Night

“Afterward, life returned to normal. The London radio, which we listened to every evening, gave us heartening news: the daily bombardment of Germany; Stalingrad; preparation for the second front. And we, the Jews of Sighet, were waiting for better days, which would not be long in coming now.”

A major theme in Wiesel’s memoir is the Jews’ reluctance to recognize the danger of Nazi persecution growing ever closer around them. Eliezer’s father lacks the courage and will to emigrate to Palestine earlier in the war, while it is still possible to do so. In this quotation, Eliezer describes the complacency of the Jewish community after foreign Jews are summarily rounded up and deported from Sighet.

Until they experience the horrors of deportation and internment at Auschwitz and Birkenau first-hand, the Jews of Eliezer’s town assume that they will escape the worst, even as the Nazis storm into Budapest and impose sanctions on its Jewish community. 

“We drank, we ate, we sang. The Bible bade us rejoice during the seven days of the [Passover] feast, to be happy. But our hearts were not in it. Our hearts had been beating more rapidly for some days. We wished the feast were over, so that we should not have to play this comedy any longer.

“On the seventh day of Passover the curtain rose. The Germans arrested the leaders of the Jewish community […] From that moment, everything happened very quickly. The race toward death had begun.”

Within a few days of the Fascists assuming power in the Hungarian capital, German troops are in the streets of Sighet. The Jews’ first impressions of the Germans are reassuring; the occupiers treat the residents politely, if distantly, and some are even charming. Eliezer observes that the optimists among his compatriots seize on this show of benevolence to dismiss any reservations about the honorable intentions of the Nazis. The sword hangs above their heads, yet they continue to smile, oblivious to their fate, which has already been sealed. Their illusion is shattered when the Germans arrest the leaders of the community on the last day of Passover, 1944. Immediately thereafter, the Nazis impose sanctions on the Jews, forcing them to wear the yellow Star of David, surrender all valuables, and restrict their movements.

“‘I have terrible news,’ he said at last. ‘Deportation.’

“The ghetto was to be completely wiped out. We were to leave, street by street, starting the following day.” 

As part of these sanctions, the Jews of Sighet are forced into two small ghettoes, fenced off from the surrounding neighborhoods by barbed wire. Even in the ghettoes, the residents cling to their optimism that things will soon improve. They see their confinement as a blessing, an opportunity to live in a self-contained, self-governing Jewish republic, no longer subject to the hateful glares of hostile faces. This illusion of security is shattered when the Nazis order the ghettoes to be destroyed and all the Jews deported.

“There was joy—yes, joy […] They began their journey without a backward glance at the abandoned streets, the dead, empty houses, the gardens, the tombstones […] On everyone’s back was a pack. In everyone’s eyes was suffering drowned in tears.”

After being brutally evicted from their houses by the Hungarian police, the Jews are forced to assemble in the midday heat of the square, where a roll-call is taken multiple times. Children cry for water but are forbidden from breaking the ranks. Finally, the order is given to leave, and a slow procession begins, recalling the exile of the captive Hebrews from Jerusalem in the Old Testament. Ironically, Eliezer notes, the deportees feel joy—joy, perhaps, in that nothing could be worse than sitting among their possessions, in the middle of the road beneath a blazing sun. It is an unreal and pathetic scene; the streets are littered with personal objects the residents had thought of taking but then abandoned. As Eliezer says, those once important possessions—banknotes, portfolios, briefcases, suitcases, etc., symbolizing individual human identities and lifetimes of accomplishments—were now worthless.

“Night. No one prayed, so that the night would pass quickly. The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.”

The night before Eliezer and his family are to be deported from the ghetto is their last night of relative safety and security. Eliezer’s image of the night stars and the extinguishing of the fire that supports them conveys the hope, fearful anxiety, and uncertainty that troubles him on the eve of the exile from Sighet.

“We were caught in a trap, right up to our necks. The doors were nailed up; the way back was finally cut off. The world was a cattle wagon hermetically sealed.”

Upon arriving at Kaschau, a town on the Czech border, a German officer boards the train of Jewish deportees and announces that the passengers are now under the authority of the German army. Eliezer realizes that they will no longer remain in Hungary. The officer orders the deportees to surrender any remaining gold, silver, or watches that they possess. Anyone who is found later to have disobeyed will be shot, and if anyone tries to escape the car, all will be shot.

Eliezer realizes that the deportees are now subject to the full brutality of the Nazis, and that all ties with the outer world and their previous home life have been definitively severed.

“‘Fire! Fire!’

“Her little boy was crying, hanging onto her skirt, trying to take hold of her hands. ‘It’s all right, Mummy! There’s nothing there…’ This shook me even more than his mother’s screams had done.

