Moishe the Beadle is a penniless foreign Jew, who is among the first people deported by the Nazis in the small town of Sighet. Moishe the Beadle is transported to the Galician forest, where he narrowly survives a Nazi firing squad by pretending to be dead after he is wounded...
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in the leg. Moishe the Beadle miraculously escapes and travels back to Sighet to warn the other Jews about their impending fate.
Moishe the Beadle's response to being deported and surviving the Nazi firing squad is considered selfless and proactive. Moishe is aware that the Jewish citizens of Sighet do not know the horrors that await them and proactively attempts to warn them about the Nazi soldiers. Moishe demonstrates his selfless personality by weeping and begging the Jewish citizens of Sighet to listen to him. Moishe mentions that his only concern in life is warning the other Jews about the atrocities he experienced in the hopes that they will flee Sighet before they are arrested. Moishe the Beadle says,
"I wanted to return to Sighet to describe to you my death so that you might ready yourselves while there is still time. Life? I no longer care to live. I am alone. But I wanted to come back to warn you" (Wiesel, 32).
Overall, Moishe the Beadle's response to being deported and surviving the Nazi firing squad is both selfless and proactive.
Moshe the Beadle's response to being deported is an interesting one. While he is targeted and isolated, his response is quite communitarian, focusing on the larger good. Moshe pretends to be dead, witnessing the atrocities of the Nazis, only to come back to Sighet and warn them about what is to come. Moshe believes that offering warning to the townspeople of Sighet is his purpose in being. It is here where his reaction is interesting. Moshe does not recoil in silence. He does not take sanctuary in isolation. Rather, Moshe the Beadle's response to being deported is to endure and then return to Sighet to warn others of his own experience. His reaction is one of solidarity and community in a time where isolation and alienation pervades. When he is rejected and shunned because of disbelief, Moshe the Beadle feels defeated. His reaction is a foreshadowing of the worst effects of the Holocaust. Wiesel's work speaks to the true terror of the Holocaust in how it eliminated connection and relations between individuals. The dehumanization that the Nazis started was appropriated by its victims towards one another. It is here where Moshe the Beadle's response to being deported is significant as it provides an example of what should be as opposed to what actually results.