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Night
Review
Page 3
• Moishe– Beadle – caretaker of the synagogue– No surname – no true identity, recognition as a man– “jack of all trades” (master of none): he knew a lot
about many things, but no true religious education, uneducated- Eliezer goes to him for education
– Why was he the exception to the rule regarding how the poor were treated by the majority of the Jewish community?
Continues
• Anaphora – Repetition of a word, or phrase, for emphasis– List of what he did that gave him acceptance
from the adult community.• “He stayed out of people’s way”. “His presence
bothered no one”. “He had mastered the art of rendering himself insignificant, invisible”.
– This is what the Nazi’s are counting on to destroy the Jewish people.
– IRONY: Later when Moishe returns.
Eliezer’s view of Moishe
Softness in his tone. Childlike images• Simile: “awkward as a clown” – circus• “his waiflike shyness” – child who needs protection;
orphan; sweet; no conflict.• “wide, dreamy eyes, gazing off into the distance” –
childlike imagination (this will later influence Eliezer as to the credibility of Moishe’s claims)
• “He spoke little. He sang, or rather he chanted”– Religious themes – Shekhinah in Exile; Kabbalah
• Eleiser – 13 years old; deeply observant; bar mitzvah age. Influential age
• Following all the rules and laws of his faith.
Page 4
• Influence to begin independent thoughts; mysticism of the Kabbalah.
• His father wants him to be more educated. Protective father.– “You are too young for that. Maimonides tells us that one must be
thirty before venturing into the world of mysticism, a world fraught with peril. First you must study the basic subjects, those you are able to comprehend.” “There are no Kabbalists in Sighet.” “He wanted to drive the idea of studying Kabbalah from my mind.”
– A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Important to know the basics before developing an intellectual understanding of religious practices and beliefs that may be flawed. Prevents confusion – or at least is a step in the right direction.
– (grandmother) (father – bird)• Father well respected by the community; however, no father/son
discussion when questioned. Eliezer then goes on his own quest of his faith through Moishe. Parents often make this mistake. “I am your father/mother, trust what I say without question.” This oftentimes causes rebellion. – good/bad.
• Maimonides –Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon – first to write a code of Jewish law all must follow. Mishneh Torah
Page 4 & 5
• Begins to ask questions. Why? Why? Why?– It is always good to ask questions. From that, we
attain knowledge; critical thinking skills; ability to differentiate between what is truth and fallacy.
• Is challenged by Moishe. Why? Why? Why?• “Why do you cry when you pray?” Challenges his faith.
Does he do it out of rote? – mechanical repetition, without real understanding of its meaning or significance.
• Repetition of “Why did I pray? Why did I live? Why did I breathe?”
• Eliezer accepts his ignorance. Hard thing to do for anyone. We don’t like to admit that we are wrong. Then, we must admit that we are NOT PERFECT!
• Moishe knows why he prays: “I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions.”
Quick Write #2
• Moishe challenges Eleiser’s understanding of his faith through the quote:
• “There are a thousand and one gates allowing entry into the orchard of mystical truth. Every human being has his own gate. He must not err and wish to enter the orchard through a gate other than his own. That would present a danger not only for the one entering but also for those who are already inside.”– Analyze this quote. What does Moishe mean? What
is the orchard of mystical truth? What are the gates?• 250 words
Page 6
• “Moishe the Beadle was a foreigner.”• “Crammed into cattle cars.”
– Hungarian police– Influence of Germany over Hungary so far– “cried silently” - try to be insignificant; invisible, don’t
fight back….accept…accept.– Not happening to us..just the foreigners…value?– “What do you expect? That’s war..” too accepting
• USA – Japanese• Long Beach• For their safety• Paranoia
Hungary’s Part
• While anti-Jewish legislation was a common phenomenon in Hungary, the Holocaust itself did not reach Hungary until 1944.
• In March of 1944, however, the German army occupied Hungary, installing a puppet government (a regime that depends not on the support of its citizenry but on the support of a foreign government) under Nazi control.
• Adolf Eichmann, the executioner of the Final Solution, came to Hungary to oversee personally the destruction of Hungary’s Jews. The Nazis operated with remarkable speed: in the spring of 1944, the Hungarian Jewish community, the only remaining large Jewish community in continental Europe, was deported to concentration camps in Germany and Poland. Eventually, the Nazis murdered 560,000 Hungarian Jews, the overwhelming majority of the prewar Jewish population in Hungary.
Page 6
• Time gives way to forgetting what happened. • Rumors – Galicia, working, content..yes. Went to
Galicia…BUT….• Weather is pleasant; back to normal
• Moishe returns– Tells them the truth– “forced to dig huge trenches…..took place in Galicia.”– Character of the German soldiers
• Jews = animals, cattle, dogs, target practice
Page 7-8
• Moishe – Joy in his eyes gone– No longer sang– No longer quiet– “Jews, listen to me! That’s all I ask of you….– “They think I’m mad,” ….tears, like drops of wax…
• Simile; candle melting; moving from the light into the darkness of Hell to come
• Christ-figure: Anaphora: “I was saved….I…I…I…only no one is listening to me…” Light of the World – warning of the evils of Satan. Do we listen? They refuse to see the light of truth. They ostracize him; reject him totally as a member of their community.
• Becomes silent.– Beaten– Eyes cast down; avoiding people’s gaze
Page 8- 1944• False hope: Germany would be defeated; only a
matter of time.• Anaphora: “The trees were in bloom. It was a
year like so many others, with its spring, its engagements, its weddings, and its births.” – A sense of normalcy. Trying to convince themselves that all is ok.
• “The Red Army….Hitler will not be able to harm us….” They refuse to see the truth. What about all the millions who have already died?
• “so many millions of people….in the middle of the 20th century?” Not possible….difficult to accept the possibility of something so evil….do we then doubt Satan’s existence?
Page 9
• Fascist party takes over Hungary• They did not understand what that meant.• Begin to hear stories. Worried…for a moment. “the
Jews of Budapest live in an atmosphere of fear and terror. Anti-Semitic acts take place every day…”
• Simile – “news spread like wildfire”– Flames fast and furious but burns out quickly...Rationalize– No worry..won’t come to us…too far…again with
rationalizations…not us…therefore, no concern..
Page 9
• Jewish people refuse to see the signs:– German soldiers enter their town.– Officers stayed in Jewish homes. – Attitude distant but polite…wolf in sheep’s
clothing….Satan hides well…keep those rose-colored glasses on as long as possible…then, it is too late…
– “death helmets” – bringing death to all Jews
Death’s-head emblem on German helmet- SS guards
Page 10
• Germans are waiting for the right moment. Keep the Jewish people calm and unsuspecting. “Three days after he moved in, he brought Mrs. Kahn a box of chocolates…..There they are, your Germans. What do you say now? Where is their famous cruelty?” Refuse to see the reality of what is going to happen.
• “The Germans were already in our town…the Fascists…the verdict - (DEATH)…the Jews were still smiling.” – Very naive
10
• Passover – 8-day celebration– The Jews celebrated their Passover Feast in
remembrance of God's deliverance from death during the time of Moses.
– Sighet -• Weather perfect – however, synagogues closed.
Acceptance? Don’t want to cause conflict…don’t complain. Maybe they will go away.
• Celebrate during this time; but they are pretending. Deep down they are concerned, but they don’t want to admit it. Want the celebrations to be over so they have no reason to celebrate.
Passover
Moses was instructed to lead God's people out of Egypt and save them from the evil and ungodly Pharaoh. Because of Pharaoh's disbelief in the power of the One True God, Yahweh (God) sent a series of ten plagues upon the Egyptians: the Nile turned to blood and at various times the land was filled with frogs, gnats, flies, hail, locusts, and darkness. In one awesome act of God's ultimate authority, He sent one final devastating plague: every firstborn of every household would be annihilated.
