Night: Chapter 1

Context

Jewish Terms

• Hasidic

• Moishe

• Shtibl

• pertaining to a Jewish sect devoted to the strict observance of the ritual law

• a beadle ushers and preserves order during services. Everyone in Sighet refers to Eliezer's instructor in the Kabbalah as "Moishe the Beadle" rather than by his last name to denote his function at religious services.

• A small house for prayer

Jewish Terms

• Talmud

• Kabbalah

• collections of rabbinic (Rabi’s) commentary on biblical texts that form, with the Torah, the foundation for the religious laws of Judaism

• a body of mystical teachings of rabbinical origin, often based on an esoteric interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures

Jewish Terms

• Destruction of the Temple

• the central place of worship for the Israelites. The first Temple was built in Jerusalem by King Solomon and destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. Seventy years later, after the Jews returned to Jerusalem, the Second Temple was built on the same site. This Second Temple was significantly enlarged and expanded during the First Century B.C.E.; the Romans destroyed it in 70 C.E

Jewish Terms• Maimonide

• Zohar

• (1135–1204) Jewish rabbi, physician and philosopher

• Hebrew meaning "splendor, radiance;" one of the major works of the Kabbalah.

Jewish Terms

• Zionism • a Jewish movement that arose in the late 19th century in response to growing anti-Semitism and European nationalism. One of its primary aims was to re-establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Jewish Terms

• Passover

• Synagogue• Rosh

Hashanah

• a Jewish holiday commemorating the Hebrews' liberation from slavery in Egypt

• in Judaism, a house of worship and learning

• the festival of the New Year in Judaism. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the eight days in between are special days of penitence.

Geography

• Sighet, Transylvania

• a historical region of western Romania bounded by the Transylvanian Alps and the Carpathian Mountains.

• Part of Hungary from 1867 to 1918, it became part of Romania after World War I.

• divided between Romania and Hungary in 1940, with northern Transylvania going to Hungary.

• Northern Transylvania was restored to Romania after World War II.

Geography

• Galicia • a province of Poland ruled by Habsburg Austria in the 19th Century and the Polish Republic between the two world wars.

• After World War II, Galicia became a part of West Ukraine.

• Hungary• Poland• Palestine• Budapest• Germany

• Gestapo

• Facist Party

• the German Secret State Police, which was under SS control and command

• a political movement that exalts the collective nation, and often race, above the individual and that advocates: – a centralized totalitarian state headed by a

charismatic leader; – expansion of the nation, preferably by military

force, forcible suppression and sometimes physical annihilation of opponents—real and perceived.

• demand total personal commitment of the individual to the collective whole (nation, race)

• Often organize economic production around preparation for total war and extreme exploitation of occupied territories

• Miklos Horthy • Hungarian admiral and statesman who served as regent from 1920 to 1944.

• Pro-Nazi: Nhyilas • Hungarian for Arrow Cross, a fascist anti-Semitic party that assumed power in late 1944 and assisted the SS in deportations of Jews in the autumn of 1944 

• Yellow star • a badge featuring the Star of David (a symbol of Judaism) used by the Nazis during the Holocaust as a method of identifying Jews in Germany and in some areas occupied by the Germans

The Jewish Badge

• any section of a city or town in which members of a minority group live or are restricted by economics or discrimination.

• The first ghetto was established in Venice in 1516 when the Church ordered that walls be built around the Jewish Quarter.

• The word “ghetto” means “foundry” or “iron works.” In Venice, the ghetto was near a foundry that produced cannon balls.

• The establishment of ghettos was the first step in the Nazi extermination plan for the Jews of Eastern Europe. They served as assembly and collection points for Jews.

• Ghetto

More than 800 ghettos were established by the Nazis in Eastern Europe.

Judenrat

The Judenrat members in Krakow, Poland.

Arrival

Daily Life

Nazi officer terrorizes elderly woman with a whip.

A brother feed his young sister in the Lodz Ghetto.