“Some women tried to calm her. ‘You’ll find your husband and your sons again […] in a few days […] She continued to scream, breathless, her voice broken by sobs. ‘Jews, listen to me! I can see a fire! There are huge flames! It is a furnace!’

“It was as though she were possessed by an evil spirit which spoke from the depths of her being.”

On the train, Madame Schächter, a 50-year old mother of three, has a mental breakdown. She and her youngest son have been separated from her husband and two older sons, who were deported on the first transport. Unnerved by this, she imagines she sees a terrifying fire outside the window of the cattle car at night. The other deportees initially try to comfort her, but her constant screams threaten the very sanity of the other passengers and they bind and gag her. Breaking free from her bonds, she begins screaming again, waking up the deportees, who had just begun to doze off. Young men again bind her and strike her violently on the head to silence her, this time encouraged by the other passengers.

The scene is important in two respects. Madame Schächter foresees the horrors awaiting the Jews at the concentration camp; her hallucinations are the product of madness but prophetic of the unspeakable fate and fiery crematoria toward which the train’s occupants are traveling. At the same time, the brutality and barbarous treatment the Jews will receive and perpetrate upon each other at the camp is foreshadowed in their violent reaction to her on the train. Packed into a cattle car like animals, the process of their dehumanization begins. The social fabric of civility and kindness begins to fray, replaced by cruelty and immoral behavior.

“Through the windows we could see barbed wire; we realized this must be the camp. We had forgotten the existence of Madame Schachter. Suddenly, we heard terrible screams: ‘Jews, look! Look through the window! Flames! Look!’

“And as the train stopped, we saw this time that flames were gushing out of a tall chimney into the black sky.”

Upon arriving at Birkenau, the reception center for Auschwitz, the terrible flames that Madame Schächter sees in her hallucination become a reality. The train’s occupants see fire leaping into the night sky from a chimney of the crematorium. There is a horrible smell in the air, the odor of burning human flesh. Strange-looking characters dressed in striped shirts—Jewish prisoners at the camp—leap into the cattle car and begin beating the occupants, ordering them to leave the train. Eliezer notices that Madame Schachter has become silent and indifferent, and the deportees are forced out of their car into a nightmarish scene. It is midnight.

“‘Men to the left! Women to the right!’

“Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight short, simple words. Yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother. I had not time to think, but already I felt the pressure of my father’s hand: we were alone. For a part of a second I glimpsed my mother and my sisters moving away to the right. I saw them disappear into the distance […] I did not know that in that place, at that moment, I was parting from my mother and Tzipora forever.” 

Immediately after leaving the train, the Jews are divided by gender. In a fraction of an instant, families are separated; many parents, children, and siblings will never see each other again. The significance of the event, the enormity of its impact, is only realized by Eliezer in hindsight; its suddenness leaves no time to think, only bewildered uncertainty as to what will come next.

The simplicity and indifference of the officer’s quietly-spoken command separating the men and women conveys something of what the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt called the “banality of evil” in her analysis of the trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. She means that, oftentimes, Nazi atrocities were not committed by fanatics or sociopaths, but by ordinary people simply doing their jobs, motivated by professional advancement, without sensitivity to the moral consequences of their actions.

“I heard murmurs around me.

“‘We’ve got to do something. We can’t let ourselves be killed. We can’t go like beasts to the slaughter. We’ve got to revolt […] Let the world learn of the existence of Auschwitz. Let everybody hear about it, while they can still escape…’

“But the older ones begged their children not to do anything foolish: ‘You must never lose faith, even when the sword hangs over your head. That’s the teaching of our sages…’

“The wind of revolt died down.”  

Leaving the train, the deportees are accosted and threatened by prisoners who tell them they will be burned in the crematoria of Auschwitz. The Jews from Sighet had never heard of the concentration camp and are shocked by the appearance and brutal language and behavior of the inmates. Some of the younger men, armed with knives, want to rush the SS guards in a risky attempt to escape. Their elders caution them to place their trust in God, rather than in violent resistance.

In this episode, Eliezer emphasizes the reluctance of the Jews to forcibly resist their captors, even though they seem to be facing imminent death. Though the young men’s bid for escape would be suicidal, they would prefer to die in the attempt, rather than passively accept the death that awaits them in the camp’s furnaces. Though Eliezer doesn’t offer an opinion on this choice, the sad irony of relying upon God to deliver the Jews from the horrors of Auschwitz becomes ever more poignant as his narrative proceeds and faith in a benevolent God crumbles. The episode underscores two opposing drives among the Jews: the will to resist the Nazis actively and heroically versus passive resignation, bolstered by the traditions of faith.

“I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it…

“‘Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible, even these crematories…’

“His voice was choking […] He was weeping. His body was shaken convulsively. Around us, everyone was weeping. Someone began to recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I do not know if it has ever happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have ever recited the prayer for the dead themselves.” 

