Prof. Dale Hathaway: Relg 101

Wiesel's Night

Dale Hathaway

Oct. 23, 2017

Winthrop University

Places of Night

Sighet (See-get)	Buna
Birkenau	Auschwitz
Buchenwald	Gleiwitz

Note: Sighet (SEE-get): Transylvanian village in which the novel's opening section is set. Scenes in Sighet provide an introduction to life in the Jewish community by focusing on Wiesel's introduction to his Jewish heritage and religion. The invading Nazi troops establish two ghettoes into which the village's Jews are herded after being forced to give up all but what they can carry with them. - Birkenau: Polish town that is the site of the first concentration camp in which the Wiesel family is imprisoned. Birkenau: The reception center for Auschwitz. Elie and his father are separated from the female members of the family. Elie's mother and youngest sister are exterminated at Birkenau. - Auschwitz: Polish city that is the site of another concentration camp to which Wiesel, his father, and numerous workers from their first camp are later sent. - Buna: The second concentration camp where Elie and his father are taken to, it is at Buna where they face the hardest labor and abuse. - Gleiwitz: The camp the prisoners reach during the winter march. The prisoners move from Gleiwitz to Buchenwald. - Buchenwald: The concentration camp where Elie's father dies. A Jewish resistance takes control of the camp. - the smell of burning bodies

Following their stay in the ghetto, the family, along with their neighbors, are put onto trains and sent to concentration camps. Their first stop is Birkenau, where they are introduced to the horrors that follow. There they see families separated, mothers and children going in one direction and fathers and working-age sons in another. Wiesel's mother and sister are taken from him and, as he learns later, murdered. At Birkenau young Wiesel witnesses people giving up on life and willing themselves to die. In fact, Wiesel himself contemplates suicide, but the religious teachings he receives at home and the dogged determination of his father keep him from killing himself.

There, Wiesel is briefly separated from his father. Although he is still in a concentration camp, Wiesel finds Auschwitz much more attractive than his previous prison because it is cleaner. Even though his job as a factory worker allows him to prove that he should be allowed to live, Wiesel becomes jaded and numb to the beatings he experiences and the deaths of those around him. About the time he becomes acclimated to his new surroundings, Wiesel is sent to Buna with his father.

The greatest adjustment that Wiesel makes at the new camp is to the smell of burning bodies. There, too, Wiesel undergoes surgery on a seriously injured foot. Acquaintances warn him that he must not remain in the hospital too long or he will be killed. At one point, while still recovering, Wiesel is forced to march in the prison yard with other prisoners to prevent Russian planes from bombing the camp. In fact, the weak and wounded prisoners are forced to make a forty-two mile march to another concentration camp, Buchenwald.

Upon reaching this camp, the prisoners are allowed to rest. However, as a result of their long march and a serious case of dysentery, Wiesel's father dies, leaving his son to survive on his own. Elie is eventually among the few prisoners who are finally liberated from Buchenwald.

Scenes in the concentration camps become even more focused when Wiesel takes readers into the barracks, factories, hospitals, and death chambers that become the scenes of horror. He survived in part because of the strong religious faith that he had developed through his early education and the examples of his parents.

Women and children enroute to Auschwitz

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Wiesel and other survivors Published by Gale Cengage

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Night an introduction

(1) p.3-22	(2) p.23-28	(3) p.29-34
(4) p.34-65	(5) p.66-85	(6) p.85-95
(7) p.95-104	(8) p.104-112	(9) p.113-115

Organization

gradual loss of the illusion of hope
loss of faith in the God of his childhood
gradual loss of his relationship with his father

Never shall I forget

… Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children. . . . Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever …

… Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

God is on the gallows

Following the execution of a child possessing “the face of a sad angel,” a voice asserts that God “is hanging here on this gallows.”

Wiesel is deliberately ambiguous about the source of this assertion.

Note: The nine chapters in Night are devoted to specific aspects of Wiesel's Holocaust experience: the warnings and illusion-filled prelude before deportation, the terrifying train ride to Auschwitz, the arrival at the gates of the SS hell, the loss of family members, and the early signs of a shattering faith. Wiesel recalls the slave labor at the Buna works adjacent to the central Auschwitz complex, the promise of the approaching Russian army's liberation destroyed by the SS evacuation of camp inmates, the march away from Auschwitz toward Germany, the train ride to Buchenwald, the death of his father, and his own liberation. The book's tone varies from irony to bitterness to terrible despair, with the latter perhaps being dominant. As its Yiddish title suggests (literally, “and the world remained silent”), Wiesel's book is addressed to the world that did nothing, but it also challenges a God who did nothing.

