Answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper using complete sentences. Make sure you
include all details necessary to completely answer the questions. Before turning in the assignment,
please remove all fringes from your paper.
Reading 1 (pgs. 3 – 22)
1. How does Eliezer describe himself?
2. What is Eliezer’s family like?
3. Describe Moshe the Beadle.
4. What is Moshe’s relationship with Eliezer and the Jews of Sighet?
5. What did Moshe witness when he was shipped to Poland?
6. Why does Moshe want the Jews of Sighet to know what he witnessed?
7. How do the Jews of Sighet view Moshe when he returns?
8. What do the Jews of Sighet know about the outside world in 1941?
9. Describe life in the Sighet ghettos.
10. Explain the opportunities for escape that the Wiesels miss before evacuation.
Reading 2 (pgs. 23 – 46)
1. Describe the ghetto evacuation and journey to Auschwitz.
2. Interpret the significance of Madame Schachter’s insane warnings.
Think about the reasons
for her screams, and the reactions of the others to her screaming.
3. Describe the first selection.
4. How do Eliezer and his father survive the first selection.
5. Explain the purpose of Birkenau.
6. Why do you think the Germans take away the inmates’ personal belongings, cut their hair, and
tattoo a number on each person’s arm?
7. Describe Eliezer’s plan if he is selected for death at Birkenau.
8. Describe the prisoners’ indoctrination into concentration camp life.
9. How does Eliezer respond when his father is beaten for the first time?
10. What advice does Eliezer’s cousin from Antwerp give his father?
Reading 3 (pgs. 47 – 65)
1. What is Buna?
2. What does Eliezer do at the Buna camp/
3. Give 2 examples of the ways Eliezer’s relationship with his father is changing.
4. What is prompting the changes in his relationship with his father?
5. What does Eliezer mean when he refers to his father as “his weak point” now?
6. Describe the Kapos.
7. Why do you think Eliezer and the other prisoners respond so emotionally to the hanging of the
child?
8. Why do the Germans have public hangings?
9. What is ironic about the prisoners’ feelings about air raids?
10. Explain the prisoners’ attitude toward death.
Reading 4 (pgs. 66 – 84)
1. Describe Eliezer’s feelings as the prisoners observe the Jewish New Year.
2. Why does Eliezer direct his anger toward God rather than the Germans?
3. Why does Eliezer describe himself as “afraid” of having to wish his father a happy New
Year?
4. How do the prisoners in Eliezer’s block survive the New Year’s selection?
5. How does Eliezer respond to the following situations:
a) he fears his father has been
“selected” b) he discovers his father has been “selected”
c) he learns his father has
avoided the “final selection”?
6. What does Eliezer’s father give him as his inheritance?
7. How has the relationship between Eliezer and his father changed during their time at
Auschwitz?
8. Why is Eliezer admitted to the camp hospital?
What dangers face him there?
9. What choices are open to Eliezer and his father when the camp is evacuated?
10. What do you think of Eliezer’s decision to leave the hospital early?
Reading 5 (pgs. 85 – 11)
1. What keeps Eliezer going during the march?
2. How does the realization that the Rabbi Eliahou’s son purposely abandoned the Rabbi affect
Eliezer?
3. How does Eliezer save his father from the selection at Gleiwitz?
4. Describe the tragic incident between a father and son on the train.
5. Explain why Eliezer’s father is denied medical care at Buchenwald.
6. What feelings does Eliezer have as his father dies?
Do you think these feelings are
rational?
7. Describe the events that lead up to the liberation of Buchenwald.
8. What do the liberated prisoners do first?
9. What happens to Eliezer after his liberation?
10. How does Eliezer see himself at the close of the novel?