The deportees are forced to march past ditches where the bodies of children and adult prisoners are being burned. It is a scene of incredible horror, one which permanently etches itself in Eliezer’s brain—surely a nightmare, until the terribly sad voice of his father awakens him again to the brutal reality of the spectacle. Faced with imminent, horrific death by fire, the Jews weep and begin to recite the Jewish prayer for the dead, consecrating themselves for their own death.

Eliezer decides to run to the electric fence and die there, rather than in the flames of the ditch, to which they think they are headed. At the last moment, a few steps from the pit, the prisoners are ordered to turn toward the barracks. In one of the most emotionally intense scenes in the book, the psychological trauma this nightmarish spectacle inflicts upon the deportees forces them to realize they are no more than animals meant for slaughter.

“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 nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.” 

Immediately following this scene, Eliezer reflects on its life-changing significance for him. Two steps from the burning pit, the men finally are ordered to turn and march to a barracks. Interrupting his description of the evening’s events, Eliezer insists, in incantatory language, that he will never forget this night that has murdered his childhood and his God, and turned his entire life into one long night. His language, repeating the phrase “Never shall I forget” seven times, functions as an oath—a refusal to forget the horror and the nameless victims of Auschwitz, the atrocity of the Nazis who perpetrated these horrors, and his identity as a survivor of the Holocaust that was forced upon him by his experience.

“I had ceased to feel fear. And then I was overcome by an inhuman weariness.

“Those absent no longer touched even the surface of our memories. We still spoke of them […] but we had little concern for their fate. We were incapable of thinking of anything at all. Our senses were blunted […] The instincts of self-preservation, of self-defense, of pride, had all deserted us.”

As his first night in Birkenau comes to an end, Eliezer is a changed human being. The Nazi tactics of psychological and physical terrorism achieve their aim of dehumanizing the Jewish deportees, and Eliezer feels himself descend into an exhaustion that is simultaneously physical, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual. Terrorized, traumatized and beaten, the prisoners are unable to process cognitively what has happened to them. Their pride has been destroyed and their instincts for self-preservation and self-defense desert them. Their autonomy as human beings is stripped away as they are transformed from individuals into uniformed prisoners, shorn like sheep by the barbers. This systematic assault upon individual human identity destroys the reference points that sustain that identity socially and morally. Treated like animals, while being forced to recognize that they have no power to resist this treatment, the deportees are stunned and barely able to recognize themselves any longer.

“I did not move. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, before my very eyes, and I had not flickered an eyelid […] Yesterday, I should have sunk my nails into the criminal’s flesh. Had I changed so much, then? So quickly?” 

In this quotation, Eliezer realizes with shock and dismay how cowed he has become within one day of arriving at Birkenau. Politely asking where the bathroom is, Eliezer’s father is savagely struck by the barracks overseer. Eliezer says and does nothing, internalizing his anger and remorse.

“Comrades, you’re in the concentration camp of Auschwitz. There’s a long road of suffering ahead of you […] So now, muster your strength, and don’t lose heart. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life. Above all else, have faith […] let there be comradeship among you. We are all brothers, and we are all suffering the same fate […] Help one another. It is the only way to survive.” 

Assigned to a barracks at Auschwitz, Eliezer is somewhat reassured to hear “the first human words” since he and the other Jews were deported from Sighet. The Kapo, or head prisoner who addresses the new inmates, is a young Pole. He stresses the importance of the prisoners treating each other humanely, as comrades, in order to survive the ordeal ahead. He assures them that all will live to see their freedom.

While the Kapo suggests to the anxious prisoners that civility and brotherly behavior will help them endure the suffering of camp life, his encouraging words are ironic in the context of the deportees’ fate. Many, if not most, will die, and they will become increasingly brutal, even killing each other, as a response to the deplorable and dehumanizing treatment they receive from the Nazis.

“In the evening, lying on our beds, we would try to sing some of the Hasidic melodies […] Some talked of God, of his mysterious ways, of the sins of the Jewish people, and of their future deliverance. But I had ceased to pray. How I sympathized with Job! I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.” 

Eliezer describes how the prisoners, recently arrived at Auschwitz, seek consolation in their faith and try to rationalize the circumstances of their oppression by appealing to Jewish theology. Eliezer’s identity as a Jew is still an important source of strength, and he identifies with Job, the patriarch in the Old Testament who was tested by God with many afflictions. But Eliezer no longer prays to a God whose mercy and goodness is doubtful. He feels estranged from the Creator, who remains silent while his people are brutally treated and victimized by the Nazis. 

“The head of our tent was a German. An assassin’s face, fleshy lips, hands like a wolf’s paws. He was so fat he could hardly move. Like the leader of the camp, he loved children. As soon as we arrived, he had brought them bread, soup, and margarine. (Actually, this was not disinterested affection: there was a considerable traffic among homosexuals here, I learned later.)”

