A Study Guide

Created by:Reyhan, Joey, Andre, Sally & Cynthia

Characters

- Father (shlomo Wiesel)- Mother - Hilda (the eldest sister)- Bea (Elieʼs older sister)- Elie Wiesel (The third child and only boy)- Tzipora (Elieʼs younger sister)- Moishe the Beadle (A mysterious poor man who warns the ignorant city

about the Germans)

- SS officers- Germans- Red Army- Russians- Jews (community)- Jewish council

- Batia Reich (pg 14) A relative of Elie- Maria (pg 22) The old maid who offered them a safer shelter in the small gettho- Bela Kartz (pg 35) the son of an important merchant

- Mrs. Schaechter (A woman in the train who people assume were mad. She was the one that shouted “FiRE!” before it started)

- Dr Mengele (A cruel doctor who is in Auschwitz)- Meir Katz (Chlomoʼs friend from Buna)- Stein of Antwerp (A relative form Antwerp who they met in Auschwitz.- Yossi and Tibi (two brothers that has become close to Elie when they meet in

Buna)- Akiba the drummer (One of the jews who lost their faith in God because of the

concentration camp)- Juliek (A musician that meets Elie in Auschwitz who is really attached to his

violin.)- Freanek (Elizerʼs foreman at Buna who took Elieʼs gold tooth with the help of a

dentist)- Idek (Elieʼs Kapo in Buna who beats Elie despite his bad temper)- Zalman (One of Elieʼs friend)- Chief Rabbi Eliahou (Jewish prisoner whose son abandoned)

NIGHT SETTINGS

Night is set in the Hungarian territory of Sighet. Sighet is a small village filled with jews. It is calm and peaceful. In the village of Sighet, the Elie went through several settings like the Synagogue, his house and the yards in front of his house. After this setting the Book Night changed the setting to the Gettho for the temporary placement of the Jews of Sighet. Then the setting again shifted to the Concentration Camp of Auswitch. There they are brought in the setting of entry, Crematorium, blocks and also commando work spots. After the approach of the red army, they moved from Auswitch to the abandoned lands of German towards their next Concentration Camp.The Next Concentration camp is Birkenau. They were in Birkenau for several days. This is the last setting that Elie had told us about. Aside from that, there are some minor setting like Paris and Northern Africa in his flash forward.

In Brief bullet point of Night settings:- Hungary, Sighet- Ghetto- Auswitch- Birkenau

Plot Summary

Night is narrated by Eliezer, a Jewish teenager who lives in Sighet, in Hungarian Transylvania. Eliezer studies the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) and the Cabbala (a doctrine of Jewish mysticism). He have met Moshe the Beadle who was religious and mystical, Eliezer soon see him as a teacher. Moshe the Beadle was deported. In a few months Moshe returns with a horrifying tale: the Gestapo (the German secret police force) took charge of his train, led everyone into the woods, and butchered them. Nobody believes Moshe, who is taken for a lunatic. They wouldn't believe him because they have always thought that their hometown will always be safe.

In the spring of 1944, the Nazis occupy Hungary. Not long afterward the Jews of Eliezer’s town are forced into small ghettos within Sighet. Soon they are herded onto cattle cars, and a nightmare journey happens. After days and nights crammed into the car, exhausted and starving, the passengers arrive at Birkenau, the gateway to Auschwitz.

Upon his arrival in Birkenau, Eliezer and his father are separated from his mother and sisters, who they never get see again. In the first of many “selections” that Eliezer described, the Jews are evaluated to determine whether they should be killed immediately or put to work. Eliezer and his father seem to passed, but before they are brought to the prisoners’ barracks, they stumble upon the open-pit where the Nazis are burning babies by the truckload.