Wiesel is acutely conscious of the duty of the survivor and writer following the Holocaust to educate that apathetic world and to provide a voice for the six million murdered Jewish victims. In an interview published in the Journal of Education (1980), he noted, “I do not write to please the reader. . . . I write for the dead.” Wiesel himself calls Night the literature of testimony.

“Holocaust”

The mass murder of European Jews and others under Nazi rule during World War II has come to be known simply as the Holocaust.(see below)
Timeline of a long history of anti-semitism:

As noted in an earlier discussion, an alternate name Shoah is often used to distinguish from a word that could be used of sacrifice to God

Jews and anti-semitism

Jews had long been victims of persecution
Hitler rose to prominence as a charismatic demagogue in 1920's
He lost an election for president in 1932
in 1933 he became chancellor and set in motion the destruction of democracy in Germany

Note: Jews had been the subjects of persecution in Europe at least since the seventeenth century. When Adolph Hitler, the charismatic, Austrian-born demagogue, rose to power in Germany during the 1920s and early 1930s, he rallied the German people with a message that included notions of "Aryan," or white, superiority and the inferiority of other races. The Jews were a special target of his hatred, and they were incorrectly represented during this time of social, political, and economic upheaval as being wealthy and in control of the country's economy. In 1932, Hitler ran for president of Germany. He did not win, but he did well, and when the party in power was unable to end the depression, its leaders turned to Hitler for help. He became chancellor, or prime minister, of Germany in 1933. Within weeks, he set into motion a series of laws that destroyed the nation's democratic government. He eliminated all opposition and launched a program of world domination and extermination of the Jews. His government, like all totalitarian regimes, established complete political, social, and cultural control over its subjects.

Gradual progression

In Hitler's program for the "Aryanization" of Germany and world conquest, Jews were subjected first to discrimination, then persecution, and then state-condoned terrorism.
the "night of the broken glass" also known as Kristallnacht, which took place in Munich, Germany, in November 1938
By the outbreak of war in September 1939, half of Germany's five hundred thousand Jews had fled, as had many Jews from other German-occupied areas.

Note: In Hitler's program for the "Aryanization" of Germany and world conquest, Jews were subjected first to discrimination, then persecution, and then state-condoned terrorism. This had as a turning point, the "night of the broken glass" also known as Kristallnacht, which took place in Munich, Germany, in November 1938. Nazi storm troopers burned down synagogues and broke into Jewish homes, terrorizing men, women, and children. Over twenty thousand people were arrested and taken to concentration camps. After Kristallnacht, Jewish businesses were expropriated, employers were urged to fire Jewish employees, and offices were set up to expedite emigration. Jews could buy their freedom and leave the country, but they had to abandon their assets when they left. By the outbreak of war in September 1939, half of Germany's five hundred thousand Jews had fled, as had many Jews from other German-occupied areas.

Final Solution

Hitler's Nazi government planned a "Final Solution" to the "Jewish question." After experimenting with different methods of mass extermination, Nazis settled on the gas chamber as the most efficient
Death camp operations began in December 1941 at Semlin in Serbia and at Chelmno in Poland
More camps opened in the spring and summer of 1942

Note: Hitler's Nazi government planned a "Final Solution" to the "Jewish question." After experimenting with different methods of mass extermination, Nazis settled on the gas chamber as the most efficient. Death camp operations began in December 1941 at Semlin in Serbia and at Chelmno in Poland, where people were killed by exhaust fumes in specially modified vans that were driven to nearby sites where bodies were plundered and burnt. At Chelmno and Semlin, 265,000 Jews were killed in this way. - The largest of the death camps was at Auschwitz. It was originally a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners but was expanded in 1941 with the addition of a larger camp at nearby Birkenau. - The extermination of European Jews reached a new peak in the summer of 1944, after Germany invaded Hungary - The Final Solution moved into its last stages as Allied forces closed in on Germany in 1944. The camps were closed and burned down - When the war ended and the concentration camps were liberated by Allied troops, thousands of unburied corpses and tens of thousands of sick and dying prisoners were found crammed into overcrowded barracks without food or water.

