Chapter 1

The first chapter of the Night is about Elie's life as the story begins. He talks about the town in which he lived as a child, Sighet, the little town in Transylvania. He had grown up wanting to learn about Kabbalah, the mysticism and deeper spiritual aspects of Judaism, but his father said that at his young age of thirteen, he was not ready for such things. He would be much better off learning the basics, the simple laws. But Elie was not content with his fathers answer, so he befriended Moishe the Beadle, a curious man from the town who lived in the streets. He was a prayerful man and he and Elie quickly struck up a strong relationship. They discussed the ins and outs of Kabbalah. Unfortunately, Moishe was soon taken away with the other foreign Jews, hauled off in cattle cars by the Hungarian police to an unknown location. Life continued on and soon the deportees were forgotten.

Then one day, Elie saw Moishe sitting outside of the synagogue. He ran up to him and then Moishe began to tell him the sorrowful story of the other deportees. The Hungarian police had taken them to the Polish border where the Gestapo took authority over them. Once they had been moved into numerous waiting trucks, they were driven to a remote forest where they were ordered to dig large trenches. The trenches being completely dug, they were then shot one by one, falling into the hole which they had just dug. Moishe had been shot in the leg and left to die, but he managed to make his way back to Sighet by way of hiding out in other Jewish homes.

Now Moishe was changed. He no longer sang and chanted outside of the synagogue, but pleaded for the Jewish people of Sighet to listen to him, listen to the horrible story he had to tell of the German Gestapo's cruelty and violence. No one listened though, they only pitied the poor soul.

Then in the spring of 1944, things began to change. News came that Germany had invaded Hungarian territory and rumors spread that the Germans were coming to remove the Jews. Things went from bad to worse as the new restrictions and laws where enacted. Jews could no longer own gold, silver, or any other valuable objects. Then came the rules forbidding Jews from restaurants, travel by rail, to attend the synagogue, or to be out on the street after 6 o'clock. Next came the establishment of the ghettos. But the Jews' stay there was only short, for two weeks later the order came for all Jews to gather their belongings and to move out. The ghettos were to be liquidated and departures were scheduled street by street.

The people assembled in the streets each morning and then they were marched off toward the rail station, never to turn back or return. Elie and his family departed three days later, being forced to run from the first ghetto to the smaller second one. There the remained for a few days until being loaded onto the cattle cars which waited for them, 80 people to a car. Small amounts of bread and water were given to them, but nothing considerable. Then the whistle blew and the train began to move.

Reflection on Preface to Night

Elie Wiesel, begins by giving the reader a brief assessment of the novel, Night, and its deep significance. He says that without reading this novel, his first, all books written later in his career cannot be fully understood. And once he has giving the book a worth introduction, he proceeds to humble himself, describing his survival of the Holocaust as nothing close to a miracle, but merely chance.

While writing, Wiesel describes have a terrible time describing the atrocity and the difficulty he faced having to select words to create an image where nothing on earth could come close to a proper metaphor. Then came the fear that his story would not be accepted, for how could it. No one could know the awful nature of the living at Auschwitz unless they had lived through it. Wiesel then decided that he hopes it could be understood, rather than more deeply known.

Finally, Elie Wiesel reflects on the overall success of his novel in portraying the memory of his pasting generation. He is amazed by the transformation in society, once so forgetful and a topic so unpopular, now is becoming a revived movement with courses offered in universities and books read as part of high school curriculum. Wiesel sees this as a great hope for the future generations, who will only know about what happened through the memories of those who experienced the past. So with the Holocaust survivors' numbers dwindling everyday, many people have begun to reach into the past and learn about it for themselves, keeping a little piece of the memory to pass on to their next generation as a witness to the dead and the living.