When she points and screams about the fire and
flames, the other Jews see only darkness. Darkness is also a
character of night that allows the young to flirt and people to
relieve themselves without being seen. (p 27-28)
NIGHT
• Night 4: The overwhelming sense of Elie's
experiences during the first day of camp is that it is
like a nightmare. As Elie and the other prisoners
walk past the chimneys at Birkenau, they stand
motionless, unable to comprehend the sights: "We
stayed motionless, petrified. Surely it was all a
nightmare? An unimaginable nightmare?" Elie
thinks he's dreaming. After pinching his face, in
disbelief he utters, "How could it be possible for
them to burn people, children, and for the world to
keep silent? No, none of this could be true. It was a
nightmare...." (32-33)
Night
• That first night of camp is forever etched into Elie's
mind. His entire narrative story seems like an
account of one long, endless night: "So much had
happened within such a few hours that I had lost all
sense of time. When had we left our houses? And
the ghetto? And the train? Was it only a week? One
night-one single night?" (p 37)
“Never…”
Page 35
• Psalm 150 – final prayer; ecstatic celebration of God.
Each line begins: “Hallelujah”, or “Praise God”.
Wiesel gives an inverse version, with the repetition of
“Never”- negative vs. affirmative.
• Psalm 150 praises God; Never – questions His justice.
• Faith and morality turned upside down.
• Eliezer accuses God of being corrupt.
• Eliezer claims that his faith is destroyed; yet refers to
God in the last line.
• Eliezer is struggling with his faith and his God.
• Never able to forget the horror, he is never able to
reject completely his heritage and religion.
Psychological Moral Tragedy
• Death of faith in god
• Death of faith in humankind
• God fails to act justly and save the Jews
from the Nazis
• Nazis drive the Jews to cruelty to each
other
• Morality is upside down
Shaving of Head/Tatooing
Page 35 & 42
• Jewish law contains strict regulations about
cutting one’s hair and facial hair. Razors are
not permitted, and beards and earlocks are
often considered sources of pride and
commitment to tradition. Nazi used this as a
means of humiliation and denigration of
Jewish tradition.
• Tatooing is a strict ban by Jewish law. Nazi’s
did this to dehumanize, demoralize, and strip
them of their religious traditions.
Angel of Death
• A prominent character in Jewish folk
tradition.
• Fearsome angel who would stand at the
bedside of the sick, and using his knife,
take his/her life.
• Change one’s name during extreme
illness in an attempt to fool the angel;
discard all water in the room after the
death, because the angel supposedly
washed his knife in the water.
1st Selection
• Page 29
–
–
–
–
“Men to the left! Women to the right!”
Never sees his mother and sisters again
18 and 40
Weak vs strong
• Truth
– Auschwitz/crematoria
• Revolt
– “The wind of revolt died down.” Metaphor
– Simile … “like cattle in the slaughterhouse
– Too little too late
• Dr. Mengele
– Dr. Death
– Conductor of orchestra in this play of horror
• Selection of weak and strong
– Useful for a time, or not
Rejection of God
Page 33
• Reality of the horror and no one is crying
out to the world.
• World does not care.
• God does not care.
• “Why should I sanctify His name? The
Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of
the Universe, chose to be silent. What was
there to thank Him for?”
Death March
• “We continued our march….closer and
closer to the pit.” (33)
• Simile: “We were walking slowly, as one
follows a hearse, our own funeral
procession.”
• Still faith, angry, but: “May His name be
exalted and sanctified..”
“Never…”
page 34
• Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that
turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose
bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith
for ever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived
me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my
God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I
condemned to live
as long as God Himself.
Never.
Disinfection
•
•
•
•
•
Page 36
Gasoline – completely soaked in it
“fuel” – fire
Exterminate bugs
Showers – get used to this for a purpose
later
Imagery
• Page 37
– “The student of Talmud, the child I was, had
been consumed by the flames.”
– “My soul had been invaded – and devoured –
by a black flame.” (evil of Hell)
– “We were withered trees in the heart of the
desert.” (metaphor) (nothing lives) Living
dead
– “herded” – continual image of cattle
Reality
• Page 39
• “Work or crematorium…the choice is
yours.”
• Gypsy – chance to be cruel to someone
• Father beaten – son does nothing
– Guilt
– Forgiven by father
Irony
• Page 41
– “It was spring. The sun was shining.”