The Jewish arrivals are stripped, shaved, disinfected, and treated with almost unimaginable cruelty. Eventually, their captors march them from Birkenau to the main camp, Auschwitz. They eventually arrive in Buna, a work camp, where Eliezer is put to work in an electrical-fittings factory. Under slave-labor conditions, He has barley any food. Decimated by the “selections,” Killed and destroyed. The Jews supported and caring for each other, in religion, and in Zionism, a movement favoring the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

The prisoners are forced to watch the hanging of fellow prisoners in the camp courtyard. On time, the Gestapo even hang a small child who had been associated with some rebels within Buna. Because of the horrific conditions in the camps and the close danger of death, many of the prisoners themselves begin to slide into cruelty, concerned only with personal survival, constantly only thinking of themselves. Sons begin to abandon and abuse their fathers. Eliezer himself begins to lose his humanity and his faith, both in God and in the people around him.

After months in the camp, Eliezer goes to an operation for a foot injury. While he is in the infirmary, however, the Nazis decide to evacuate the camp because the Russians are advancing and are on the of of setting free Buna. In the middle of a snowstorm, the prisoners begin a death march: they are forced to run for more than fifty miles to the Gleiwitz concentration camp. Many die of exhaustion to the harsh weather and hunger. At Gleiwitz, the prisoners are put into cattle cars once again. They begin another deadly journey: one hundred Jews board the car, but only twelve remain alive when the train reaches the concentration camp Buchenwald. Throughout the ordeal, Eliezer and his father help each other to survive by means of mutual support and concern. In Buchenwald, Eliezer’s father dies from physical abuse. Eliezer survives, an empty shell of a man until April 11, 1945, the day that the American army liberates the camp.

Themes of Night

- Struggle in maintaining Faith and Believes in Religion:We can see his struggle and the shake of his faith in God when he first enters work. He said “Why did I pray, Why did I live” (Pg 7 in PDF) in which is him asking and wondering for all those time praying and giving respect to God, the Concentration Camp is what God gave back.

Elie Wiesel grew in the lands of Jews. The community are highly religious, other than just the community, Elie made friend with a superstitious friend called Moshe the Beadle. This develops Elie’s believe in God and the mysticism of the Jew. He is shaped to think that God is everywhere, this universe and what happens in within is controlled by God. Therefore if anything is controlled by God, it should be good. Yet this ‘faith’ and ‘believe’ is shattered down by the views of the suffering and the utter cruelty of the German Concentration camp. His believes in a good world controlled by God is shattered to pieces thanks to the horrid experience.

The Concentration camp shook him hard. He is surprised by the cruelty and how immoral the camp is. He often ask the question “Where is God when we needed him?” (Pg 79 in PDF) and also how the world kept silent as if not knowing about these poor lives. Despite is shock in overlooking the suffering of his fellow jews, he still does have faith in his religion and not give hope that easily even till the end of the book. Elie recite the ‘prayers for the death’ in his way to the crematorium.

Though he is suffering with faith, Elie is proven to be trying to keep in touch with God and his believes. Yet he still complains and stated “My anger rises up within faith and not outside it.” (Pg 49 in PDF) which means he questioned the acts from God and the world. Even though we see him as constantly loosing faith in his believes, Elie is actually hanging onto his believes. He recite and joins the Jew community prayers during special days, he sometimes recite the prayers of death and he regrets that his father’s death is not honored by any Religious memorials. Finally Elie is free from the concentration camp with his faith still in God and his religion.

- Silence and NightIn one of the first to chapters, Elie stated something like a vow. He stated “Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.” (Pg 42 in PDF) in which relates to the theme of faith and religion. Another than that when the Gestapo hangs a you boy and somebody asked “Where is God?” (Pg 79 in PDF) the entire camp stay silent due to greater fear. This gives the sense of silence by God and the World. In Elie’s mind, God have let all these cruelty, death and horror to occur just like that with out doing anything about it. Not just God, the World and its community have kept silent from these terrifying event. The World has acted nothing upon Elie’s and the Jew inmates’ situation.

When Elie reached the Birkenaue Elie said “The Eternal . . . was silent. What had I to thank Him for?” (Pg 81 in PDF) Again here Elie showed that he questioned the existence of God and why is he so silent and ignorant. Though some believed that the suffering that they been through is a form of a test, Elie still questioned wether God is testing or he is just silent.