God would shield the Israelites from this judgment if they would follow the instructions He gave to Moses and Aaron. The specific instructions are outlined in Exodus 12:1-11. Each family was to take a lamb and slaughter it at the same time at twilight after a certain number of days. Then they were to paint the sides and top of their doorways with some of this blood. Once this was done and all the meat of the lamb was eaten in accordance with God's instructions, God would spare the Israelites from death.
10 still• 7th day – “the curtain finally rose”
– The play is about to begin…HORROR is behind the curtain.
– Arrested the leaders of the Jewish community– Gold and all valuables taken; forbidden – help
from the Hungarian police.
– Metaphor – “The race toward death had begun”
• Nazis want this done ASAP!• Moishe confronts them…
Page 11
• Mom – tries to keep things together; job as mom. Suffer in silence. Nurturer; worry about her children.
• Yellow star – BRANDED LIKE CATTLE• Reaction – no big deal; it’s just a patch; “it’s
not lethal.” IRONY – they have been marked for slaughter.
• Ghetto • Nazis are slowly killing the Jewish people’s
“being”. 1st step has been easy – to accept the painless things being done to them. Baby steps.
11-12
• Ghetto – enclosed within barbed wire. Cattle. • Comfort zone. Away from the Germans. Safe…not
really…but let’s pretend… “in fact, we felt this was not a bad thing.”
• Anaphora: “We would no longer have to look at all those hostile faces, endue those hate-filled states…No more fear….No more anguish…We would live among Jews, among brothers.” NO..NO..NO…this cannot be our reality.
• Euphemism: Nice way of saying something uncomfortable, bad, etc… “Of course, there still were unpleasant moments.” JEWS BEING TAKEN AWAY.
• Personification: “The ghetto was ruled by….delusion.”
Step 2
• Page 13• German Officers – different mood; mother feels the
change• News: Transports; “The ghetto was to be liquidated
entirely.” Irony –The Final Solution: Liquidate the Jewish people
• Now they are worried and want to know everything. Secret on threat of death.
• Page 15– Irony “Our backyard looked like a marketplace….All
this under a magnificent blue sky.” Irony – total chaos – blue(peace and tranquility)
Page 16
• Exhaustion – “like molten lead”; total melt down; brains slowly moving to inevitability.
• Pain of waiting… “there was joy, yes, joy.” Irony…they think that this was hell...they have no idea of the hell they are entering.
• Imagery: juxtaposition of Blazing sunny day vs dead, empty houses (personification) = darkness within the hearts of the people- fear-despair
• “There they went, defeated, their bundles…They passed me by, like beaten dogs.”
• Juxtaposition of good vs. evil– A summer sun vs. an open tomb– Life vs death
• Personification :– “gaping doors and windows looked out into the
void.”
Simile – surreal image “…like a small summer cloud, like a dream in the first hours of dawn.”
“The verdict had been delivered”….death..
PAGE 17
Page 19
• “My mind was empty.”– “I felt little sadness.”– numb
• Father – emotion now– cries
• Mother- strong, no emotion (MASK)• Hungarian police
– First oppressors– Hatred remains to this day
• Non-Jews– Ignore the reality- hide their guilt for doing nothing– Refuse to fight for their neighbors – condone ?
Page 20 - 21
• Move to small ghetto– Still have faith
• “Oh god, Master of the Universe, in your infinite compassion, have mercy on us..”
– Still have hope• “..we were beginning to get used to the situation…miserable little
lives until the end of the war.”
– Verbal irony• “…a big farce…just want to steal our valuables…easier to do when
the owners are on vacation…”
– Free will taken away• “…we were all people condemned to the same fate-still unknown.”
Page 22
• Change of control – irony – worse– “It had been agreed that the Jewish Council would handle
everything by itself.”– Jews have been conditioned to go along with the program.
Comfort zone to have friends organize the march toward death.
• Non-Jews– Again – no one stands up for humanity– “..behind the shutters, our friends of yesterday were
probably waiting for the moment when they could loot our homes.”
• Plan has been successful– “…cattle cars were waiting…cars were sealed…one
person...in charge...someone escapes…person shot.”– “Two Gestapo officers…all smiles; all things considered, it
had gone very smoothly.”
One-page, typed reflection
• Does God exist? If not, why? If yes, and you believe that He is the Creator of all things, did He create evil? If so, why?
Or – did He create good but allowed evil to exist? How? Why?
Give at least three examples from your personal knowledge/experience.
DUE: WEDNESDAY/THURSDAY – 50 POINTS
Quick Write #5
– “ We should stop talking so much about the Holocaust. What’s past is past.”
– 250+ words– Agree or disagree– At least 3 examples from your historical
knowledge/personal experiences
Page 23
• Juxtaposition of beauty vs evil– “The lucky ones … could watch the blooming
countryside flit by.”
• Loss of sense of modesty, humanity– “Freed of normal constraints….let go of their
inhibitions…caressed one another.”• Human contact…love…necessary for survival of humanity.
• Metaphor – “Our eyes opened. Too late.”
• Reality of their delusions of safety. No escape from Hell.
Page 24
• Inhumanity to humanity– “…shot like dogs.”– “The world had become a hermetically sealed
cattle car.”• Air-tight• Seal off the “contamination” of the Jews• Smothering• No one from the outside can help
Page 25 - 28
• Mrs. Schachter– Irony of sanity vs insanity– Insane – sees the truth – prophetess– Sane – refuse to see the truth– “Fire! I see a fire! I see a fire!” – pity– Simile – “…she looked like a withered tree in a field of wheat.”– Fear – “…we felt the abyss opening beneath us.” (abyss-
immeasurable chasm/void; total darkness)– Like Moishe, “Jews, listen to me!...” warning; rejection– Rationalization: “She is hallucinating…thirsty…flames devouring her…”
(personification)– Cruelty breeds cruelty
• “bound and gagged her”• “…received several blows to the head that could have been lethal.”• Approval of the rest to beat her
– “Keep her quiet! Make that madwoman shut up. She’s not the only one here…”– Struck again
– “Jews, look! Look at the fire! Look at the flames!” And as the train stopped this time we saw flames rising from a tall chimney into a black sky.”
Quick Writes 6 & 7
For each quote, write a 250+ word response as to your agreement or disagreement with the statement. Include at least 3 examples from your historical knowledge and/or personal experience.
#6 “You can get used to anything.”
#7 “You should usually follow orders.”
Fair and Balanced• It is important to understand that the majority of Germans were not
Nazis. • Most of the concentration camps were not in Germany; this gave the
Nazi government the ability to convince the German people that the camps that they did have were only work camps or training camps. The idea of the reality of what was happening is something so heinous, that the normal person could not comprehend the truth of what was happening to the Jewish people.
• The camps in Germany were “work camps”. Why would anyone think differently?
• March 22, 1933 - Nazis open Dachau concentration camp near Munich, to be followed by Buchenwald near Weimar in central Germany, Sachsenhausen near Berlin in northern Germany, and Ravensbrück for women. These were the “work camps.”
• This era was not a time of television, internet, cable, 24-hour news. The people only had radio and newspaper. These two media have the ability to propagandize without question.
• The most of the free world was ignorant as well. • Ex. We do not know what horrors may be happening 50 miles away
from our own homes, except for internet, 24-hour cable, the ability to move about freely and quickly.
German Jews
• At Wuerzburg, Germany, Jewish deportees carrying bundles and suitcases march through town in columns behind Nazi officials riding in an open car.