– “Warning of Death”
– “The fragrances of spring were in the air”
– “Work makes you free.”
– “These were the showers, a compulsory
routine.”
Page 42-45
•
•
•
•
•
•
Spoiled child
Branding
Lied to protect relative from pain
Humanity does not get reward
“God is testing us.”
March to Buna
Vocabulary
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Lagerkapo
Oberkapo
Pipel
Kaddish
-
head of camp
overseer
young apprentice or assistant
in Judaism, an Aramaic prayer that
glorifies God and asks for the speedy
coming of His kingdom on Earth.
Crucible a vessel of a very refractory material
(as porcelain) used for melting a
substance that requires a high degree
of heat.
Din – disagreeable music tones
Dysentery – bacterial disease from malnutrition
Dregs – most undesirable part of wine; left over;
unwanted
Vocabulary
• Rosh Hashanah • Zionism
-
• Nyilas
-
• Shavuot
-
• Phylacteries -
(Hebrew, “beginning of the year”), Jewish
New Year. Usually celebrated in September.
Movement to unite the Jewish people of the
Diaspora (exile) and settle them in Palestine
Hungarian for Arrow Cross, a fascist antisemitic party which assumed power in late
1944 and assisted the SS in deportations of
Jews
Jewish holiday. It is celebrated in the late
spring
called tefillin in Hebrew, consist of two
black leather boxes that are attached to
leather ties; the boxes contain passages
from Scripture written on parchment
• Kapo
• Blockalteste -
director; leader of the group
Block leader
• Appelplatz • Lageralteste -
the place for roll call
a prisoner who was in charge of the other
prisoners
• Shtibl
• Penury
• Kabbalah
-
• Maimonides • Zohar
-
• Glaicia
-
• Gestapo
-
• Kolomay
–
Vocabulary
a house changed into synagogue
severe poverty
body of mystical teachings of rabbinical
origin, often based on an obscure
interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Jewish philosopher and physician, born in
Córdoba, Spain
Jewish mystical text commenting on Torah:
a 13th-century Jewish mystical text that is
the primary text of Kabbalistic writings
region of central Europe in southeast
Poland and western Ukraine
Secret State Police, common designation of
the terrorist political police of the Nazi
regime in Germany
City in Glaicia
Buna
• Shoes
• Gold tooth – trip to the dentist; pretends to be ill;
dentist hanged
• “you…you…you” choosing cattle at a marketplace
• Juliek – violinist – beauty of music – illegal
• SURVIVAL – p 52 = “a famished stomach” loss of
humanity
• Idek – Kapo; mad; cruel – p 54 his father = simile =
angry at his father (upside down morality – break
down of humanity )
• Franek –Pole - greedy- Father is the way to the tooth.
• Idek = publicly whips Elie into unconsiousness
Page 59
•
•
•
•
•
“Two cauldrons of soup!”
Desire overcomes fear of death
Irony = shepherd – ss
Soup – lambs – wolves = inmates
Irony = inmate “snakelike”
Page 61
• Gallows
– Young boy from Warsaw
– Stands in defiance
•
•
•
•
•
Lack of humanity
“I’m hungry”
Appreciation for food
Page 63 – different
Metaphor – p. 64 “…three black ravens”
– Pipel = hated; not this one; angelic
– To hang a child was a problem (ironic)
– Page 65 = “where is God?”
– Food tastes like corpses
Loss of Faith through the hanging of the Pipel
• God has been murdered
• A just God must not exist in a world where
a young child is hanged.
• Lowest point of Elie’s faith
• Death of his innocence with death of the
child
• Loses his faith, morals, values
• Fear – lose connection with his father in
order to survive (p.63)
Elie as the Accuser
•
•
•
•
•
P. 66 – 67
“What are You, my God?...
Benediction…
Anaphora …cynical
“the melody was stifled in his throat.” difficulty
keeping the faith
• Accuser vs accused
• Anaphora – “You..” God is the betrayer
– Powerful; stranger; observer; no longer believed
Yom Kippur
• Fast?
• Metaphor – “locked in hell”
• Open defiance of God’s laws
– Falls into the abyss of despair
Selection
• Rosh Hashanah
– Pass before God for judgment
– Irony
• Nazis = God
• They decide who lives and who dies
• RUN!!! Do not show weakness
Pavlov’s Theory
• Page 73
• “The bell….The bell….a universe without a
bell.”
