Night by Elie Wiesel
Interlude: an intervening episode, period, space, etc.; a short dramatic piece, esp. of a light or farcical character, formerly introduced between the parts or acts of miracle and morality plays or given as part of other entertainments.
Reprieve: to delay the impending punishment or sentence of a condemned person; to relieve temporarily from any evil
Rations: a fixed allowance of provisions or food especially for soldiers or sailors or civilians during a shortage
Dysentery: an inflammation disorder of the lower intestinal tract, usually caused by a bacterial, parasitic, or protozoan infection and resulting in pain, fever and severe diarrhea, often accompanied by the passage of blood and mucus
Robust: strongly or stoutly built
Quarantine: a period, originally 40 days, of detention or isolation imposed upon ships, persons, animals or plants at arrival at a port or place, when suspected of carrying a disease
Apathy: absence or suppression or passion, emotion or excitement
Humane: characterized by tenderness, compassion and sympathy for people and animals, especially for the suffering or distress
Grimace: a facial expression, often ugly or contorted, that indicates disapproval, pain, etc.
Nocturnal: active at night; opposed to diurnal
Livid: having discolored, bluish appearance caused by a bruise, congestion of blood vessels, strangulation, etc., as the face, flesh, hands or nails; enraged; furiously angry
Pious: having or showing a dutiful spirit of reverence for God or an earnest wish to fulfill religious obligations
Interminable: monotonously or annoyingly protracted or continued; unceasing
Wizened: withered; shriveled
Morale: emotional or mental condition with respect to cheerfulness, confidence, zeal, etc., especially in the face of opposition, hardship, etc.
Infernal: hellish; diabolic; fiendish; inhuman
Refuge: shelter or protection against danger
Oppressive: hard to put up with; causing great discomfort or fatigue
Expelled: driven out by force; kicked out
1. Wiesel's childhood home was in Sighet, Transylvania.
2. The cabala is a system iof esitoteric theosophy and theorgy developed by rabbis influencing certain medieval and Renaissance Christian thinkers . It was based on a mystical method of interpreting scripture by which initiates claimed to penetrate sacred mysteries. AMonf its central doctrines are, all creation is an emanation from the Deity and the soul exists from eternity.
3. The truths that Weisel was referring to were the truths about the human race, why we do what we do, and ever the more information and investigation into his faith and his God. The kind of truths that Weisel was ignorant of were those that dealt with the fact that not all humans treat others with kindness, and that you cannot control what others say, do, and/or think.
4. Moshe the Beadle was such a significant character because he was the first character introduced in Night, and his values resonated throughout the text, even though he disappeared after the first few pages. Moshe represented, first and foremost, an earnest commitment to Judaism, and to Jewish mysticism in particular. As Eliezer’s Cabbala teacher, Moshe talked about the riddles of the universe and God’s centrality to the quest for understanding. Moshe’s words framed the conflict of Eliezer’s struggle for faith, which was at the center of Night. In his statement “I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions,” Moshe conveyed two concepts key to Eliezer’s struggle: the idea that God is everywhere, even within every individual, and the idea that faith is based on questions, not answers. Eliezer’s struggle with faith was, for the most part, a struggle of questions. He continually asked where God had gone and questions how such evil could exist in the world. Moshe’s statement told us that those moments do not reflect Eliezer’s loss of faith; instead they demonstrated his ongoing spiritual commitment. But we also saw that at the lowest points of Eliezer’s faith—particularly when he saw the pipel (a youth) hung in Buna—he was full of answers, not questions. At those moments, he had indeed lost the spirit of faith he learned from Moshe, and was truly faithless. Moshe may have also served as a stand-in for Wiesel himself, as his presence evoked an overarching purpose of the entire work. Night can be read as an attack against silence. So many times in the novel, evil was perpetuated by a silent lack of resistance or—as it was in the case of Moshe’s warnings—by ignoring reports of evil. With Night, Wiesel, like Moshe, beared witness to tragedy in order to warn others, to prevent anything like the Holocaust from ever happening again.
5. After Moshe returned from his escape, people did not listen to him because the whoel idea of what he was saying sounded insane and the people just thought he had gone mad.
6. Madame Sachter was a woman aboard the same train with Eliezer who thought she had seen flames, as in a furnace. At those times of her hallucinations, there were no flames, but as soon as they had reached Auschwitz, the flames were real, they were the crematory. She was similar to Moshe the Beadle because she was also ignored when she tried to help or warn the people. Prophetic figures ar eoften ignored because it is a warning to the poeple, but they are so oblivious, they do not see it.