More camps opened in the spring and summer of 1942, when the Nazis began clearing the ghettos in Poland and rounding up Jews in western Europe for deportation to labor and concentration camps such as those at Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor. The largest of the death camps was at Auschwitz. It was originally a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners but was expanded in 1941 with the addition of a larger camp at nearby Birkenau. Auschwitz-Birkenau and its subcamps held 400,000 prisoners, including 205,000 Jews. In the spring of 1942, gas chambers were built at Birkenau, and mass transports of Jews began to arrive there. Some were held as registered prisoners, but the great majority was gassed. These gassing operations were expanded in 1943, and four gas chamber and crematorium complexes were built. Before they were killed, the victims' valuables were stripped from them. Their hair was used to stuff mattresses, and any gold in their teeth was melted down. In total, about one million Jews died at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The extermination of European Jews reached a new peak in the summer of 1944, after Germany invaded Hungary, and the new (but not yet fully fascist) Hungarian government fully cooperated in the deportation of 430,000 Jews to Auschwitz in only seven weeks, from May 15 to July 9. About 100,000 of the Hungarian Jews were selected for forced labor—they were assigned to work in the construction of factories for German fighter planes and other tasks. Another 80,000 Jews were exempted from deportation and consigned instead to the Hungarian Army's forced Labor Service.

The Final Solution moved into its last stages as Allied forces closed in on Germany in 1944. The camps were closed and burned down. Prisoners remaining at concentration camps in the occupied lands were transported or force-marched to camps in Germany. Thousands of prisoners on these death marches died of starvation, exhaustion, and cold, or they were shot. When the war ended and the concentration camps were liberated by Allied troops, thousands of unburied corpses and tens of thousands of sick and dying prisoners were found crammed into overcrowded barracks without food or water.

Much of Europe was destroyed in the war. Survivors of the camps were in terrible condition, both physically and psychologically. Many lost their faith, committed suicide, or were otherwise unable to resume normal lives. Trials were held in Nuremberg in 1945 at which top surviving Nazi leaders were tried for war crimes. Similar trials followed, but thousands of war criminals eluded justice. Millions of people were displaced, feeling unwelcome or unable to return to their former homes. Israel was established as a state in 1948 and opened its doors to all Jews, and many of them who survived the Holocaust migrated there, as well as to the United States, Australia, and elsewhere.

Night Literary Style

Narrative:	short narrative piece, novella
Semantics:	The problem of capturing the unrepresentable,
Allusion:	Night is full of scriptural allusions
Anti-bildungsroman:	Wiesel's novella turns the tradition on its head.
Hasidic tales:	do not follow western notions but develop their own time according to the message of the story. "Time," … "is represented as a creative force, a bridge sinking man to eternity."

Note: The novella is a short piece of fiction that is based on the author's eight hundred-page memoir of his time in the Nazi death camps. The shortened tale is told from a first person point of view. There is no attempt to enter other minds and little attempt to explain what is on the narrator's mind.

or sublime, into an art product has not been impossible since the Roman treatise on the topic by Longinus. Using examples from the Old Testament (particularly Genesis and Job), the Iliad, and poetry, he displayed the successful methods for capturing nature in verse, ecstasy in poetry, the abyss in myth, and supreme beings in mere names.

, or hints of reference to biblical npassages. In fact, the very timelessness of the constant night is reminiscent of supernatural tales.

Traditionally, the bildungsroman in German literature is the story of a young, naive man entering the world to seek adventure. He finds his adventure, but it provides him with an important lesson. The denouement finds him happy, wiser, and ready for a productive life. The classic example is J. W. von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.

The sole purpose of the book is to relate briefly and succinctly what happened. The reader's conclusions are meant to be independent, although they have been lead, quite consciously, toward an abhorrence of the moral vacuum presented in the camps.
As a result, Occidental aesthetics views nothing as beyond the ability of the well-trained artist to present it in a packaged form.