• Selection – father gives him his knife and spoon.
• Page 76-77: Akiba Drumer – lost his faith, will to
fight, to live; no hope=total despair= death of the
soul
• Forgot to say Kaddish = loss of faith = betrayal
of humankind
Theme of Faith
• From the beginning, Elie Wiesel's work details the threshold of
his adult awareness of Judaism, its history, and its significance
to the devout.
• His emotional response to stories of past persecution
contributes to his faith, which he values as a belief system rich
with tradition and unique in its philosophy.
• A divisive issue between young Elie and Chlomo is the study of
supernatural lore, a division of Judaic wisdom that lies outside
the realm of Chlomo's common sense.
• To Chlomo, the good Jew attends services, prays, rears a
family according to biblical dictates, celebrates religious
festivals, and reaches out to the needy, whatever their faith.
Theme of Faith
• From age twelve onward, Elie deviates from his
father's path by remaining in the synagogue after the
others leave and conducting with Moshe the Beadle
an intense questioning of the truths within a small
segment of mystic lore.
• The emotional gravity of Elie's study unites with the
early adolescent desire for obsession, particularly of
a topic as entrancing as the history of the Spanish
Inquisition or the Babylonian Captivity.
• It comes as no surprise that Elie's personal test jars
his youthful faith with demands and temptations to
doubt because he lacks experience with evil.
Theme of Faith
•
•
•
•
•
When Moshe returns from his own testing in the Galician forest, his
story seems incredible to Sighet's Jews, including Elie.
Later, the test of faith that undermines Elie's belief in a merciful God is
the first night at Birkenau and the immolation of infants in a fiery
trench.
The internal battlefield of Elie's conscience gives him no peace as
atrocities become commonplace, including hangings before breakfast.
The extreme realism of Elie's test of faith at Auschwitz portrays in
miniature the widespread question of suffering that afflicts Europe's
Jews during an era when no one is safe and no one can count on
tomorrow.
Although Elie omits fasting and forgets to say Kaddish for Akiba
Drumer, the fact that Elie incubates the book for a decade and writes
an original text of 800 pages proves that the explanation of faith and
undeserved suffering is a subject that a teenage boy is poorly
equipped to tackle.
Quick Write #8
• Respond to the following quote. 250+
words with examples from your historical
knowledge and/or personal experience.
– "... in spite of everything, I still believe that people are
really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes
on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and
death. I see the world gradually being turned into a
wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder,
which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of
millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think
that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end,
and that peace and tranquility will return again." Anne Frank
Quick Write #9
• Respond to the following statement:
– “He who forgets the past is condemned to
repeat it.”
– 250 + words
– Give examples from your historical knowledge
and/or personal experience.
Quick Write #10
Respond to the following statement:
– “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an
ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean
does not become dirty.”
Mahatma Gandhi
– 250+ words with examples from your historical
knowledge and/or personal experience
Hospital Stay
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Pages 78-80
Must have surgery on his foot.
Trust in the Doctor? – German – Hyppocratic Oath
Red Army is advancing
All patients will remain in the hospital.
Inmates will be evacuated to another camp.
Metaphor: “beehive of activity”
“I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He
alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the
Jewish people.”
Irony
• “faceless patient”
– No chance of survival
– Bomb the camp
– Kill all of us
– Eliezer chooses to leave in pain
– They were saved by the Red Army (page 82)
Leaving Buna
page 83
• Anaphora:
• “The last night…the last night…the last
night…”
• Hope still alive: Russians on their
way…soon
• Imagery: “Poor clowns…”
• Death march: “…the bell…death
knell…funeral…”
Inner Strength…still
• “..we were running…like automatons…like
a machine.”
• Wiesel’s faith: saw too much suffering to
break from his past and reject his heritage.
He kept his faith in God throughout.
• Elie’s faith: struggled, but although he
rejects God, he never totally rejected his
faith.
Personification of Death
• Page 86
• “just a few more meters…..a small red
flame..a shot…Death enveloped me, it
suffocated me….”
• Love for his father keeps him alive and
strong to continue. “I had no right to let
myself die.”
Master vs God
• Page 87-89
• “We were the masters of nature, the
masters of the world….”
