Elie Wiesel uses irony in describing the reaction of many of Sighet's Jews to the arrival of Germans in the ghetto. Due to Moshe the Beadle's stark warnings, everyone's been led to believe that the Germans have come to commit atrocities against the Jews. Yet after they arrive in Sighet, the Germans are initially quite polite and unobtrusive. This leads some to question Moshe's dire predictions of what is to come. Wishful thinking soon becomes the norm in the ghetto, and this unfounded optimism is expressed by Wiesel in a series of rhetorical questions asked by those who've convinced themselves that all will be well:
Well? What did we tell you? You wouldn't believe us. There they are, your Germans. What do you say now? Where is their famous cruelty?
It's understandable that people in this kind of situation would want to hope for the best. But Eliezer is scathing...
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of what he sees as the unwarranted complacency of so many of his fellow Jews. And he uses deadpan irony to drive home his point:
The Germans were already in our town, the Fascists were already in power, the verdict was already out—and the Jews of Sighet were still smiling.
When the Germans finally arrive in Sighet, it is clear that this event brings great fear and trepidation to the Jews of this community. What is particularly noticeable about the way that the author communicates this event is the discordant, broken sentence structure that creates a syncopated feel. Note the following example:
Anguish. German soldiers--each with their steel helmets and their death's head emblem.
Note the way that this paragraph begins with two incomplete sentences. The emphasis that is placed on the first word, "Anguish," is heightened through it being given a sentence all to itself. It helps express the shock, fear and bafflement that almost robs the author and his Jewish community of the power of words to express their emotions. The second sentence likewise emphasises this sense of fear through the focus of the "steel helmets" and "death's head emblem" of the German soldiers. For the Jewish community, the arrival of the soldiers is automatically associated with the fear of death and war, as symbolised through their helmets and the emblem they proudly bear.