Another type of silence brought up in night other than the Silence of the World and the Silence of God, there is the Silence of the Inmates. Elie slept still, keeping silent in his bunk when his father was brought to the end by an SS. This shows how scared and vulnerable Elie is, but most importantly how he stayed idle through out the end of his father. Elie and those around stayed silence and did nothing to save those harmed.

As for the book itself, I think Elie wants to break the idea of silence and writing this book as a form of an announcement in a loud speaker. He is trying to tell the World that it has been silence before and not acting upon these horrible events that Elie had gone through. He wants to make sure the world knows of such horrid events and that it shall not be repeated again.

- Cruelty or unhumanitarianIn the book Night we can see many cruelty and horrid doings by the officers in the German Concentration Camp. This is done to weaken the Jew community and to separate them. The advantage of doing so is that they will not trust each other and they will be easier to order and enslaved. Months in the Concentration camp had envision Elie with the cruelty of the world and how beastly humans can be. This troubles him though he realizes that this is the reality of war. The Cruelty here is mostly given from the Germans to the Jews.

Though then Elie realizes that the German are cruel to his community, at first the Jew thinks the Germans as those who aren’t beastly in any ways. At the early entry of the German to the Jew of Sighet, Elie stated “Our first impressions of the Germans were most reassuring. . . . Their attitude toward their hosts was distant, but polite.” (Pg 13 in PDF) This was their first impression until Elie shifted this politeness towards the cruelty of the Crematoriums and the Concentration Camps. From the good and calm village to the savage survival camp.

In the camp, cruelty can be seen everywhere. The Jews were forced to work and those who aren’t chosen or be considered as weak shall be burned in the Crematorium. These actions are surely out of the Humanitarian borders. Yet instead of calming each other and helping each other or at least staying as a strong community, some of them were actually turning against each other. This event an be seen in the Train in which one Son sacrificed his father for a piece of bread.

- Family: Father and Son relationshipElie have gone through many cruelty and savage actions during the his life in the concentration camp. Of all those savage doings, one of them in particular impacts him the most, the Family Bond, Father and Son Relationship. Through out the story we can see that Elie is trying to stay together with his Father no matter what. They lied to get in the same block and to work at the same commando. Even though this is a risky thing to do, but they did it to stay together as a family, as a father and son.

Yet this all changed when we stepped towards the end of the story. Sons are starting to betray their father for a crust of bread, fathers are fighting for themselves and leaving their sons behind. Take the Father and Son who were fighting for the crumbs of bread thrown to the train. The Father sacrificed himself to get the bread, though the Son did not trust the father. The Son ended up letting the father get killed. Yet this action that he takes lead to his death too.

As for Elie and his father, in the end the Block Master had told Elie to abandon his father and leave him to die. That way Elie can get his father’s ration and obtain double ration to survive. Elie did not do this because he still has a feeling of caring for his father. Though he gave his rations to his father half hearted, he still attempts to be a good son and trying very hard not to abandon his father. In the end, Elie’s father called but Elie did not answer. Elie staid in silence letting an SS Guard beat his father up. Elie felt rebellious and responsible of his father’s death. It was said that there were no Fathers and Sons in a Concentration Camp, it’s just every man for themselves.

Symbols, Imagery, Allegory of Night

• Night - Night is used as the meaning of death, darkness of the soul, and loss of faith in the book. Consider all the terrible things that happened at night: Mrs.Schächter has her visions of fire, hell, and death; Eliezer and his father arrive at Auschwitz and wait in line all night long with the smell of death in their noses; there is one night the soup tastes like corpses; they march through long nights, and stacked on top of each other, suffocate each other to death in the night; Elizier’s father also dies during the night. As Eliezer says himself in pg.100: “The days resembled the nights, and the nights left in our souls the dregs of their darkness”.

• Fire - Fire and Flames are used to symbolize death. In chapter two, as the train full of Jews from Sighet approaches Auschwitz, Mrs.Schächter has a vision of fire and flames in the middle of the night. She screeches about the fire all night long and then again the following night. When they arrive at Auschwitz, the inhabitants understand what Mrs.Schächter was talking about. The crematoria, where babies and prisoners were sent in being burned to ashes. The view of the crematoria send through all aspects of life in the concentration camps, reminding the prisoners of their closeness to death.