• The Jews of Wuerzburg were taken by police officials into the Platzscher Garten hotel. In one room of the hotel, their luggage was inspected by Gestapo officials and all valuables were confiscated. The luggage was then taken to a collecting area, from where it would supposedly be taken to the deportation train. However, the deportees never saw their luggage again.
• In a second room, the deportees surrendered all their personal papers showing ownership of securities and property. They were left only with their identification cards, watches and wedding rings. In the next room the deportees underwent body searches for concealed valuables. Even gold fillings were removed from their teeth. Next, their identification cards were stamped "evakuiert" [deported].
• They were then surrendered to an SS detachment until ready to leave for the railway station. To facilitate the march through the city and the boarding of the trains, the deportees were organized into groups led by Jewish ordners. The transport traveled to Nuremberg, where it was attached to a larger Judentransport departing for ghettos and concentration camps in the East, outside of Germany
Saviors
• Leaders and diplomats• Per Anger, Swedish diplomat in Budapest who originated
the idea of issuing provisional passports to Hungarian Jews to protect them from arrest and deportation. Anger collaborated with Raoul Wallenberg to save the lives of thousands of Jews.
• Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg - Swedish diplomat, who negotiated the release of 27,000 people (a significant number of which were Jews) to hospitals in Sweden.
• Jacob (Jack) Benardout - British diplomat to Dominican Republic before and during World War Two. Issued numerous Dominican Republic visas to Jews in Germany. Only 16 Jewish families arrived in the Dominican Republic (the other Jews dispersed into countries along the way e.g. Britain, America) and so created the Jewish community of The Dominican Republic
Saviors
• José Castellanos Contreras - a Salvadoran army colonel and diplomat who, while working as El Salvador's Consul General for Geneva from 1942-45, and in conjunction with George Mantello, helped save at least 13,000 Central European Jews from Nazi persecution by providing them with false papers of Salvadoran nationality.
• Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, German diplomatic attaché in Denmark. Alerted Danish politician Hans Hedtoft about the imminent German plans deport to Denmark's Jewish community, thus enabling the following rescue of the Danish Jews
Saviors• Frank Foley - British MI6 agent undercover as a passport officer in
Berlin, saved around 10,000 people by issuing forged passports to Britain and the British Mandate of Palestine.
• Varian Fry - American journalist who saved 2,000 - 4,000 Jews, including many prominent artists and intellectuals.
• Albert Göring - German businessman (and younger brother of leading Nazi Hermann Göring) who helped Jews and dissidents survive in Germany
• Paul Grüninger - Swiss commander of police who provided falsely dated papers to over 3,000 refugees so they could escape Austria following the Anschluss.
• Wilm Hosenfeld - German officer who helped pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew, among many others.
• Prince Constantin Karadja - Romanian diplomat, who saved over 51,000 Jews from deportation and extermination, as credited by Yad Vashem in 2005
Saviors
• Jan Karski- Polish emissary of Armia Krajowa to Western Allies and eye-witness of the Holocaust.
• Necdet Kent - Turkish Consul General at Marseille, who granted Turkish citizenship to hundreds of Jews. At one point he entered an Auschwitz-bound train at enormous personal risk to save 70 Jews, to whom he had granted Turkish citizenship, from deportation.
• Zofia Kossak-Szczucka - Polish founder of Zegota.
• Carl Lutz - Swiss consul in Budapest, managed to provide safe-conducts for emigration to Palestine to many thousands of Hungarian Jews.
Saviors
• Luis Martins de Souza Dantas - Brazilian in charge of the Brazilian diplomatic mission in France. He granted Brazilian visas to several Jews and other minorities persecuted by the Nazis. He was proclaimed as Righteous among the Nations in 2003
• George Mantello (b. George Mandl) - El Salvador's honorary consul for Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia - provided fictive Salvadoran citizenship papers for thousands of Jews and spearheaded a publicity campaign that eventually ended the deportation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz
• Paul V. McNutt - United States High Commissioner of the Philippines, 1937-1939, who facilitated the entry of Jewish refugees into the Philippines
• Helmuth James Graf von Moltke - adviser to the Third Reich on international law; active in Kreisau Circle resistance group, sent Jews to safe haven countries.
Saviors
• Delia Murphy - wife of Dr. Thomas J. Kiernan, Irish minister in Rome 1941-1946, who worked with Hugh O'Flaherty and was part of the network that saved the lives POWs and Jews from the hands of the Gestapo
• Giovanni Palatucci - Italian police official who saved several thousand.
• Giorgio Perlasca - Italian. When Ángel Sanz Briz was ordered to leave Hungary, he falsely claimed to be his substitute and continued saving some thousands more Jews.
• Dimitar Peshev - Deputy Speaker of the Bulgarian Parliament.
• Frits Philips - Dutch industrialist who saved 382 Jews by insisting to the Nazis that they were indispensable employees of Philips.
Saviors
• Witold Pilecki - the only person who volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz, organised a resistance inside the camp and as a member of Armia Krajowa sent the first reports on the camp atrocities to the Polish Government in Exile, from where they were passed to the rest of the Western Allies.
• Karl Plagge - a Major in the Wehrmacht who issued work permits in order to save almost 1,000 Jews (see The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews, by Michael Good)
• Eduardo Propper de Callejón - First secretary in the Spanish embassy in Paris who stamped and signed passports almost non-stop for four days in 1940 to let Jewish refugees escape to Spain and Portugal.
Savior
• Traian Popovici - Romanian mayor of Cernăuţi (Chernivtsi): saved 20,000 Jews of Bukovina.
• Manuel L. Quezon - President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, 1935-1941, assisted in resettling Jewish refugees on the island of Mindanao
• Florencio Rivas - Consul General of Uruguay in Germany, who allegedly hid during Kristallnacht and later provided passports to one houndred and fifty Jews
• Gilberto Bosques Saldívar - General Consul of Mexico in Marseilles, France. For two years he issued Mexican visas to around 40,000 Jews and political refugees, allowing them to escape to Mexico and other countries. He was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1943 and released to Mexico in 1944
Saviors
• Ángel Sanz Briz - Spanish consul in Hungary. Saved, together with Giorgio Perlasca, more than 5,000 Jews in Budapest by issuing Spanish passports to them.
• Abdol-Hossein Sardari - Head of Consular affairs at the Iranian Embassy in Paris. He saved many Iranian Jews and gave 500 blank Iranian passports to an acquaintance of his to be used by non-Iranian Jews in France.
• Oskar Schindler - German businessman whose efforts to save his 1,200 Jewish workers were recounted in the book Schindler's Ark and the film Schindler's List.
• Eduard Schulte - German industrialist, the first to inform Allies about the mass extermination of Jews.
• Irena Sendler - Polish head of Zegota children's department: saved 2,500 Jewish children.
Saviors
• Ho Feng Shan - Chinese Consul in Vienna, who freely issued visas to Jews.
• Henryk Slawik - Polish diplomat, saved 5,000-10,000 people in Budapest, Hungary.
• Aristides de Sousa Mendes - Portuguese diplomat in Bordeaux, who signed about 30,000 visas to help Jews and persecuted minorities to escape the Nazis and The Holocaust.
• Chiune Sugihara - Japanese consul to Lithuania, 2,140 (mostly Polish) Jews and an unknown number of additional family members were saved by passports, many unauthorized, provided by him in 1940.
• Selâhattin Ülkümen - Turkish diplomat who saved the lives of some 42 Jewish Turkish families, more than 200 persons, among a Jewish community of some 2000 after the Germans occupied the island of Rhodes in 1944.
Saviors
• Raoul Wallenberg - Swedish diplomat, saved up to 100,000 Jews. Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews condemned to certain death by the Nazis were thus saved. All inhabitants have been honored by Yad Vashem.