Jewish men remove loaves of bread from a wagon at the soup kitchen in the Kielce ghetto.

Children selling books to earn money.

Jew chopping up furniture to use as fuel.

Lodz Ghetto. The ghetto orchestra, Lodz.

Girls eating in soup kitchen, Warsaw.

Jewish men praying in the

Krakow Ghetto.

Celebrating the beginning of the Sabbath in the Lodz Ghetto.

Jewish women baking matzos for Passover in

the Warsaw Ghetto.

Celebrating the Passover Seder in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Jewish Life

Reading the Torah.

Conditions

Food ration card.

With little food and diseases rampant in the crowded ghettos, the living conditions became unbearable.

Smuggling

Forced Labor

Jewish women moving human excrement, Lodz, Poland.

Child in a ghetto factory, Kovno, Lithuania.

Making shoes. Kovno, Lithuania.

A workshop in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Jewish children making boxes in the Glubokoye Ghetto.

Jewish women press Nazi military uniforms in the Glubokoye Ghetto.

“Liquidation/Resettlement”

Jews are forced into a truck which is taking them to their execution.

Jews from the Lodz ghetto board trains for the death camp at Chelmno.

Passengers in a train car. Lodz, Poland

Deportation of the elderly and sick from the Lodz Ghetto to Chelmno.

Deportations in and out of the Lodz Ghetto.

Deportation of Children from the Lodz Ghetto.

Jews from Lublin ghetto being hustled to the trains to be sent to Sobibor death camp.

Round-ups in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Hungary after the German occupation

A deserted street in the area of the Sighet Marmatiei ghetto. This photograph was taken after the deportation of the ghetto population. Sighet Marmatiei, Hungary, May 1944

Timeline

• 1940In spring, Germans conquer Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands; Winston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister. In May, Auschwitz concentration camp is established near the Polish city Oswiecim. Italy declares war on Britain and France in June. In August, at German and Italian arbitration, Romania is compelled to cede northern Transylvania, including Sighet, to Hungary. In autumn, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia join the German-Italian alliance, called the Axis. German authorities begin to seal off ghettos in German-occupied Poland.

• Elie Wiesel and his family become residents of Hungary.

• 1941Nazi Germany attacks the Soviet Union on June 22. The British and the Soviets sign a Mutual Assistance agreement. On July 31 Nazi Security Police chief Reinhard Heydrich is given authorization to plan and coordinate a "total" and "final" solution of the "Jewish Question." Construction of Auschwitz-Birkenau camp (Auschwitz II) begins in autumn. The U.S. enters World War II on December 8, a day after Germany's Axis partner, Japan, attacks the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On December 8, the first of the killing centers in Nazi-occupied Poland begins operations.

• Twelve-year-old Elie Wiesel begins studying the Kabbalah.

• 1942The Wannsee Conference held in Berlin in January in Berlin ensures the full cooperation of all state, Nazi Party, and SS agencies in implementing "the Final Solution"- a plan to murder the European Jews-under the coordination of the SS and police.

• 1943Jews in the Warsaw ghetto rise up against their oppressors. By the end of the year, the Germans and their Axis partners have killed more than four million European Jews.

• 1944Germany occupies Hungary in March. Between late April and early July, around 440,000 Hungarian Jews are deported from Hungary, most of them to Auschwitz. On June 6, D-Day, Anglo-American forces establish the first Allied beachhead in western Europe on the Normandy coast of German-occupied France. On June 22, Soviet forces begin a massive offensive in Belarus and advance to the outskirts of Warsaw in six weeks. Anne Frank's family is arrested by the German occupation authorities in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler orders a halt to the "Final Solution" in November 1944 and orders the destruction of the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau

• Elie Wiesel is fifteen years old when he and his family are deported in May 1944 by the Hungarian gendarmerie and the German SS and police from Sighet to Auschwitz. His mother and younger sister perish; his two older sisters survive.