• Corpses - The image of corpses is used not only to describe literal death, but also to symbolize spiritual death. After liberation, when Eliezer looks at himself for the first time in many months, he sees a corpse in the mirror. The look in his eyes as he stares at himself never leaves him. It explained of the horror he has experienced and seen, which stole his childhood life forever and his faith and believes in God’s mercy and faith.

• Smoke - Smoke are used to symbolize death. The smoke from the crematoria represents to the death of innocent babies and prisoners which Eliezer will never forget. In pg. 34 Eliezer says: “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”. Smoke also symbolize hope when Buna was being attacked. Everyone’s eyes shone with hope due to the bomb raid because finally they could get to see the camp where they are being tortured everyday is filled with flames and smoke-laden air.

• Bread & Soup - Bread & Soup symbolize living. When Eliezer and his father is in the concentration camp, bread and soup is the only food that keeps them away from dying. They care more about an extra ration of soup or bread rather than their parents or family.There’s a time when they were inside a wagon and when the workers throw the breads to them, they start to fight one another to the death for a mouthful. “Bread, soup - these were my whole life”.

IMPORTANT QUOTES

“ Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for machine gunners. This took place in the Galacian forest, near Kolomay.”

Page number 6

“Never shall I forget that 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 bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.

Page number 34

“Never shall I forget the flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire 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.”

Page number 34

Analysis:

The Germans were brutal and treat the Jews very gory. They don’t have any fear for what they have done as an example of babies was used as targets for machine gunners. This is where they have done it in a concentration camp.

Page number 6

In the first arrival of Auschwitz, Elie and his father received their first selection. As the selection go on, Elie and his father passes through the crematorium where they saw dead baby bodies were being burned into ashes. This is the most horrible and terrifying part of the Germans’ inhumanity.

Page number 34

There is an extension of “Never shall forget” phrase, which this phrase has a similarities with the first quote of “Never shall I forget the night in camp.” This quote represents that Elie struggled of loosing his faith on God; he wasn’t there for him.

Page number 34

Work Cited:

"A Burned Corpse." Corpse. Web. 28 Oct. 2011. <http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/galleries/buchgal/A%20burned%20corpse%20in%20Leipzig-Thekla,%20a%20sub-camp%20of%20Buchenwald.jpg>.

"All The Dumb Things » Blog Archive » Teenage Tourist in a War Zone. Phnom Penh, Cambodia. 1975." All The Dumb Things. Web. 27 Oct. 2011. <http://blog.allthedumbthings.com/2007/05/14/teenage-tourist-in-a-war-zone-phnom-penh-cambodia-1975/>.

"Bread and Soup." Soups. Web. 28 Oct. 2011. <http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Iuaq5GwaenY/SYsr_FwnqGI/AAAAAAAAA8g/acBklh56S80/s400/batter+bread+with+soup.JPG>.

"Fire." Fire. Web. 28 Oct. 2011. <http://i1.trekearth.com/photos/5162/flames.jpg>.

"Snow Flakes." Snow. Web. 28 Oct. 2011. <http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2Ks_Im1Ni8c/TDLgvCZNTUI/AAAAAAAABpc/Oi9-3qh108c/s1600/Snow_Crystal_Powerpoint_Background.jpg>.

"Solitude Horse Night Wallpaper | Selected Photos and Wallpapers." IMAGEof.net | Selected Photos and Wallpapers. Web. 27 Oct. 2011. <http://www.imageof.net/wallpaper/Solitude-Horse-Night/>.

Wiesel, Elie. "Night." Night Elie Wiesel. Web. 28 Oct. 2011. <http://www.penguin.com.au/jpg-large/9780140189896.jpg>.

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“A Study Guide” Night Elie WieselCover art and design by Reyhan

Author and Contributors: Reyhan, Joey, Andre, Sally & CynthiaStudy Guide 2011©