• Moissac, France There was a Jewish boarding home and orphanage in this town. When the mayor was told that the Nazis were coming the older students would go camping for several days, the younger students were boarded with families in the area and told to treat as members of their immediate family and the oldest students hid in the house. When it became too dangerous for the students to stay there any longer they made sure that every student had a safe place to go to. If the students again had to move the counsellors from the boarding house arranged for a new place and even escorted them to the new housing.
Saviors
• Sir Nicholas Winton - British stockbroker who organized the Czech Kindertransport which sent 669 children (most of them Jewish) to foster parents ln England and Sweden from Czechoslovakia and Austria after Kristallnach. Sir Nicholas has been nominated for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize
• Namik Kemal Yolga - Vice-Consul at the Turkish Embassy in Paris who saved numerous Turkish Jews from deportation.
• Guelfo Zamboni - Consul General at Thessaloniki who gave false papers to save the lives of over 300 Jews residing there.
• Albert Battel - a German Wehrmacht officer.
Saviors
• Albert Bedane - of Jersey, provided shelter to a Jewish woman, as well as others sought by the German occupiers of the Channel Islands.
• Victor Bodson helped Jews escape from Germany through an underground escape route in Luxembourg.
• Corrie ten Boom, rescued many Jews in the Netherlands by sheltering them at her home. - was sent to Ravensbrück
• Stefania Podgorska Burzminski and Helena Podgorska at age 16 and 7 (Helena was her sister), they smuggled out of the ghettos and saved thirteen Jews from the liquidation of the ghettos.
Saviors
• Sgt.-Major Charles Coward was an English POW who smuggled over 400 Jews out of Monowitz labour camp.
• Miep Gies, Jan Gies, Bep Voskuijl, Victor Kugler, and Johannes Kleiman hid Anne Frank and seven others in Amsterdam, Netherlands for two years.
• Alexandre Glasberg, Ukrainian-French priest who helped hundreds of French Jews escape deportation.
• Friedrich Kellner, justice inspector, who helped Julius and Lucie Abt, and their infant son, John Peter, escape from Laubach.
• Stanislaw Kielar – two girls from Reisenbach family • Janis Lipke from Latvia, protected and hid around 40 Jews from the
Nazis in Riga. • Heralda Luxin, young woman who sheltered Jewish children in her
cellar. • Józef and Stefania Macugowscy, hid six members of the Radza
family, and several others, in Nowy Korczyn, Poland. • Shyqyri Myrto, Albanian rescuer of Jozef Jakoel and his sister Keti. • JUDr Rudolf Štursa, a lawyer, and Jan Martin Vochoč, an Old
Catholic priest, in Prague baptized Jews on demand and issued over 1,500 baptism certificates.
Saviors
• Villages helping Jews• Yaruga, Ukraine• Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in the Haute-Loire département in France,
which saved up to 5,000 Jews. • Markowa, Poland, where 17 Jews survived the war. Many families
hid their Jewish neighbours there and some paid the ultimate price. – Wiktoria and Józef Ulm, their 6 children and unborn baby were shot
dead by the Germans for hiding the Szall and Goldman families. – Dorota and Antoni Szylar - hid seven members of Weltz family. – Julia and Józef Bar - hid five members of Reisenbach family. – Michal Bar - hid Jakub Lorbenfeld. – Jan and Weronika Przybylak - hid Jakub Einhorn.
• Tršice, Czech Republic, many people from this village helped hide a Jewish family, six of them were given the honorific of Righteous among the Nations.
• Nieuwlande, The Netherlands - during the war this small village contained 117 inhabitants. They unanimously decided in 1942 and 1943 that every household would give shelter to one Jewish household or individual during the war, thus making it impossible that anyone in the small village would betray their neighbours. Dozens of Jews
Saviors
• Religious figures• Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Zante,[who, when ordered by the
Axis occupying forces to submit a list of all Jews on the island, submitted a document bearing just two names: his own and the Mayor's. Consequently all 275 Zante Jews were saved.
• Archbishop Damaskinos - Archbishop of Athens during the German occupation. He formally protested the deportation of Jews and quietly ordered churches under his jurisdiction to issue fake Christian baptismal certificates to Jews fleeing the Nazis. Thousands of Greek Jews in and around Athens were thus able to claim that they were Christian and were thus saved.
• Archbishop Johannes de Jong, later Cardinal, of Utrecht, Netherlands, who drew up together with Titus Brandsma O.Carm. († Dachau, 1942) a letter in which he called for all Catholics to assist persecuted Jews, and in which he openly condemned the Nazi German "deportation of our Jewish fellow citizens" (From: Herderlijk Schrijven, read from all pulpits on Sunday 26 January, 1942).
Saviors• Alfred Delp S.J., a Jesuit priest who helped Jews escape to
Switzerland while rector of St. Georg Church in suburban Munich; also involved with the Kreisau Circle. Executed February 2, 1945 in Berlin.
• Rufino Niccacci, a Franciscan friar and priest who sheltered Jewish refugees in Assisi, Italy, from September 1943 through June 1944.
• Maximilian Kolbe - Polish Conventual Franciscan friar. During the Second World War, in the friary, Kolbe provided shelter to people from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews. He was also active as a radio amateur, vilifying Nazi activities through his reports.
• Bernhard Lichtenberg - German Catholic priest at Berlin's Cathedral. Sent to Dachau because he prayed for Jews at Evening Prayer.
• Hugh O'Flaherty - an Irish Catholic priest who saved about 4,000 Allied soldiers and Jews; known as the "Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican". Retold in the film The Scarlet and the Black.
Saviors
• Pope Pius XII - during the German occupation of Rome he organized that Italian Jews would be concealed in convents and monasteries. Up to 1,000 Jews were even concealed at the Pope's Summer Residence Castel Gandolfo. His distribution of false baptismal certificates helped save the lives of over 860,000 Jews.
• Sára Salkaházi - a Hungarian Roman Catholic Sister who sheltered an estimated 100 Jews in Budapest.
• Andrey Sheptytsky - Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, harbored hundreds of Jews in his residence and in Greek Catholic monasteries. He also issued the pastoral letter, "Thou Shalt Not Kill," to protest Nazi atrocities.
• The Sisters of Social Service, nuns who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews; included Sister Sara Salkahazi, recognized by Yad Vashem as well as beatified.
• Archbishop Stefan of Sofia - Bishop of Sofia and Exarch of Bulgaria. • André and Magda Trocmé - A French pastor and his wife who led
the Le Chambon-sur-Lignon village movement that saved 3,000-5,000 Jews.
• Omelyan Kovch - Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest who was deported to Treblinka camp for helping thousands of Jews. He was canonized by Pope John Paul II
Saviors
• Prominent individuals• Khaled Abdul-Wahab administrator of Mahdia,
Tunisia, under German occupation; first Arab nominated for "Righteous Among the Nations"
• Maria Leenderts and Petrus Johannes Jacobus Kleiss, Dutch merchants in her "Selecta Schoenenwinkel" (located at 248 Dierenselaan in Den Haag) with the cooperation of personnel of the "Quick Steps" soccer club (located on the corner of the Hardewijkstraat and the Nijkerklaan in Den Haag) and the pastor of the "Sint Thersia Van Het Kind Jesus Kerk" (located across the street from the Selecta shoe store and on the corner of the Apeldoornselaan and the Dierenselaan) accommodated many Jewish families throughout the war.
Saviors
• Dorothea Neff, Austrian stage actress, who hid her Jewish friend Lilli Schiff.
• Algoth Niska Finnish gentleman rogue and alcohol smuggler; smuggled Jews via the Baltic.
• Irene Gut Opdyke, Polish hid twelve Jews in a German Major's basement.
• Jaap Penraat - Dutch architect who forged identity cards for Jews and helped many escape to Spain.
