Chapter 5

At this point in the story, Rosh Hashanah is coming for the Jews. On the eve of the holy day, all tensions were strung tightly, wondering if it would be the "last day of the [calender] year" or really the last day. As the evening's soup was distributed, everyone refrained from eating. They would wait until after prayer. As night fell, everyone began to assemble in the the camps center square, the Appelplatz. Almost 10,000 of the prisoners, the Blockälteste, and the Kapos gathered together in order to pause and recognize the time of meaning in their church year.

Elie's thought process was concentrated on the interrogation of God, asking who He was and what He had to say about such evil days as these. For what Elie had been through, his questions were a logical part of his coping with such unexplainable massacres. He resisted and rebelled, straining in an effort not to follow along with the group reciting the prayer. In the end, he decided within himself that he was stronger than God, "felt myself to be stronger than this Almighty" being to whom his neighbors were praying. Now he was only "an observer, a stranger."

Then came Yom Kippur, "The Day of Atonement," but the debated question was, "Should everyone fast?" Most felt that they had no need to fast, they were already fasting as it was. Others though felt that the intention of fasting was still good, and that they could give up one days worth of food in order to sacrifice for their sins. Elie, having anything but a strong faith at this point, decided he would eat in protest, in protest of a God who was not there for them in their time of need.

The next horrible event to take place was the selection. It was simply known as "selection" and was everything that the name implies. Those who were deemed to be weak and unhealthy by the SS had their numbers taken down and they were acknowledged as being good for the crematorium. Elie's Blockälteste had been through selection before and he spoke to his block before they went before the examination board saying,

"In a few moments, selection will take place. You will have to undress completely. Then you will go, one by one, before the SS doctors. I hope you will all pass. But you must try to increase your chances. Before you go into the next room, try to move your limbs, give yourself some color. Don't walk slowly, run! Run as if you had the devil at your heels! Don't look at the SS. Run, straight in front of you!"

When Elie's turn came, he "ran without looking back." The run seemed to last forever for him, but when he finally reached Tibi and Yossi, two of his young companions, on the other side, he was relied to hear that the infamous Dr. Mengele had not taken down his number. Yossi smiled and said, "Anyways, they couldn't have. You were running too fast..."

When the bell rang to signal the end of selection, Elie raced towards Block 36, his father's block. Meeting him in the middle, both were relieved when they heard that the other had pasted. Life was insured for now.

Chapter 4

Many of the occurrences in this chapter exemplify the depravity which Elie must endure, suffering beyond what humans should even experience. The magnitude of the events is even unrealized at the time by the young Elie. His experience in the camps of Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Buna changed his attitude and outlook on life for the rest of his life, but he did not come to realize this until after he had escaped the confines of such an evil environment, gave his mind time to unwind, and his conscience time to stabilize again.

Chapter 4 begins with the entrance into Buna, a new camp where Elie and his group of fellow inmates would be staying. After receiving the routine showers upon entry, the group was given new clothing (if it could even be called that, rags more specifically) and placed in two tents to wait for their block assignments. Once given the blocks they would be staying in, the inmates waited for the Kommando leaders to select their work crews. Word spread quickly that overall, Buna was a good labor camp, one could easily hold their own, that is, as long as they didn't get assigned to the construction Kommando. Elie was given an opportunity to secure a good Kommando, even getting a place for his father too, but the price was his pair of shoes. One of the shifted-eyed aides in the camp offered to give Elie the good slot, but the price was too high for him. Ironically, his shoes were later taken from him with nothing in return, a sorry end to a deal which could have gotten him another pair of shoes and a ration of bread with margarine. This little occurrence shows the deeper unsettlingness of Elie's situation, where he really has no control of his own life's direction.

Elie and his father got selected for the electrical warehouse crew, a position that wasn't difficult or dangerous. They worked diligently when the SS were around, but the normal circumstances were relaxed and slow-paced.

One day at the warehouse, the overseer, Idek, was venting his anger on the workers and Elie happened to cross his path. Idek beat him severely and when Elie was able to get away from him, he was only crawling. A nice, young French woman came over to Elie and wiped his bloodied face with a cool cloth, talking to him and reassuring him that it would be okay. Elie, years later, met the woman again in Paris, spending the whole day talking with her.

Amongst other events which adversely affected Elie was the hanging of a young boy, a boy called pipel, who was hung for suspected involvement in a sabotage plot on the central electric plant in Buna. The pipel, along with two other prisoners, was hung one days the workers were returning to the camp. The horrible part of the hanging was that the young child, the innocent pipel, was too light, and remained alive for over half an hour, struggling and writhing before the entire camp's population. That would forever change Elie, causing him to lose sleep at night and to question the very existence of a loving God.

After the triple hanging, Elie remarked that the soup of the evening "tasted of corpses."

Chapter 3

Upon arriving at the camp, Birkenau, the men, women, and children were ordered off the train and "herded" into the camp along a path lined with SS men, each holding a machine gun.

The first separation was separation by sex. Women went to the right, men to the left. Elie went with his father, leaving his mother and Tzipora for what he did not know would be the last time.

How horrifying it would have been to know that you would never see you mother again. Leaving your young sister to the hands of a cruel enemy would be one of the last thing I would want to be forced to do. Perhaps it is better that Elie did not know that he would never see the two again.

