Night (book) - Definition

Wiesel was a Jewish teenager in Hungary when World War II began: he describes the town of Sighet, (now Sighetu Marmaţiei) where he grew up, as well as the figure of Moshe the Beadle, a non-Hungarian who works in the Hasidic temple. Elie studies the kabbalah with Moshe.

Before Germany's invasion of Hungary, non-Hungarians were deported from Sighet to a German concentration camp. Moche returns to the town, having escaped, and tries unsuccessfully to convince the local Jews that they are in grave danger. After Germany invades, the Jews are first placed in ghettoes, and then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Wiesel describes arriving at Birkenau, being inspected by Josef Mengele, and ultimately being beaten and placed in the camp at Auschwitz. Wiesel describes in detail the horrors of the camp, and the many deaths he saw, first-hand. Wiesel is open about his refusal to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur while in Auschwitz, explaining that he still believed in God at the time, but was angry with him for allowing the Jews to be imprisoned and killed.

Finally, Wiesel and his father are evacuated from Auschwitz just ahead of the Russian army, and taken with many others on a long, death-filled journey to Buchenwald. His father survives the trip, but dies in early 1945 at Buchenwald. The story ends shortly thereafter, with Wiesel freed from the camp in April, 1945.

Alternative Summary

Eliezer Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in the small town of Sighet, Transylvania. People in this town of different languages and religion have lived together for centuries, sometimes in peace sometimes in war. This area has changed hands between Romania and Hungary repeatedly through war. The community he grew up in was close knit and mostly Jewish. The main things in his life were family, religious study, community, and God. His religious study started almost as soon as he could speak. One could say that his whole life revolved on his religion. For the first ten years of the war the city of Sighet remained untouched. The Wiesel family believed they were safe. However all of this changed upon the arrival of the Nazis, the deportation of his village in 1944, and his arrival at Auschwitz.

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned in wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

Never shall I forget those flames, which consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments, which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

Night is an autobiographical novella. It tells of Elie's experiences throughout the Holocaust. Beginning in 1941 it chronicles his life until the end of the war in 1945. The beginning of the book tells of his strong faith in the Jewish religion, however this faith is tested when the Nazis ripped him from his town. Elie has to deal with many difficulties at a very young age of fifteen. His difficulties were major; He has suffered the loss of his family and his innocence. From a first hand view Elie retells the readers of the awful concentration camps. His story is of starvation, beatings, torture, illness, and hard labor. His experiences lead him to question God. In contrast, his book also tells of acts of compassion even in all of the violence and hatred.

The concentration camp the Wiesel family and other Jews in his community were deported to Auschwitz. Immediately upon arrival Elie was separated from his mother and sister. That was the last time he saw them. He was able to stay with his father for the next years as they were subjected to the appalling concentration camps. The two were worked almost to death, as they were starved, beaten, and shuttled from camp to camp on foot, or in open cattle cars, in driving snow. They lacked food, proper shoes, or clothing. In the last months of the war, Wiesel's father died due to dysentery, starvation, exhaustion and exposure. Finally, in April 1945, the United States Third Army liberated Elie from Buchenwald.

Following the war Wiesel found refuge in France. That is where he found out that his two older sisters had survived the war; he also learned the sad news that his mother and younger sister had died in gas chambers. While in France, Elie mastered the language and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, supporting himself as a choir master and teacher of Hebrew. He later became a professional journalist. Elie had vowed never to write about his Holocaust experiences, but in 1955, the Catholic writer Francois Mauriac urged him to do so. He wrote all his memoirs in a 900-page Yiddish work. The book entitled Un die welt hot geshvign', which translated means, And the world kept silent, was published in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The book was later compacted to a 127-page French volume called La Nuit or Night. In an interview Elie said, "I wrote it for the other survivors who found it difficult to speak."

Other works of Wiesel include: The Gates of the Forest, The Oath, The Testament, and The Fifth Son. He has written plays, including Zalmen, or the Madness of God and The Trial of God, and his essays and short stories are collected in the volumes Legends of Our Time, One Generation After, and A Jew Today. The numerous books that he wrote have helped him gain international attention. After learning of the persecution of Jews in the USSR he became politically involved. He first traveled to the USSR in 1965 and described what he saw in the book, The Jews of Silence. He also fought for oppressed peoples in Soviet Union, South Africa, Vietnam, Biafra, and Bangladesh.

Elie Wiesel was appointed chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council in 1978. He was also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1985, and in 1986, he was awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize. He has been Andrew Mellon Professor of Humanities at Boston University, and presently He lives in New York City with his family.

Night (book) - Definition

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