• Tim Pickert rescued dozens of Jews from the ghettoes of Kraków, Poland to hide them in his windmills located on his estate 23 km northwest of the The Hague, Netherlands.
• Nicolaus Rossini, helped many Jewish orphans - was executed in Kraków-Płaszów.
• Irena Sendler, Polish social worker who saved about 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Saviors• Suzanne Spaak, wealthy socialite who saved Jewish children in
France. • Marie Taquet-Martens and Major Emile Taquet hid some
seventy-five Jewish children in a home for disabled children they were running in Jamoigne-sur-Semois, Belgium.
• Ilse (Davidsohn Intrator) Stanley, herself a German Jew living in Germany until 1939, made many trips to German concentration camps and secured the release of 412 people. After Kristallnacht when she could no longer make those trips, she continued helping German Jews leave the country legally, until her own departure in 1939.
• Gabrielle Weidner and Johan Hendrik Weidner, escape network rescued 800 Jews.
• Bertha Marx and Eugen Marx assisted in saving Jews through the Resistance forces.
DEATH
• Death 1: (page 7) One day, Moshe the Beadle, who had been deported, comes back to Sighet to tell the story of the extermination of the Jews by the Gestapo. Although Moshe begs desperately to be heard, no one believes him. He tells Elie, "'I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death.'" Moshe the Beadle considers himself as already having gone through death. As someone who has experienced death and miraculously lives, he wants to save others from having to go through that same death.
• Death 2: (pages 9- 17) Elie identifies the German soldiers by their steel helmets with the emblem, the death's head. It is the first impression Elie has of the German soldiers.
• The Jews are not allowed to leave their houses for three days-on pain of death. The term, "on pain of death" is used several times in the narrative to emphasize the harsh reality of the German's threats.
• As the Jews are forced to wear the yellow star, Elie's father replies, "'The yellow star? Oh well, what of it? You don't die of it....'" Elie responds, "Poor Father! Of what then did you die?" The yellow star symbolizes the mark of distinction that sends many Jews to their deaths. In retrospect, Wiesel feels that his father and the Jews of Sighet conceded to their deaths by submitting to every German decree. With each submission, they die a bit more.
• As the ghettos are emptied by the deportation of the Jews, rooms that were once bustling with activity, lay open with the people's belongings still remaining. It is like an "open tomb" in that there is no longer any sign of life.
DEATH
• Death 3: (p. 33)The crematories serve as factories of death. The big, fiery furnace is where those who do not make the selection are sent. The threat of being sent to the crematory is likened to being sent to the grave.
• As the prisoners witness the burning of babies, they begin to recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. It is a prayer that the living offer up on behalf of the dead. "Someone began to recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I do not know if it has ever happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have ever recited the prayer for the dead for themselves." The threat of death is so imminent that the Jews recite the prayer for their own souls.
• Death 4: (p. 38)• The SS officer who introduces them to Auschwitz is described as
having the odor of the Angel of Death. He tells the Jews that if they do not work, they will be sent to the crematory. The idea of being sent to the furnace becomes a firm reality.
• Elie realizes, as he settles in during the first night of camp, that he has changed: the child in him is dead. It is the death of his old identity-the death of his innocence.
• On the electric wires at Auschwitz, there is a sign with a caption: "Warning. Danger of death." Elie considers it a mockery because everywhere in the camp, there is constant danger of death.
MEMORY
• Memory 1: Although the whole of Night is a series of memories, there are many cases where either "forgetting" or "remembering" plays a significant role in the narrative. In the first chapter, Moshe the Beadle and all the foreign Jews of Sighet are expelled by the Hungarian Police. The Jews of Sighet are troubled but soon after the deportation, the deportees are forgotten and town life returns to normal.
• Moshe returns to Sighet and recounts the horror stories of the Gestapo's extermination of the Jews. He tries to recall from memory, the stories of the victims' deaths: "He went from one Jewish house to another, telling the story of Malka, the young girl who had taken three days to die, and of Tobias, the tailor, who had begged to be killed before his sons....“
• The German army sets up two ghettos in Sighet. The Jews of the "little ghetto" are deported first and just three days later, even as they move into the previous occupants' homes, the Jews of the big ghetto forget about them.
MEMORY
• Memory 2: During the train ride, the Jews try desperately to silence the maddening screams of Madame Schachter. They even go so far as to hit her. Just as the Jews are able to block Madame Schachter out of their minds, they see the flames of the furnace and smell the odor of burning flesh at Birkenau. There, they are reminded of Madame Schachter's visions. (P 28)
• Memory 3: The first night of camp is forever etched into Elie's memory. Repeatedly, he uses the phrase "never shall I forget." Elie does not have to try to remember anything because even if he tries to forget, the memories are eternal, forever.
• Upon arrival of Auschwitz, the SS officer in charge gives the new prisoners an introduction to the camp. He says, "'Remember it forever. Engrave it into your minds. You are at Auschwitz.'" (p38)
• As the prisoners talk about God and wonder about their fate, Elie finds that only occasionally does he think about the fates of his mother and younger sister. The rigors of concentration camp life have dulled his sense of memory.
TITLE “NIGHT”• Wiesel's experiences during the holocaust, one of the darkest
periods in human history, are like a journey into a night of total blackness. During his stay in the various concentration camps, Wiesel witnesses and endures the worst kind of man's inhumanity to his fellow men, as prisoners are beaten, tortured, starved, and murdered. Darkness and evil reigned.
• When Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, he condemned the silence and apathy of those who did not cry out and condemn the criminal atrocities of Hitler and his dark forces.
• As a symbol, night does not merely represent physical darkness; it also stands for the darkness of the soul. It was obvious that the Nazis were dark and evil; but Wiesel also felt that his heart was darkened by the evil around him. In the book, he says about himself, "There remained only a shape that looked like man. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it.“
• Throughout the holocaust, Wiesel was living through a long "night" of terror and torture, where he could see no light at the end of the tunnel, only perpetual darkness.
NIGHT
• Night 1: Before the Germans arrive at Sighet, nighttime is for Elie a time of spiritual and physical renewal. It is a time of studying religious texts, of prayer, and of restful sleep. This comforting sense of night is forever lost as Elie experiences the horrible, dreadful nights of the concentration camps.
• Night 2: Elie describes how in the ghetto, as his father was telling stories, "Night fell," foreshadowing the news of their deportation. The notion of "night" falling on the Jews becomes a running theme throughout the book. There are several instances where the phrase precedes some dreadful event. (p 12)
• Night 3: Darkness characterizes the cattle train ride to Birkenau-Auschwitz. In the darkness, Madame Schachter goes out of her mind and yells incessantly about the fire, flames, and furnace. When she points and screams about the fire and flames, the other Jews see only darkness. Darkness is also a character of night that allows the young to flirt and people to relieve themselves without being seen. (p 27-28)
NIGHT
• Night 4: The overwhelming sense of Elie's experiences during the first day of camp is that it is like a nightmare. As Elie and the other prisoners walk past the chimneys at Birkenau, they stand motionless, unable to comprehend the sights: "We stayed motionless, petrified. Surely it was all a nightmare? An unimaginable nightmare?" Elie thinks he's dreaming. After pinching his face, in disbelief he utters, "How could it be possible for them to burn people, children, and for the world to keep silent? No, none of this could be true. It was a nightmare...." (32-33)
Night
• That first night of camp is forever etched into Elie's mind. His entire narrative story seems like an account of one long, endless night: "So much had happened within such a few hours that I had lost all sense of time. When had we left our houses? And the ghetto? And the train? Was it only a week? One night-one single night?" (p 37)
“Never…”Page 35
• Psalm 150 – final prayer; ecstatic celebration of God. Each line begins: “Hallelujah”, or “Praise God”. Wiesel gives an inverse version, with the repetition of “Never”- negative vs. affirmative.