7. I considered the following passage on page 32:
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of th edesires to live. Never shall I forget those moments whuch murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget therse things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself. Never.
8. This passage, from Night’s third section, occured just after Eliezer and his father realized they had survived the first selection at Birkenau. It is the most famous passage, notable because it is one of the few moments in the memoir where Eliezer broke out of the continuous narrative stream with which he told his story. As he reflected upon his horrendous first night in the concentration camp and its lasting effect on his life, Wiesel introduced the theme of Eliezer’s spiritual crisis and his loss of faith in God. This passage resembledtwo significant pieces of literature: Psalm 150, from the Bible, and French author Emile Zola’s 1898 essay “J’accuse.” Psalm 150, the final prayer in the book of Psalms, is an ecstatic celebration of God. Each line begins, “Hallelujah,” or “Praise God.” Here, Wiesel constructed an inverse version of that psalm, beginning each line with a negation—“Never”—that replaces the affirmative “Hallelujah” of the original. Whereas Psalm 150 praises God, this passage questions him. As such, both the form and content of this passage reflected the inversion of Eliezer’s faith and the morality of the world around him. Everything he once believed had been turned upside down, in the same way that this passage’s words inverted both the form and content of Psalm 150. Zola’s essay “J’accuse” was a response to the Dreyfus Affair, an incident in which a Jewish army officer was unjustly convicted of treason, a judgment at least partially motivated by anti-Semitism. Zola responded by publishing an open letter in the Paris newspaper L’Aurore, denouncing the authorities who had covered up the -injustice and perpetuated the persecution. Zola heightened the aggressive tone of the letter by repeatedly stressing the refrain “J’accuse” (“I accuse”). The similarities between Wiesel’s passage and Zola’s—the French words of the refrain, the anti-Semitic context, and the defiant tone—invited comparison between the two texts. Zola’s piece was an impassioned accusation that decried injustice and anti-Semitism; Wiesel’s passage was also an impassioned polemic, but its target was God Himself. Zola’s “j’accuse” was directed at corrupt officials who had betrayed an innocent Jew; Eliezer’s “jamais” (“never”) was directed toward God. Carrying the comparison even further, Eliezer’s statement depicted God as a corrupt official betraying the Jews. This was a shockingly bold statement for a Jewish boy to make and reflected the profound way in which his faith had been shaken. Furthermore, the fact that Zola’s transitive verb (“I accuse”) had been replaced by an objectless adverb (“never”) reflected the prisoners’ powerlessness to remedy their situation. Although Wiesel’s passage was directed toward God, it was not directed at any specific being; since the prisoners were powerless to strike back, their anger cannot take the form of a direct confrontation. Eliezer claimed that his faith was utterly destroyed, yet at the same time said that he will never forget those things even if he “live[s] as long as God Himself.” After completely denying the existence of God, he referred to God’s existence in the final line. As mentioned before, Wiesel wrote elsewhere, “My anger rises up within faith and not outside it.” Eliezer reflected this position, which was particularly visible throughout this passage. Despite saying he had lost all faith, it waws clear that Eliezer was actually struggling with his faith and his God. Just as he was never able to forget the horror of “that night,” he was never able to reject completely his heritage and his religion. Young Elie's theology had changed because he started to think there was no God becuase how could god, the Creator of all mankind, let something so terrible happen to His people, His own life. Elie then believed there was an absence of God. This passage spoke to the rest of Night because never once was Elie able to forget the silence, the flames, the screams, or the smell of burning flesh.
9. Throughout Night, Elie first believes that there is a God, and that He is always constantly present, no matter who you are, what you've done, or where you've been. However, while in camp, his view of a god changes. He then believes that if there was in fact a "GOD" then this concentration camp would be non-existent. That 'How can God let this camp run on, if in fact, there is a God?'. Other people in the camp thought otherwise; that there IS a God, and that He is using this camp to test their faith.
10. The literal meaning that night has in Night is that it is simply dark outside, time for sleep and rest. However, the figurative, or symbolical, meaning that night has in Night is much more complex and intricate. What night stands for is the darkness that surrounds the Jewish and the oppressed. The emptiness that these people felt, the feeling of being alone in the world with no-one there beside them, to help and guide them from this madness, this ludacris idea and plan that Adolf Hitler was carrying out.
11. Night in my opinion is a small novel because Elie Wiesel first, did not wish to relive all of the horrors that the holocaust put upon him, and secondly, that he did not wish to give all details of his time there, that some things were meant for others to read and learn about, and that other things were simply meant to be buried in the minds and thoughts and hearts of those who witnessed and lived through them.