In this quotation, Eliezer describes the supervisor of his sleeping quarters at Buna, the work camp to which he and his father have been transferred. His description of the Kapo suggests the violence, ugliness and depravity of concentration camp life. Like a predatory animal, grotesque in appearance, the Kapo slyly exploits the youngest and most vulnerable male prisoners for sexual satisfaction.

“Stretched out by the cauldron, he was now trying to raise himself up to the edge. Either from weakness or fear he stayed there, trying, no doubt, to muster up the last of his strength. At last he succeeded in hoisting himself onto the edge of the pot. For a moment, he seemed to be looking at himself, seeking his ghostlike reflection in the soup. Then, for no apparent reason, he let out a terrible cry, a rattle such as I had never heard before, and, his mouth open, thrust his head toward the still steaming liquid. We jumped at the explosion. Falling back onto the ground, his face stained with soup, the man writhed for a few seconds at the foot of the cauldron, then he moved no more.”

In one of the most striking images of Wiesel’s memoir, an inmate risks his life to steal a mouthful of soup during an air raid on Buna. The starving prisoners, ordered to remain inside during the raid, hungrily eye two cauldrons of soup that are left outside near the kitchen. Terror prevents them from daring to approach the unguarded food, and they tremble with fear and envy when they see one man, crawling like a worm, toward the cauldrons. It is a supreme effort, requiring all the strength he can muster, and a suicidal one. The episode emphasizes that the severely-malnourished prisoners, stripped of dignity and humanity, are driven solely by the desire to eat and an animal-like will to survive.

“But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive…

“For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes […] Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘Where is God now?’

“And I heard a voice within me answer him: ‘Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows…’

“That night the soup tasted of corpses.”

Chapter 4 concludes with the execution of two adults and a young boy implicated in the bombing of the electrical power station at Buna. The boy is a pipel, a beautiful adolescent, and his lingering death on the gallows makes a powerful impression on the other Jewish prisoners. Beaten down, malnourished, and crushed in spirit, they have lost virtually every shred of sympathy for the suffering of other prisoners and focus narrowly on their own individual survival. However, the spectacle of the angel-like boy dying slowly seems an image of pure evil and reawakens many of the prisoners to the unearthly horror of their experience. For Eliezer, it is an image of the death of God himself, murdered by the Nazis.

“This day I had ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone—terribly alone in a world without God and without man. Without love or mercy. I had ceased to be anything but ashes, yet I felt myself to be stronger than the Almighty, to whom my life had been tied for so long.”

Eliezer finds he is unable to worship God during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, believing God has abandoned his people to the Nazi horror. Eliezer is both devastated and hardened by his experience. He feels stronger than God since he has awoken from the illusion that the world rests upon the love and mercy of a benevolent deity. His loss of faith invests him with moral outrage and a new identity: that of God’s accuser.  

“How we breathed again, now! My father had brought me a present—half a ration of bread obtained in exchange for a piece of rubber, found at the warehouse, which would do to sole a shoe.”

Eliezer and his father are greatly relieved to learn that each has evaded the selection, in which weak prisoners are chosen to be executed. Interspersed through the narrative of Night are brief scenes demonstrating the affectionate devotion of father and son as they support each other during their imprisonment. The quotation also touches upon the economic system of barter used by the prisoners to obtain their day-to-day needs in the concentration camps.

“‘A few more yards,’ I thought. ‘A few more yards, and that will be the end. I shall fall. A spurt of red flame. A shot.’ Death wrapped itself around me till I was stifled. It stuck to me. I felt that I could touch it. The idea of dying, of no longer being, began to fascinate me. Not to exist any longer […]To break the ranks, to let oneself slide to the edge of the road… My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running at my side, out of breath, at the end of his strength, at his wit’s end […] What would he do without me? I was his only support.”

Evacuated from Buna, the prisoners are forced to march, often running, for over forty miles in the frigid night. SS guards shoot the stragglers. The ordeal is almost unimaginably exhausting and Eliezer begins to fantasize about death as a quick release from his suffering. Only his sense of obligation to his father prevents him from choosing suicide by falling by the side of the road. The episode highlights the crucial importance of Eliezer and his father’s relationship in their struggle to survive the extreme conditions to which they are subjected by the Nazis.

“It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek’s soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings—his lost hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again.”

One of the most powerful and poignant images in Night, Juliek’s violin solo in the dark shed at Gleiwitz among dead and the dying prisoners epitomizes the indestructible nature of the human spirit. Juliek pours his entire life and soul into his playing, which is both a beautiful lamentation of profound loss, and an act of defiance against the Nazis’ brutal dehumanization of the Jews. In the morning, he is dead and his violin shattered into fragments, trampled by the other occupants of the shed.