• Psalm 150 praises God; Never – questions His justice.• Faith and morality turned upside down.• Eliezer accuses God of being corrupt.• Eliezer claims that his faith is destroyed; yet refers to
God in the last line.• Eliezer is struggling with his faith and his God.• Never able to forget the horror, he is never able to
reject completely his heritage and religion.
Psychological Moral Tragedy
• Death of faith in god
• Death of faith in humankind
• God fails to act justly and save the Jews from the Nazis
• Nazis drive the Jews to cruelty to each other
• Morality is upside down
Shaving of Head/TatooingPage 35 & 42
• Jewish law contains strict regulations about cutting one’s hair and facial hair. Razors are not permitted, and beards and earlocks are often considered sources of pride and commitment to tradition. Nazi used this as a means of humiliation and denigration of Jewish tradition.
• Tatooing is a strict ban by Jewish law. Nazi’s did this to dehumanize, demoralize, and strip them of their religious traditions.
Angel of Death
• A prominent character in Jewish folk tradition.
• Fearsome angel who would stand at the bedside of the sick, and using his knife, take his/her life.
• Change one’s name during extreme illness in an attempt to fool the angel; discard all water in the room after the death, because the angel supposedly washed his knife in the water.
1st Selection• Page 29
– “Men to the left! Women to the right!”– Never sees his mother and sisters again– 18 and 40– Weak vs strong
• Truth– Auschwitz/crematoria
• Revolt– “The wind of revolt died down.” Metaphor– Simile … “like cattle in the slaughterhouse– Too little too late
• Dr. Mengele– Dr. Death– Conductor of orchestra in this play of horror
• Selection of weak and strong– Useful for a time, or not
Rejection of GodPage 33
• Reality of the horror and no one is crying out to the world.
• World does not care.
• God does not care.
• “Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?”
Death March
• “We continued our march….closer and closer to the pit.” (33)
• Simile: “We were walking slowly, as one follows a hearse, our own funeral procession.”
• Still faith, angry, but: “May His name be exalted and sanctified..”
“Never…”page 34
• Never shall I forget that night, the first 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 whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith for ever.Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to 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.
Disinfection
• Page 36
• Gasoline – completely soaked in it
• “fuel” – fire
• Exterminate bugs
• Showers – get used to this for a purpose later
Imagery
• Page 37– “The student of Talmud, the child I was, had
been consumed by the flames.”– “My soul had been invaded – and devoured –
by a black flame.” (evil of Hell)– “We were withered trees in the heart of the
desert.” (metaphor) (nothing lives) Living dead– “herded” – continual image of cattle
Reality
• Page 39
• “Work or crematorium…the choice is yours.”
• Gypsy – chance to be cruel to someone
• Father beaten – son does nothing– Guilt– Forgiven by father
Irony
• Page 41– “It was spring. The sun was shining.”– “Warning of Death”– “The fragrances of spring were in the air”– “Work makes you free.”– “These were the showers, a compulsory
routine.”
Page 42-45
• Spoiled child
• Branding
• Lied to protect relative from pain
• Humanity does not get reward
• “God is testing us.”
• March to Buna
Vocabulary• Lagerkapo - head of camp• Oberkapo - overseer• Pipel - young apprentice or assistant• Kaddish - in Judaism, an Aramaic prayer that
glorifies God and asks for the speedy coming of His kingdom on Earth.
• Crucible - a vessel of a very refractory material (as porcelain) used for melting a substance that requires a high
degree of heat.• Din – disagreeable music tones• Dysentery – bacterial disease from malnutrition• Dregs – most undesirable part of wine; left over;
unwanted
Vocabulary
• Rosh Hashanah - (Hebrew, “beginning of the year”), Jewish New Year. Usually celebrated in September.
• Zionism - Movement to unite the Jewish people of the Diaspora (exile) and settle them in Palestine
• Nyilas - Hungarian for Arrow Cross, a fascist anti-semitic party which assumed power in late 1944 and assisted the SS in deportations of Jews
• Shavuot - Jewish holiday. It is celebrated in the late spring
• Phylacteries - called tefillin in Hebrew, consist of two black leather boxes that are attached to leather ties; the boxes contain passages from Scripture written on parchment
• Kapo - director; leader of the group• Blockalteste - Block leader• Appelplatz - the place for roll call • Lageralteste - a prisoner who was in charge of the other
prisoners
Vocabulary
• Shtibl - a house changed into synagogue • Penury - severe poverty• Kabbalah - body of mystical teachings of rabbinical
origin, often based on an obscure interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
• Maimonides - Jewish philosopher and physician, born in Córdoba, Spain
• Zohar - Jewish mystical text commenting on Torah: a 13th-century Jewish mystical text that is the primary text of Kabbalistic writings
• Glaicia - region of central Europe in southeast Poland and western Ukraine
• Gestapo - Secret State Police, common designation of the terrorist political police of the Nazi regime in Germany
• Kolomay – City in Glaicia
Buna
• Shoes• Gold tooth – trip to the dentist; pretends to be ill;
dentist hanged• “you…you…you” choosing cattle at a marketplace• Juliek – violinist – beauty of music – illegal• SURVIVAL – p 52 = “a famished stomach” loss of
humanity• Idek – Kapo; mad; cruel – p 54 his father = simile =
angry at his father (upside down morality – break down of humanity )
• Franek –Pole - greedy- Father is the way to the tooth.• Idek = publicly whips Elie into unconsiousness
Page 59
• “Two cauldrons of soup!”
• Desire overcomes fear of death
• Irony = shepherd – ss
• Soup – lambs – wolves = inmates
• Irony = inmate “snakelike”
Page 61
• Gallows– Young boy from Warsaw– Stands in defiance
• Lack of humanity
• “I’m hungry”
• Appreciation for food
• Page 63 – different
• Metaphor – p. 64 “…three black ravens”– Pipel = hated; not this one; angelic– To hang a child was a problem (ironic)– Page 65 = “where is God?” – Food tastes like corpses
Loss of Faith through the hanging of the Pipel
• God has been murdered
• A just God must not exist in a world where a young child is hanged.
• Lowest point of Elie’s faith
• Death of his innocence with death of the child
• Loses his faith, morals, values
• Fear – lose connection with his father in order to survive (p.63)
Elie as the Accuser
• P. 66 – 67• “What are You, my God?...• Benediction…• Anaphora …cynical• “the melody was stifled in his throat.” difficulty
keeping the faith• Accuser vs accused• Anaphora – “You..” God is the betrayer
– Powerful; stranger; observer; no longer believed
Yom Kippur
• Fast?
• Metaphor – “locked in hell”
• Open defiance of God’s laws– Falls into the abyss of despair
Selection
• Rosh Hashanah– Pass before God for judgment– Irony
• Nazis = God• They decide who lives and who dies• RUN!!! Do not show weakness
Pavlov’s Theory
• Page 73• “The bell….The bell….a universe without a bell.”• Selection – father gives him his knife and spoon.• Page 76-77: Akiba Drumer – lost his faith, will to
fight, to live; no hope=total despair= death of the soul
• Forgot to say Kaddish = loss of faith = betrayal of humankind
Theme of Faith• From the beginning, Elie Wiesel's work details the threshold of
his adult awareness of Judaism, its history, and its significance to the devout.
• His emotional response to stories of past persecution contributes to his faith, which he values as a belief system rich with tradition and unique in its philosophy.
• A divisive issue between young Elie and Chlomo is the study of supernatural lore, a division of Judaic wisdom that lies outside the realm of Chlomo's common sense.