12. Night can be interpreted as both a memoir of tragedy and of triumph. Tragedy because of the understated horrors that occurred during the holocaust and those specifically mentioned in the novel. Triumph because of the courage and the strength it took those survivers to keep going, to keep living, to keep alive, to survive.
Journals
December 19, 2006
Page 2:
“‘Why do you weep when you pray?’ he asked me, as though he had known me a long time.
‘I don’t know why,’ I answered, greatly disturbed.
The question had never entered my head. I wept because--because of something inside me that felt the need for tears. That was all I knew.
‘Why do you pray?’ he asked me, after a moment.
Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?”
(Dialogue between Moshe the Beadle and Eliezer) It is as if Eliezer prays for no reason at all. He knows who he is praying to, but not why. To me it seems as if he is doing it only because he is told to by his father and his community. To me, a person should pray because they believe God will hear their prayer, and He will help the matter, or person, in which someone may be praying for. You should not pray and not know why, you need a reason.
December 19, 2006
Page 4:
“He told his story and that of his companions. The train full of deportees had crossed the Hungarian frontier and on Polish territory had been taken in charge by the Gestapo. There it had stopped. The Jews had to get out and climb into lorries. The lorries drove toward a forest. The Jews were made to get out. They were made to dig huge graves. And when they had finished their work, the Gestapo began theirs. Without passion, without haste, they slaughtered their prisoners. Each one had to go up to the hole and present his neck. Babes were thrown into the air and the machine gunners used them as targets.”
(written by Eliezer of Moshe’s story) This was most definitely cruel and unusual punishment. Okay, being taken prisoner is not extremely terrible, neither is digging holes, until they found out they were graves. Having someone dig their own grave is insane. Surely if you are going to kill someone, you would prepare their grave, but they were lazy. Presenting your neck is like committing suicide. And using babies as targets is the worst of all. They were little innocent creatures and did nothing wrong.
December 19, 2006
Page 5:
“‘You don’t understand,’ he said in despair. ‘You can’t understand. I’ve been saved miraculously. I managed to get back here. Where did I get the strength from? I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death. So that you could prepare yourselves while there was still time. To live? I don’t attach any importance to my life any more. I’m alone. No, I wanted to come back, and to warn you. And see how it is, no one will listen to me. . . .”
(spoken by Moshe the Beadle) Moshe was trying to warn the people, but they would not listen. He had been saved to warn his fellow Jews, but why? I thought it was interesting how it was worded; “I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death.” I thought that was kind of harsh. As harsh as it may have seemed, it still did not get the point across to the people.
December 19, 2006
Page 7:
Anguish. German soldiers--with their steel helmets, and their emblem, the death’s head.
This was just straight up harsh. Their emblem was death’s head. I would have been so creeped out that I probably would have peed my pants or something.
December 19, 2006
Page 7:
However, our first impressions of the Germans were most reassuring. The officers were billeted in private houses, even the homes of Jews. Their attitude toward their hosts was distant, but polite. They never demanded the impossible, made no unpleasant comments, and even smiled occasionally at the mistress of the house. One German officer lived in the house opposite ours. He had a room with the Kahn family. They said he was a charming man--calm, likable, polite, and sympathetic. Three days after he moved in, he brought Madame Kahn a box of chocolates. The optimists rejoiced.”
This excerpt reminded me of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. It reminded me of that novel because the Christians came and they acted very polite and remained somewhat distant to the people at first. Then once the people started to feel comfortable with them, they converted, whereas the Germans attacked.
December 19, 2006
Page 16-17:
My father wept. It was the first time I had ever seen him weep. I had never imagined that he could. As for my mother, she walked with a set expression on her face, without a word, deep in thought. I looked at my little sister Tzipora, her fair hair well combed, a red coat over her arm, a little girl of seven. The bindle on her back was too heavy for her. She gritted her teeth. She knew by now that it would be useless to complain. The police were striking out with their truncheons. “Faster!” I had no strength left. The journey had only just begun, and I felt so weak. . . .
This was a very touching part in the novel. Seeing your father weep is very emotional. For a man to cry, you know the situation is very serious. It must have been very sad to see my family go through the Holocaust. I would not have been able to remain strong. I’m weaksauce.
December 19, 2006
Page 22:
There was a moment’s panic. Who was it who had cried out? It was Madame Schächter. Standing in the middle of the wagon, in the pale light from the windows, she looked like a withered tree in a cornfield. She pointed her arm toward the window, screaming:
“Look! Look at it! Fire! A terrible fire! Mercy! Oh, that fire!”
I probably would have had hallucinations such as those that Madame Schächter had, that is if I had lasted that long. I thought it was very ironic how she saw flames and always pointed to the same spot. That spot being the same spot in which they saw the first crematory.