• God is no longer the Master of the
world…the prisoners are now the
masters…godless worldview…survival is
the only goal..morality is meaningless.
• Personification of Death
• “All around me…dance of
death…something in me rebelled against
that death…”
Father/Son Relationship
Rabbi Eliahu and his son – page 91
Elie and his father – page 91
Although angry with God, still prays…calls
God “Master of the Universe.”
Death So Close
• Page 94-95
– Almost trampled
– Juliek – violin “little corpse”
– Page 96-97
• Imagery: eating snow off each other’s backs
• 100 men to a car…so skinny
– Page 98-99
•
•
•
•
“cemetery covered with snow”
Lack of humanity – strip dead bodies for clothes
Father
“naked orphans without a tomb”
Animals in the Zoo
• Page 100-101
• “dozens of starving men … worker
watched with great interest…”
• Modern society … coins tossed to the poor
• “Beasts of prey….ready to kill for a crust
of bread.”
• Father and son kill for a crust of bread
Buchenwald
• 100 began…12 came out
– Death personified through argument with
father. Page 105
• Guilt- page 106-107
– Relief when father is gone
– Shares his bread grudgingly
– Father begins to die; dysentery
– Page 112- January 28, 1945; father dies
– “Free at last” – should he feel guilty?
Page 113-115
• Liberation
– Liquidation of inmates
– Thousands marched out daily
– SS escape
– American tank enters April 10, 1945
– “From the depths of the mirror…the look inhis
eyes…has never left me.”
DEATH
•
Death 5: As Elie witnesses the hanging of the young pipel, he feels
that it is his God who is hanging on the gallows. Elie identifies with the
death of the young pipel because he undergoes a similar slow, painful,
spiritual death.
•
Death 6: The selection process determines who will live and who will
die. Dr. Mengele, the notorious SS officer, is the person who heads the
selection. He moves his baton to the right or to the left, depending on
the health of the prisoners. Dr. Mengele is like the Angel of Death. He
is the messenger of death.
As the prisoners prepare for the evacuation of Buna, the bell rings. It
signals the start of the winter march. The sight of the prisoners setting
out in the winter is likened to a burial procession. The prisoners
realize that many of them will not make in through the march alive.
•
•
Death 7: On the winter march, the prisoners who cannot keep up are
either shot by the SS officers or trampled upon by the others. The
winter march is a march to their deaths. As Elie sees his friend Zalman
fall behind, he begins to think about his painful foot: "Death wrapped
itself around me till I was stifled. It stuck to me. I felt I could touch
it."The presence of his father is the only motivation that keeps him
going.
DEATH
• Death 8: On the train ride, dead corpses are thrown overboard
onto the snow. "Twenty bodies were thrown out of our wagon.
Then the train resumed its journey, leaving behind it a few
hundred naked dead, deprived of burial, in the deep snow of a
field in Poland." By this time, Elie is indifferent to death.
• As the Jews on the train feel that the end is near, they all begin
to wail like animals that are about to die. The cries are a primal,
instinctive, and reactionary response to death. Many die like
animals, without the dignity accorded to human beings.
• Death 9: At Buchenwald, Elie's father struggles with dysentery.
Elie tries to revive his father's spirit, but it is of no use. Elie's
father is taken away during the night. Elie feels guilty that he
cannot find the tears to weep. Concentration camp existence
has robbed him of the proper response to his father's death.
Elie is emotionally dead.
• Death 10: In his Holocaust experience, Elie undergoes near
physical, spiritual, and emotional death. It is graphically
reflected in the mirror as he sees the image of a corpse staring
back at him.
FAITH
• From the time of his childhood, Elie was extremely interested in
Judaism and studied the Talmud and the Kabbala. He regularly
attended services at the synagogue, prayed to his God, and
wept over the history of the Jews. His father was also very
religious.
• In the concentration camps, religion helps the prisoners to
endure. They regularly pray to God for mercy and help. The
Jews still fast during holy days, even though they are starving
to death. It seems that nothing can shake their faith. Elie's faith,
however, gets shaken to the core.
• Sickened by the torture he must see and endure, Elie questions
if God really exists. He refuses to pray on the eve of the Jewish
New Year and will not fast during the time of atonement. Elie's
faith, however, is not permanently shattered. When he sees a
son robbing from his father, he prays to God that he may never
desert his father. The prayer is answered, for even when his
father becomes a burden, Elie stays by his side and cares for
him.
