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Night | Introduction

With the encouragement of Francois Mauriac, Eliezer Wiesel broke his silence on the horror of the Holocaust to produce an eight hundred-page memoir entitled Un di Velt Hot Geshvign in 1956. That cathartic story was reworked over two years and became the slim 1958 novella La Nuit which became Night in 1960. Wiesel's novel revealed the Holocaust in stark, evocative, detail. He had a hard time finding an audience, however, in a world that preferred the 1947 Diary of Young Girl written by Anne Frank. Night made no claim on innocence but created an aesthetic of the Holocaust to force people to face the horrible event and, hopefully, break the general silence surrounding that hell. For Wiesel, Night began a brilliant writing career.

Night begins in 1941 in a Hasidic Community in the town of Sighet, Transylvania. There we meet a devout young boy named Eliezer who is so fascinated by his own culture and religion that he wishes to study Jewish cabbala. His father, however, says he must master the Talmud before he can move on to the mystical side of the Jewish faith. Moshe the Beadle indulges the boy until the reality of World War II reaches them. The fascists come to power in Romania and foreign Jews are deported and Moshe with them. Some days later, he makes it back to town and tells them what happened. All the people presumed deported were shot. That was only the beginning, the dusk of the coming night. Within a matter of paragraphs, officers of the Nazi SS corps have arrived and the family is broken up and sent to Birkenau. The metaphorical night only gets darker as Eliezer struggles to survive in the brutality and degradation of the camps.

Night Summary

Sighet
Night opens with a description of Moshe the Beadle, a poor Jew in Sighet, who is teaching Jewish mysticism to young Eliezer. After Moshe is expelled with the other foreign-born Jews, he miraculously returns to tell the Jews of Sighet that all those who were expelled have been killed. However, none of the villagers believe him, and eventually Moshe stops telling his tale. In the spring of 1944, German troops appear in Sighet, and the occupiers issue anti-Semitic decrees and establish two Jewish ghettos. Eventually, the Jews of Sighet are told that they are going to be evacuated.

The Germans pack Eliezer and his family onto a train. Madame Schacter screams every night that she sees a fire and the others try to silence her, shaken by her insanity. It is not until they approach the camp itself, and see flames, that they realize that she has predicted their fate. They have arrived at Birkenau.

Birkenau
The guards order the men and women to separate, and Eliezer is parted from his mother and little sister forever. He and his father see little children being burned alive and Eliezer realizes that he will never forget the sight. In the barracks, Eliezer's father asks an SS officer where the lavatories are and the man strikes him. Eliezer does nothing for fear of being struck himself, but he vows never to forgive the staking of his father. The men are then marched to Auschwitz.

Auschwitz
The men arrive at their block, where the prisoner in charge speaks the first human words they have yet heard. Later the men are tattooed and Eliezer becomes A-7713; he has been stripped even of his name.

A relative of Eliezer's, Stein, manages to find them, and Eliezer lies that Stein's wife and children are well. Stein continues to visit them occasionally, until he goes to find news of his family and Eliezer never sees him again. After three weeks, the remaining men in the block are marched to Buna, another camp.

Buna
At Buna, the men are transferred to the musicians' block and begin work at an electrical equipment warehouse. Eliezer befriends Tibbi and Yossi, two Zionist brothers with whom he talks of emigrating to Palestine after the war.

Idek, the Kapo, beats Eliezer for no apparent reason. A French girl wipes his bloodstained forehead and says a few comforting words. On another day, Idek beats... » Complete Night Summary