December 19, 2006
Page 27:
“Men to the left! Women to the right!”
Eight words spoken quite indifferently, without emotion. Eight short, simple words. Yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother. I had not had time to think, but already I felt the pressure of my father’s hand: we were alone. For a part of a second I glimpsed my mother and my sisters moving away to the right. Tzipora held Mother’s hand. I saw them disappear into the distance; my mother was stroking my sister’s fair hair, as though to protect her, while I walked on with my father and the other men. And I did not know that in that place, at that forever. I went on walking. My father held onto my hand.
That was very categorizing. The family’s whole ordeal was to stick together. But they could not because they were ordered to separate. In the end I think it may have been a better fate because seeing your father die must have been bad enough, but your mother and your little sister would have killed me even more.
December 19, 2006
Page 27:
My hand shifted on my father’s arm. I had one thought--not to lose him. Not to be left alone.
I thought this was a touching moment in the novel. You could tell there was a strong father-son bond between the two. It is cute.
December 19, 2006
Page 31:
For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me. How should I bless His name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for?
Eliezer was starting to realize that God was not as wonderful as he was thought to be. God let the Jews be tortured and burned to death. All of the people did not like God that much at the moment.
December 19, 2006
Page 32:
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 flames of the children, shoes bodies I saw turned into 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, 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.
This was a very moving excerpt from the novel. What Eliezer had seen had scarred him for life. The flames coming up from the crematory were the lives of children. That was not an easy thing to see everyday of your life. Just imagine waking up to see the flames rising up to the sky, knowing the flames could have been from your friend, mother, brother, sister or father.
December 19, 2006
Page 33:
Those absent no longer touched even the surface of our memories. We still spoke of them--“Who knows what may have become of them”--but we had little concern for their fate. We were incapable of thinking of anything at all. Our senses were blunted; everything was blurred as in a fog. It was no longer possible to grasp anything. The instincts of self-preservation, of self-defense, of pride, had seemed to me that we were damned souls wandering in the half-world, souls condemned to wander through space till the generations of man came to an end, seeking their redemption, seeking oblivion--without hope of finding it.
The burning of people and their crucial death didn’t faze their friends as much anymore. Their family and friends forgot about them, they knew something had happened, but there was nothing they could do about it. Their lives were taken away from them, and yet no one recited the Kaddish, the prayer for dead people.
December 19, 2006
Page38-39:
“Comrades, you’re in the concentration camp of Auschwitz. There’s a long road of suffering ahead of you. But don’t lose courage. You’ve already escaped the gravest danger: selection. So now, muster your strength, and don’t lose heart. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life. Above all else, have faith. Drive out despair, and you will keep death away from yourselves. Hell is not for eternity. And now, a prayer--or rather, a piece of advice: let there be comradeship among you. We are all brothers, and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive. Enough said. You’re tired. Listen. You’re in Block 17. I am responsible for keeping order here. Anyone with a complaint against anyone else can come and see me. That’s all. You can go to bed. Two people to a bunk. Good night.” The first human words.
This man seemed to have a little heart. He realized what they had gone through and how it had affected them. He was nice. He told them things that would help; such as to help one another. They should keep faith, maybe not in God, but in each other to help get through the Holocaust. He was very humane.
December 19, 2006
Page 41:
At the beginning of the third week, the prisoner in charge of our block was deprived of his office, being considered too humane. Our new head was savage, and his assistants were real monsters. The good days were over. We began to wonder if it would not be better to let oneself be chosen for the next move.
This new head of the block was not very nice. If he had a choice, he would have written all of their names down for the next selection. He could care less if they were alive or dead, it was not his problem or his life. I hate it when people are so inhumane like that, I think it is very disrespectful.
December 19, 2006
Page 42:
Some talked of God, of his mysterious ways, of the sins of the Jewish people, and of their deliverance. But I ceased to pray. How sympathized with Job! I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.
Eliezer remained strong and faithful to no one but himself and his father. God had made the Jews go through such torture; therefore He had no absolute justice. He was like a mean kid burning ants with a magnifying glass.
December 19, 2006
Page 43:
Work is liberty.
Okay well there is not much to say about this quote except that it was misleading. I just thought it was important, so I wrote it down.
December 19, 2006
Page 57:
We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks, it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life.
Seeing the flames from the crematory everyday caused the people to no longer fear death. I thought that was very brave because most people fear death. But I guess when you see and breathe death everyday; it has no effect on you. Death was no longer a lingering presence to the Jews anymore, it was just there.