FAITH
• Faith 1: Elie is a deeply religious boy whose favorite activities
are studying the Talmud and spending time at the Temple with
his spiritual mentor, Moshe the Beadle. At an early age, Elie has
a naïve, yet strong faith in God.
• Faith 2: Many of the prisoners try to cope with their situation by
talking of God. Akiba Drumer, a devout Jew with a deep solemn
voice, sings Hasidic melodies and talks about God testing the
Jews. Elie, however, ceases pray. He identifies with the biblical
character Job, who questions God when misfortunes come
upon him. Similarly, Elie begins to doubt God's absolute
justice.
• Faith 3: As Elie witnesses the hanging of the young pipel, he
feels that it is his God who is hanging on the gallows. Elie
identifies with the death of the young pipel because he
undergoes a similar slow, painful spiritual death. The death of
the pipel is related to the death of his faith in God.
FAITH
• Faith 4: On the Jewish New Year, Elie feels a strong
rebellion against God. He becomes the accuser and
God the accused. But in his rebellion against his
faith in God, he also feels alone and empty.
• The Jews debate whether they should fast for Yom
Kippur. As an act of obedience to his father and also
as an act of rebellion against God, Elie swallows his
food. In the camps, his physical needs become more
important than his faith.
• Faith 5: Even the most devout, religious Jews begin
to lose faith. Akiba Drumer does not make the
selection when "cracks" begin to form in his faith. A
rabbi from Poland, who always recites the Talmud
from memory, concludes that God is no longer with
them. For some, losing their faith in God is akin to
losing their will to live.
FAITH
• Faith 6: As Elie recuperates in the hospital after his foot
surgery, a faceless neighbor tells him that he has more faith in
Hitler than in anyone else because he's the only one who's kept
his promises to the Jewish people. This is a direct attack on
those who have clung to their faith in God. The ultimate insult
is that even Hitler is an object worthier of faith than is God.
• Faith 7: Recalling the actions of Rabbi Eliahou's son, Elie prays
to the God he no longer believes in, that he have the strength to
never do what the rabbi's son had done in abandoning his
father. Rabbi Eliahou's search for his son rekindles in Elie a
sense of hope and faith. Elie feels that at the very least, he
should be faithful to his father to the end.
• From an early age, Elie Wiesel has a tremendous love for
religion, wanting to study the Cabbala and Talmud. When he is
first imprisoned, it is his faith that helps him survive. Like most
of the Jews, he prays regularly for an end to the persecution
and strength to survive. His faith, however, is shaken when he
sees the depth of the atrocities committed against his fellow
Jews. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, he finds that he cannot
even pray, questioning if God exists amongst such cruelty to
mankind. In the end, his faith returns and helps him deal with
his experiences.
MEMORY
• Memory 4: At Buna, Elie is beaten by Idek the Kapo and a young
French girl comes to his aid and tells him to keep his anger and
hatred for another day. Years later, Elie Wiesel recalls running into
her in Paris. They reminisce about the days in the concentration
camp. Such memories are hard to forget.
• Memory 5: After the prisoners go through the selection process, they
forget about it until a few days later when the head of the barracks
reads off the numbers of those selected. Although the prisoners
forget, Dr. Mengele, the one who makes the selections, does not
forget.
• Akiba Drumer, sensing that his death is near, makes Elie and others
promise to remember him when he is taken away by praying the
Kaddish. Due to the harsh treatment they receive, after only three
days since Akiba Drumer is taken away, Elie and the others forget to
pray the Kaddish for him.
MEMORY
• Memory 6: During the train ride in the dead of winter, the
prisoners forget about everything-death, fatigue, and their
physical needs. The unbearable sufferings that the prisoners
undergo desensitize their senses-they are able to block
everything from their minds.
• Elie remembers that Rabbi Eliahou's son had tried to abandon
his father during the winter march. That memory makes him
pray to a God that he no longer believes in, to give him the
strength not to do what the rabbi's son had done.
• Memory 7: Elie cannot forget the smile his father shows him
even in the midst of his suffering. "I shall always remember that
smile. From which world did it come?" Elie asks. These
seemingly minor, death-defying gestures are particularly
memorable.