Nevertheless, the moral chaos and utter hell that was the Holocaust surpassed any previously recorded human abyss. For some, even fifty years later, it has broken the aesthetic mold of Longinus; how is it possible to comprehend, let alone represent, this most awful of all events? Not easily, yet Wiesel's methods resemble those humans who preceded him in the effort to understand the horrible and sublime by representing their experience in one form or other. It is through that artistic effort that comprehension comes.

The means of representing the unrepresentable are the techniques of the sparse and staccato. In this case, those techniques are used to keep the reader, as much as possible, in mind of how precious is the breath of air the death camp inmates survive on. Words are used sparingly and, when possible, blank space is used instead.

The terse sentences remind the reader of the necessity of conserving energy: one is meant to be bothered by the apparent waste of Eliezer's run across the camp (at the end of a workday) to check on his father. Generally, scenes are made up of few words yet loom large; the storyteller relies on the imagination of the audience, rather than on his ability. He places the dots and hints at the color, but the reader creates the image. Sentences like: "An open tomb," "Never," "The gate to the camp opened." They are fragments, scraps of evidence that remain until they are sown together into a narrative which makes sense of what happened. The narrative replaces the useless pictures the GIs took when they liberated the camps. The struggle of representing the unrepresentable horror, as Wiesel discovered, is best accomplished in the same way that Longinus felt the writers of the Talmud did—with few words and plenty of space for digestion. - Hasidic tales especially do not follow Occidental notions but develop their own time according to the message of the story. "Time," says Sibelman, "is represented as a creative force, a bridge sinking man to eternity." Within the story time are more direct allusions to particular stories. Two of the most memorable examples will suffice to demonstrate.

Immediately after realizing that the group is not marching into the death pit, there is the incantation, "Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp … " etc. This passage is a pastiche of Psalm

In French (and Wiesel writes in French or Yiddish), the start of

each line begins with Jamais (meaning never). Psalm 150 praises God for his works and deeds while the "Never" passage commits just the opposite reality to memory.

Another example of allusion is the execution of the three prisoners. One of these doomed prisoners is an innocent child, a pipel. This scene recalls the moment in the Christian Gospel when Christ is crucified. In the Gospel according to Matthew, he is accompanied by two thieves. At the point of expiration, Christ asks God why he has been forsaken. At death, the sky darkens and the onlookers murmur that this was definitely the Son of God. In contradistinction, the death of the pipel bothers the onlookers in the opposite way. There is still a look for God but this time, "[w]here is he? Here He is—He is hanging here on the gallows…."

( says Sibelman)

He presents an educated, young man forced into a hell made by human hands. There he learns more wisdom than he asked for, even when he dreamed of learning the mystical tradition. What he learns about human behavior he would rather not apply. In the end, he sees himself in the mirror, for the first time in several years, as a corpse. The result is not that he will think about being a productive worker, but about healing humanity.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Night
revelation	ghetto	delusion
phylactery	beadle	hasidism
synagogue	anti-semitism	conflagration
deportation	crematorium	Aryan
apathy	Kabbalah (cabalist)	Zionism
Talmud	Kaddish

Note: - penury: extreme poverty - waiflike: neglected; uncared for - mysticism: a system of contemplative prayer and spirituality aimed at achieving direct intuitive experience of the divine - fraught: full of; involving - indulge: to satisfy or gratify - revelation: something revealed - insinuate: to suggest or imply - annihilate: destroy completely - anguish: extreme distress, suffering, or pain - sublime: supreme or outstanding - edict: command given by an authority - decree: formal order or command - ghetto: a section of a city in which all Jews were required to live - delusion: a false belief or opinion - anecdote: short story about an event - antechamber: waiting room - relic: something kept in remembrance; a surviving memorial of something past - phylactery: either of two small, black, leather cubes containing a piece of parchment inscribed with verses 4::9 of Deut. 6, 13::21 of Deut. 11, and 1::16 of Ex. 13: one is attached with straps to the left arm and the other to the forehead during weekday morning prayers by Orthodox and conservative Jewish men.

Characters

Characters	Night
Akiba Drummer	Franek	Hersch Genud
Idek	Juliek	Meir Katz
Louis	Moshe the Beadle	the pipel
Madame Schächter	Stein	Tibi
Chlomo Wiesel	Eliezer Wiesel	Yossi