December 19, 2006
Page 61-62:
Then the march past began. Two adults were no longer alive. Their tongue hung swollen, blue-tinged. But eh third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive. . . .
For more than half an hour he stayed there, a struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed.
Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
“Where is God now?”
And I heard a voice within me answer him:
“Where is He? Here He is--He is hanging here on this gallows. . . .”
That night the soup tasted of corpses.
I thought this was totally sad. First of all, hanging two adults was just mean. But hanging a child who was too light to die instantly was savage and insanely mean. Making the prisoners look at the hanged people was mean, they had already stared death in the face in their everyday activities, but making them look at the hanged people was outrageous.
December 19, 2006
Page 63:
“What are You, my God,” I thought angrily, “compared to this afflicted crowd, proclaiming to You their faith, their anger, their revolt? What does Your greatness mean, Lord of the universe, in the face of all this weakness, this decomposition, and this decay? Why do You still trouble their sick minds, their crippled bodies?"
God was being totally unfair to the people. He put them through enormous amounts of torture. It was as if it was His amusement. God could see that the Jews were in pain, and yet He let them suffer. I felt as if He did that on purpose.
December 19, 2006
Page 64:
Why, but why should I bless His name? In every fiber I rebelled. Because He had thousands of children burning in His pits? Because He kept six crematories working night and day, on Sundays and feast days. Because in His great might He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: “Blessed art Thou, Eternal, Master of the Universe, Who chose us from among the races to be tortured day and night, to see our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end in the crematory? Praised be Thy Holy Name, Thou Who hast chosen us to be butchered on Thine altar?
God was straight up like a serial killer at this point in the novel. He butchered them, starved them, and burned them to death. It kind of reminded me of the movie Bruce Almighty when Bruce Nolan (played by Jim Carrey) said “smite me oh mighty smiter!” or something along those lines.
December 19, 2006
Page 64:
“Yes, man is very strong, greater than God. When You were deceived by Adam and Eve, You drove them out of Paradise. When Noah’s generation displeased You, You brought down the Flood. When Sodom no longer found favor in Your eyes, You made the sky rain down fire and sulphur. But these men are here, whom You betrayed, burned, and what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!”
Eliezer thinks that he and his fellow Jews are stronger than God. They had managed to escape the fiery pits of hell created by God. They remained faithful to each other. They did nothing wrong and yet God still sought revenge.
December 19, 2006
Page 77:
“I’ve got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He’s the only one who’s kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.”
(spoken by faceless neighbor) This was a very interesting excerpt from the novel because God had let the Jews down and allowed them to be tortured and killed, he kept no promises to man and did not help man either. Whereas Hitler “has made it very clear that he will annihilate all the Jews before the clock strikes twelve, before they can hear the last stroke” (Wiesel, 76). It seems that Hitler will do what he says he will do, therefore more trust and faith can be laid in him than in God.
December 19, 2006
Page 85:
He refused. I lay down and tried to force myself to sleep, to doze a little, but in vain. God knows what I would not have given for a few moments of sleep. But deep down, I felt that to sleep would mean to die. And something within me revolted against death. All round me death was moving in, silently, without violence. It would seize upon some sleeping being, enter into him, and consume him bit by bit. Next to me there was someone trying to wake up his neighbor, his brother, perhaps, or a friend. In vain. Discouraged in the attempt, the man lay down in his turn, next to the corpse, and slept too. Who was there to wake him up?
This was perhaps one of Eliezer’s strongest points in the novel. He would have slept, he had been moments before his father told him not to sleep in the snow. Death was lurking over him like a stalker waiting to attack. Eliezer needed to stay with his father, they could not be separated. He had to stay awake because if he fell asleep, as well as his father, who would wake him up to insure that he is alive? No one would be there, he had to stay in it for his father.
December 19, 2006
Page 99:
I held onto my father’s hand--the old, familiar fear: not to lose him.
I feel that Eliezer and his father had a very strong relationship. By this time in the novel, children had abandoned their fathers and mothers, some even killed their parents. But Eliezer had all the strength and will power to fight against it. He was to stay with his father until the end, whether it be the end of the Holocaust, or the end of one of their lives.
December 19, 2006
Page 109:
Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. We thought only of that. Not of revenge, not of our families. Nothing but bread.
And even when we were no longer hungry, there was still no one who thought of revenge. On the following day, some of the young men went to Weimar to get some potatoes and clothes--and to sleep with girls. But of revenge, not a sign.
The kids and teenagers knew what they had to do, not get revenge, but to help themselves survive. It was up to them whether to live, or be shot by an SS officer while seeking revenge. This showed that the kids were much stronger than adults.
posted by Lyndzie Garro at 8:07 AM
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