• To Chlomo, the good Jew attends services, prays, rears a family according to biblical dictates, celebrates religious festivals, and reaches out to the needy, whatever their faith.
Theme of Faith
• From age twelve onward, Elie deviates from his father's path by remaining in the synagogue after the others leave and conducting with Moshe the Beadle an intense questioning of the truths within a small segment of mystic lore.
• The emotional gravity of Elie's study unites with the early adolescent desire for obsession, particularly of a topic as entrancing as the history of the Spanish Inquisition or the Babylonian Captivity.
• It comes as no surprise that Elie's personal test jars his youthful faith with demands and temptations to doubt because he lacks experience with evil.
Theme of Faith• When Moshe returns from his own testing in the Galician forest, his
story seems incredible to Sighet's Jews, including Elie. • Later, the test of faith that undermines Elie's belief in a merciful God is
the first night at Birkenau and the immolation of infants in a fiery trench.
• The internal battlefield of Elie's conscience gives him no peace as atrocities become commonplace, including hangings before breakfast.
• The extreme realism of Elie's test of faith at Auschwitz portrays in miniature the widespread question of suffering that afflicts Europe's Jews during an era when no one is safe and no one can count on tomorrow.
• Although Elie omits fasting and forgets to say Kaddish for Akiba Drumer, the fact that Elie incubates the book for a decade and writes an original text of 800 pages proves that the explanation of faith and undeserved suffering is a subject that a teenage boy is poorly equipped to tackle.
Quick Write #8
• Respond to the following quote. 250+ words with examples from your historical knowledge and/or personal experience.– "... in spite of everything, I still believe that people are
really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again." - Anne Frank
Quick Write #9
• Respond to the following statement:– “He who forgets the past is condemned to
repeat it.”– 250 + words– Give examples from your historical knowledge
and/or personal experience.
Quick Write #10
Respond to the following statement: – “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an
ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” Mahatma Gandhi
– 250+ words with examples from your historical knowledge and/or personal experience
Hospital Stay
• Pages 78-80• Must have surgery on his foot.• Trust in the Doctor? – German – Hyppocratic Oath • Red Army is advancing• All patients will remain in the hospital.• Inmates will be evacuated to another camp.• Metaphor: “beehive of activity”• “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He
alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.”
Irony
• “faceless patient”– No chance of survival– Bomb the camp– Kill all of us– Eliezer chooses to leave in pain– They were saved by the Red Army (page 82)
Leaving Bunapage 83
• Anaphora:
• “The last night…the last night…the last night…”
• Hope still alive: Russians on their way…soon
• Imagery: “Poor clowns…”
• Death march: “…the bell…death knell…funeral…”
Inner Strength…still
• “..we were running…like automatons…like a machine.”
• Wiesel’s faith: saw too much suffering to break from his past and reject his heritage. He kept his faith in God throughout.
• Elie’s faith: struggled, but although he rejects God, he never totally rejected his faith.
Personification of Death
• Page 86
• “just a few more meters…..a small red flame..a shot…Death enveloped me, it suffocated me….”
• Love for his father keeps him alive and strong to continue. “I had no right to let myself die.”
Master vs God
• Page 87-89• “We were the masters of nature, the masters
of the world….”• God is no longer the Master of the world…
the prisoners are now the masters…godless worldview…survival is the only goal..morality is meaningless.
• Personification of Death• “All around me…dance of death…something
in me rebelled against that death…”
Father/Son Relationship
Rabbi Eliahu and his son – page 91
Elie and his father – page 91
Although angry with God, still prays…calls God “Master of the Universe.”
Death So Close
• Page 94-95– Almost trampled– Juliek – violin “little corpse”– Page 96-97
• Imagery: eating snow off each other’s backs• 100 men to a car…so skinny
– Page 98-99• “cemetery covered with snow”• Lack of humanity – strip dead bodies for clothes• Father • “naked orphans without a tomb”
Animals in the Zoo
• Page 100-101
• “dozens of starving men … worker watched with great interest…”
• Modern society … coins tossed to the poor
• “Beasts of prey….ready to kill for a crust of bread.”
• Father and son kill for a crust of bread
Buchenwald
• 100 began…12 came out– Death personified through argument with
father. Page 105
• Guilt- page 106-107– Relief when father is gone– Shares his bread grudgingly– Father begins to die; dysentery– Page 112- January 28, 1945; father dies– “Free at last” – should he feel guilty?
Page 113-115
• Liberation– Liquidation of inmates– Thousands marched out daily– SS escape– American tank enters April 10, 1945– “From the depths of the mirror…the look inhis
eyes…has never left me.”
DEATH
• Death 5: As Elie witnesses the hanging of the young pipel, he feels that it is his God who is hanging on the gallows. Elie identifies with the death of the young pipel because he undergoes a similar slow, painful, spiritual death.
• Death 6: The selection process determines who will live and who will die. Dr. Mengele, the notorious SS officer, is the person who heads the selection. He moves his baton to the right or to the left, depending on the health of the prisoners. Dr. Mengele is like the Angel of Death. He is the messenger of death.
• As the prisoners prepare for the evacuation of Buna, the bell rings. It signals the start of the winter march. The sight of the prisoners setting out in the winter is likened to a burial procession. The prisoners realize that many of them will not make in through the march alive.
• Death 7: On the winter march, the prisoners who cannot keep up are either shot by the SS officers or trampled upon by the others. The winter march is a march to their deaths. As Elie sees his friend Zalman fall behind, he begins to think about his painful foot: "Death wrapped itself around me till I was stifled. It stuck to me. I felt I could touch it."The presence of his father is the only motivation that keeps him going.
DEATH
• Death 8: On the train ride, dead corpses are thrown overboard onto the snow. "Twenty bodies were thrown out of our wagon. Then the train resumed its journey, leaving behind it a few hundred naked dead, deprived of burial, in the deep snow of a field in Poland." By this time, Elie is indifferent to death.
• As the Jews on the train feel that the end is near, they all begin to wail like animals that are about to die. The cries are a primal, instinctive, and reactionary response to death. Many die like animals, without the dignity accorded to human beings.
• Death 9: At Buchenwald, Elie's father struggles with dysentery. Elie tries to revive his father's spirit, but it is of no use. Elie's father is taken away during the night. Elie feels guilty that he cannot find the tears to weep. Concentration camp existence has robbed him of the proper response to his father's death. Elie is emotionally dead.
• Death 10: In his Holocaust experience, Elie undergoes near physical, spiritual, and emotional death. It is graphically reflected in the mirror as he sees the image of a corpse staring back at him.
FAITH
• From the time of his childhood, Elie was extremely interested in Judaism and studied the Talmud and the Kabbala. He regularly attended services at the synagogue, prayed to his God, and wept over the history of the Jews. His father was also very religious.
• In the concentration camps, religion helps the prisoners to endure. They regularly pray to God for mercy and help. The Jews still fast during holy days, even though they are starving to death. It seems that nothing can shake their faith. Elie's faith, however, gets shaken to the core.
• Sickened by the torture he must see and endure, Elie questions if God really exists. He refuses to pray on the eve of the Jewish New Year and will not fast during the time of atonement. Elie's faith, however, is not permanently shattered. When he sees a son robbing from his father, he prays to God that he may never desert his father. The prayer is answered, for even when his father becomes a burden, Elie stays by his side and cares for him.
FAITH
• Faith 1: Elie is a deeply religious boy whose favorite activities are studying the Talmud and spending time at the Temple with his spiritual mentor, Moshe the Beadle. At an early age, Elie has a naïve, yet strong faith in God.