As the men were moved away from the women, they began to mix with inmates who had already been at Auschwitz for some time. These inmates were very angry, irritated, unruly, and aggressive, often shouting and striking the new arrivals, cursing their stupidity for every coming to such a place. The problem was the arrivals had not come of their own free will. They had just never heard of Auschwitz, even in 1944. Living far away in Transylvania, Hungary, they had not be exposed to the rumors and horror stories that circulated about the concentration camp. How could they ever believe that human beings were being burned alive in crematoriums at this day and age, babies being thown alive into burning infernoes. It was just too much to comprehend. After making their way to a crossways, each prisoner was examined by the infamous Doctor Mengele, separated by age and skill level. Elie had been told by a veteran inmate to claim that his age was 18, and doing so, he was kept with his father, this being a great relief for his strained nerves. Then as their group marches on, a man in the crowd informs them that they are headed for the crematorium. Elie's heart races and his faith is struck. Does he really have faith anymore in a God who he thought was loving. Now his faith is challenged and perhaps even for a short time, challenged. I think I will have to read more to determine the final outcome, but I have a feeling that his faith will eventually return.

The first night was one that Elie Wiesel will never forget. He describes the smoke, the children's faces, the consuming flames, the nocturnal silence, and the moments which he describes a having "murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes." I too would have sleeping problems after having to endure such atrocities.

The next day they were ordered out of the barracks, stripped naked, marched to the barber where their heads were violently shaved, then marched to another barrack where they were randomly thrown prison garments. Those whose garments didn't fit traded with others as best they could. A event that strikes me as very moving is when Elie's dad suffers a colic attack and asks where the toilets are located, the German simply strikes him across the face. Elie realizes after his father crawls back to his position that he had not reacted, he had not retaliated against his fathers assailant. Had he changed that quickly? Now he had lost all former signs of aggression. He felt that he was becoming docile and submissive, for which he felt remorseful. After an endless session of waiting, Elie and his fellow inmates are marched out of the camp, taking a nice, slow-paced march toward the work camp, Auschwitz. Once they had arrived at the new camp, things began to start looking up. After a good night's sleep, the morale had greatly increased and their "veteran" inmates were not so brutal as their first encounters with others at the main gate. They were all given new clothing and then each one recieved a tattoo on their left forearm, signifiying their new names. Elie would be known as A-7713 from now on.

They now remained in Auschwitz for three weeks. Sleeping a lot in the morning in afternoon, life was fairly calm and laid back. Those who were not skilled workers only waited. Finally, when their numbers had dwindled down to around 100, their turn came and the block secretary announced that they would be leaving "with the next transport." At 10 o'clock, the SS guards rounded them up and marched them through a few German villages until they finally arrived at Buna, a new camp. As the last pasted into the camp, the "iron gate closed behind [them]."

Chapter 2

As Chapter 1 left off with the departure of Elie, his family, and the other members of the cattle car from the Sighet ghetto, Chapter 2 picks up there, describing the uncomfortable and unbearable conditions inside the crowded train car. For two days the train sped along, showing no signs of when or where they were heading. Those who were lucky enough to be close to a window could breathe some of the fresh air and stare pointlessly into the empty countryside. The other riders who were stuffed in the middle had to take turns rotating between sitting and standing. The heat and the lack of air became worse and worse as the days past. With my own love of my personal space, I can only imagine the agony and suffering that these people would have been brutally forced to endure for multiple days. Adding to their suffering was the want of food and water. Dehydration would have been a major concern with the stifling heat and the short supply of water to be shared amongst the eighty riders.

The atmosphere inside the train was quite tense, with the fear and stress increasing with every empty hour spent pondering each one's own fate. The separation of Mrs. Schachter from her husband and two older sons had already driven her mad after a few short days without them. Her screams, hysteria, and hallucinations greatly added to the sealed train car's stress level. The pressure was building inside, but with the doors nailed shut and the threat of execution for all as a result of one member's escape, the increasing tension had nowhere to overflow and the space seemed only to become smaller. The irritated and overwhelmed inhabitants of the car finally saw fit to silence the screaming Mrs. Schachter. A couple men bound her and gagged her, leaving only her young son to comfort her in a corner of their own.

Upon arriving at an unknown station, one window-looker read a sign to the other, "Auschwitz," but no one had heard of the place. Two men were sent to retrieve water for the others and while fetching the needed hydration, they bought some information from a guard with a gold watch they had. The guard told them that this was their final destination, Auschwitz, a labor camp. Supposedly the conditions were good; families were not to be separated, the young and healthy were to work in the factories, while the old and the sickly were to work in the fields. This news was taken as a blessing from God, morale sored, and a feeling of optimism began to return to the exhausted arrivals. They were not unloaded but waited throughout the day, anticipating at any time their freedom from the confines of the cattle car to arrive, but it did not come.

At 11 o'clock, the train slowly began to move again and it came to rest about a 1/2 hour later. Once again Mrs. Schachter began to scream, shouting, "Jews, look! Look at the fire! Look at the flames!" (Wiesel 28) Only this time, there really were flames and the stench of burning flesh filled every nose. They had arrived, arrived in Birkenau.

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.