MEMORY
• Memory 8: Elie finds it hard to forget the last concert Juliek
gives to an audience of dying men. The memory of the last
concert is heightened by the lasting images of Juliek's dead
body and his smashed violin. And whenever Elie Wiesel hears
Beethoven's concerto, he remembers the face of his friend,
Juliek, and his last concert.
• Memory 9: When he awakes from his sleep, Elie remembers
that he has a father. Sleep and fatigue had gotten the better of
him; the survival of his body overcomes him to the point of
forgetting about his father.
• At Elie's father's death, there are no prayers, no candles lit to
his memory, no tears. In the depth of his memory, Elie admits
feeling a sense of relief in not having to worry about his father
anymore. He feels free from his father's physical presence, but
not from the memory of his father, which remains with him
forever.
NIGHT
• Night 5: The impression of "last nights" anchors the
timeframe of Elie's narrative. There are numerous
instances of last nights: the last night at home; the last
night in the ghetto; the last night on the train; the last
night at Buna.
• Night 6: "Night" carries with it the notion of uncertainty
and fear. Short of representing death, night becomes an
imagery of the unknown. As Elie and the other prisoners
prepare to leave Buna, there is a greater fear of what is to
come: "The gates of the camp opened. It seemed that an
even darker night was waiting for us on the other side."
• Night 7: One night, on the winter trek to Buchenwald, Elie
is almost strangled to death by an unknown attacker. Elie
does not know the reason for the attack. Night brings out
the worst dangers.
• The nights become bleaker as the narrative progresses.
Thus, Elie detests the "long nights" of the winter: "We
were all going to die here. All limits had been passed. No
one had any strength left. And again the night would be
long."
MAN’S INHUMANITY TO MAN
• Deportations begin. The Jews are herded into cattle cars and sent to
concentration camps, where they are forced to do hard labor, are
beaten and tortured, are denied food and water, and are often killed
by burning, hanging, shooting, starving, freezing, or beating. Even
the babies and small children are thrown into pits of fire since they
serve no purpose to the Nazis.
• Because of the torture they must witness and endure, the prisoners
become animalistic. When they are made to march, if a fellow
prisoner falls, he is often trampled to death. When food is thrown at
them, the prisoners kill each other to gain a bite of bread. In their
search for survival, sons turn against their fathers; even Elie has
fleeting thoughts of being rid of Mr. Wiesel.
• Through most of the book, however, Elie tries to help his father, who
is repeatedly tortured. He shows him how to march properly so he
will not be persecuted by the Nazi guards; he nurses him after he is
beaten by a guard; he saves him from being thrown off the train as a
corpse; he gets him up and to Buchenwald after he falls amongst
the corpses; and he takes care of him after his skull is cracked for
pleading for water. In the end, Mr. Wiesel is taken to the
crematorium and thrown into the fire, probably while he is still
breathing.
MAN’S INHUMANITY TO MAN
• The major theme of the book is the horror that results
from extreme prejudice. Because Hitler hated Jewish
people, he caused them to be imprisoned, tortured,
and murdered.
• The book records the horrendous experiences of Elie
Wiesel, the Jewish author, during Hitler's reign of
terror. He is arrested, imprisoned in a concentration
camp, and tortured.
• Although he escapes death, he is totally devastated by
the things he must endure and witness during the
holocaust.
• The book is a recording of man's inhumanity to man at
its worst.
• The persecution begins when the Germans occupy
Sighet. Soon Jews are made to wear yellow stars to
identify themselves; in addition, Jewish shops are
closed and Jewish homes are seized, forcing the
families to live in the ghetto.
Eternal Flame
• All Jewish temples have a light that is always
on. It references the Eternal Flame that was
kept burning in the First Temple. Represents
the eternal watchfulness and providence of
God over His people.
• Night – flame and fire represent Nazi power
and cruelty. Reflects Eliezer’s loss of faith.
Symbolizes the evil in the world rather than
God’s benevolence.
THEME PROMPTS
•
•
•
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NIGHT
SILENCE AND IRONY
MAN’S INHUMANITY TO MAN
JOURNEY OF ELIEZER’S FAITH
• YOUR ESSAY WILL NEED TO BE:
– THOROUGH
– INCLUDE AT LEAST FIVE QUOTES (WITH PAGE
NUMBER)
– AT LEAST 500 WORDS…NOT INCLUDING YOUR
QUOTES