• Faith 2: Many of the prisoners try to cope with their situation by talking of God. Akiba Drumer, a devout Jew with a deep solemn voice, sings Hasidic melodies and talks about God testing the Jews. Elie, however, ceases pray. He identifies with the biblical character Job, who questions God when misfortunes come upon him. Similarly, Elie begins to doubt God's absolute justice.
• Faith 3: As Elie witnesses the hanging of the young pipel, he feels that it is his God who is hanging on the gallows. Elie identifies with the death of the young pipel because he undergoes a similar slow, painful spiritual death. The death of the pipel is related to the death of his faith in God.
FAITH
• Faith 4: On the Jewish New Year, Elie feels a strong rebellion against God. He becomes the accuser and God the accused. But in his rebellion against his faith in God, he also feels alone and empty.
• The Jews debate whether they should fast for Yom Kippur. As an act of obedience to his father and also as an act of rebellion against God, Elie swallows his food. In the camps, his physical needs become more important than his faith.
• Faith 5: Even the most devout, religious Jews begin to lose faith. Akiba Drumer does not make the selection when "cracks" begin to form in his faith. A rabbi from Poland, who always recites the Talmud from memory, concludes that God is no longer with them. For some, losing their faith in God is akin to losing their will to live.
FAITH
• Faith 6: As Elie recuperates in the hospital after his foot surgery, a faceless neighbor tells him that he has more faith in Hitler than in anyone else because he's the only one who's kept his promises to the Jewish people. This is a direct attack on those who have clung to their faith in God. The ultimate insult is that even Hitler is an object worthier of faith than is God.
• Faith 7: Recalling the actions of Rabbi Eliahou's son, Elie prays to the God he no longer believes in, that he have the strength to never do what the rabbi's son had done in abandoning his father. Rabbi Eliahou's search for his son rekindles in Elie a sense of hope and faith. Elie feels that at the very least, he should be faithful to his father to the end.
• From an early age, Elie Wiesel has a tremendous love for religion, wanting to study the Cabbala and Talmud. When he is first imprisoned, it is his faith that helps him survive. Like most of the Jews, he prays regularly for an end to the persecution and strength to survive. His faith, however, is shaken when he sees the depth of the atrocities committed against his fellow Jews. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, he finds that he cannot even pray, questioning if God exists amongst such cruelty to mankind. In the end, his faith returns and helps him deal with his experiences.
MEMORY
• Memory 4: At Buna, Elie is beaten by Idek the Kapo and a young French girl comes to his aid and tells him to keep his anger and hatred for another day. Years later, Elie Wiesel recalls running into her in Paris. They reminisce about the days in the concentration camp. Such memories are hard to forget.
• Memory 5: After the prisoners go through the selection process, they forget about it until a few days later when the head of the barracks reads off the numbers of those selected. Although the prisoners forget, Dr. Mengele, the one who makes the selections, does not forget.
• Akiba Drumer, sensing that his death is near, makes Elie and others promise to remember him when he is taken away by praying the Kaddish. Due to the harsh treatment they receive, after only three days since Akiba Drumer is taken away, Elie and the others forget to pray the Kaddish for him.
MEMORY
• Memory 6: During the train ride in the dead of winter, the prisoners forget about everything-death, fatigue, and their physical needs. The unbearable sufferings that the prisoners undergo desensitize their senses-they are able to block everything from their minds.
• Elie remembers that Rabbi Eliahou's son had tried to abandon his father during the winter march. That memory makes him pray to a God that he no longer believes in, to give him the strength not to do what the rabbi's son had done.
• Memory 7: Elie cannot forget the smile his father shows him even in the midst of his suffering. "I shall always remember that smile. From which world did it come?" Elie asks. These seemingly minor, death-defying gestures are particularly memorable.
MEMORY
• Memory 8: Elie finds it hard to forget the last concert Juliek gives to an audience of dying men. The memory of the last concert is heightened by the lasting images of Juliek's dead body and his smashed violin. And whenever Elie Wiesel hears Beethoven's concerto, he remembers the face of his friend, Juliek, and his last concert.
• Memory 9: When he awakes from his sleep, Elie remembers that he has a father. Sleep and fatigue had gotten the better of him; the survival of his body overcomes him to the point of forgetting about his father.
• At Elie's father's death, there are no prayers, no candles lit to his memory, no tears. In the depth of his memory, Elie admits feeling a sense of relief in not having to worry about his father anymore. He feels free from his father's physical presence, but not from the memory of his father, which remains with him forever.
NIGHT
• Night 5: The impression of "last nights" anchors the timeframe of Elie's narrative. There are numerous instances of last nights: the last night at home; the last night in the ghetto; the last night on the train; the last night at Buna.
• Night 6: "Night" carries with it the notion of uncertainty and fear. Short of representing death, night becomes an imagery of the unknown. As Elie and the other prisoners prepare to leave Buna, there is a greater fear of what is to come: "The gates of the camp opened. It seemed that an even darker night was waiting for us on the other side."
• Night 7: One night, on the winter trek to Buchenwald, Elie is almost strangled to death by an unknown attacker. Elie does not know the reason for the attack. Night brings out the worst dangers.
• The nights become bleaker as the narrative progresses. Thus, Elie detests the "long nights" of the winter: "We were all going to die here. All limits had been passed. No one had any strength left. And again the night would be long."
MAN’S INHUMANITY TO MAN
• Deportations begin. The Jews are herded into cattle cars and sent to concentration camps, where they are forced to do hard labor, are beaten and tortured, are denied food and water, and are often killed by burning, hanging, shooting, starving, freezing, or beating. Even the babies and small children are thrown into pits of fire since they serve no purpose to the Nazis.
• Because of the torture they must witness and endure, the prisoners become animalistic. When they are made to march, if a fellow prisoner falls, he is often trampled to death. When food is thrown at them, the prisoners kill each other to gain a bite of bread. In their search for survival, sons turn against their fathers; even Elie has fleeting thoughts of being rid of Mr. Wiesel.
• Through most of the book, however, Elie tries to help his father, who is repeatedly tortured. He shows him how to march properly so he will not be persecuted by the Nazi guards; he nurses him after he is beaten by a guard; he saves him from being thrown off the train as a corpse; he gets him up and to Buchenwald after he falls amongst the corpses; and he takes care of him after his skull is cracked for pleading for water. In the end, Mr. Wiesel is taken to the crematorium and thrown into the fire, probably while he is still breathing.
MAN’S INHUMANITY TO MAN
• The major theme of the book is the horror that results from extreme prejudice. Because Hitler hated Jewish people, he caused them to be imprisoned, tortured, and murdered.
• The book records the horrendous experiences of Elie Wiesel, the Jewish author, during Hitler's reign of terror. He is arrested, imprisoned in a concentration camp, and tortured.
• Although he escapes death, he is totally devastated by the things he must endure and witness during the holocaust.
• The book is a recording of man's inhumanity to man at its worst.
• The persecution begins when the Germans occupy Sighet. Soon Jews are made to wear yellow stars to identify themselves; in addition, Jewish shops are closed and Jewish homes are seized, forcing the families to live in the ghetto.
Eternal Flame
• All Jewish temples have a light that is always on. It references the Eternal Flame that was kept burning in the First Temple. Represents the eternal watchfulness and providence of God over His people.
• Night – flame and fire represent Nazi power and cruelty. Reflects Eliezer’s loss of faith. Symbolizes the evil in the world rather than God’s benevolence.
THEME PROMPTS
• NIGHT • SILENCE AND IRONY• MAN’S INHUMANITY TO MAN • JOURNEY OF ELIEZER’S FAITH
• YOUR ESSAY WILL NEED TO BE:– THOROUGH– INCLUDE AT LEAST FIVE QUOTES (WITH PAGE
NUMBER)– AT LEAST 500 WORDS…NOT INCLUDING YOUR
QUOTES
