Night pages 98-115

The Jews, crammed into the cattle cars, are "pressed tightly against one another, in an effort to resist the cold, our heads empty and heavy, our brains a whirlwind of decaying memories. Our minds numb with indifference" (p. 98). These Jewish prisoners have been forced to endure inhumane treatment that has wreaked physical and emotional havoc upon them. They now feel indifferent to all that befalls them, most no longer even caring about their families, those they used to care about more than all else. Eliezer soon remembers his father, and turns to see him huddled with a blanket, indistinguishable between life and death. Eliezer is overwhelmed with the sensation that he is alone, that there is no longer a reason to live. The train stops by an empty field and the SS walk past the cars, shouting for the Jews to throw out their dead. "The living were glad. They would have more room...The volunteers undressed him and eagerly shared his garments" (p. 99). Again this Darwinian survival of the fittest emerges. These prisoners care only for themselves, eagerly throwing out their dead and dying countrymen in order to obtain more space and a few meager garments to better cover themselves. Two of the volunteers attempt to throw Eliezer's father into the field. Eliezer hits his father, desperately attempting to wake him up. His father wakes up, faintly breathing and eyes glassy; the "gravediggers" move on.

They receive no food, and so are forced to live on snow; "we remained lying on the floor for days and nights, one on top of the other, never uttering a word. We were nothing but frozen bodies. Our eyes closed, we merely waited for the next stop, to unload our dead" (p. 100). They no longer possess the energy or willpower to do anything but eat snow and fall there. They still reveal a measure of indifference in this. Days and nights of travel follow; they would occasionally pass through German towns; "one day when we had come to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon . There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. The worker watched the spectacle with great violence" (p. 100). Once again these Germans treat the Jews as animals, and set them to fighting against one another over a scrap of bread. This plays on the appearance throughout history of a basic human desire for the witness of violence, for example in the Roman amphitheates in which gladiators were forced to fight each other and wild animals for the pleasure of the crowd. Eliezer then notes a similar incident years later in which a ship's passengers throw coins to the natives to watch their struggle over the meager amount.

In the cattle car, Eliezer notes as an old man steals away a crust of the bread. He crawls away to a corner, where he is assaulted by a younger man. The older man recognizes his assailant and cries, "Meir, my little Meir! Don't you recognize me...You're killing your father...I have bread...for you too...for you too" (p. 101). The son kills his father, then searches him and takes his bread. Two men have been watching this, and they take the opportunity to kill Meir. This is another example of human indifference and of men fighting only for their own survival; they have been so morphed that they are willing to kill their own family for a meager scrap of bread.

Eleizer then notes the character of Meir Katz, a friend of his father's. On the third night of their journey, Eliezer woke up to a man attempting to strangle him, with no apparent reason. His father manages to call Meir, who pulls off the aggressor. But this is Meir's last real act. He loses strength following his son's death in the first selection. When the train stops at Buchenwald, Meir stays on it, along with the dead, to await his reunion with his son. This book gives witness to apathy from the sons, who often abandon or even assault their fathers to strengthen themselves, but their fathers always reveal powerful love, even as they are abandoned and assaulted; it is almost as if the younger generation is attempting to rid themselves of the perceived over-sentimental generation of their fathers.


Eliezer's father steadily grows weaker. Eliezer begins to argue with his father, attempting to reason with him to go on living. However, "I knew that I was no longer arguing with him but with Death itself, with Death and that he already had chosen" (p. 105). This experience has devastated his father, leaving him weak in body and in will. He at least has reached the end of his journey; it is almost inevitable that he soon must die. Eliezer feels as if he is arguing against death as to why death must occur, why people give up their struggle to survive even though they have given so much of themselves to their cause.

When Eliezer awakens, it is daylight, and he is immediately aware that his father is not with him. He searches for hours before finding him, and when he does his father beseeches Eliezer for the coffee that is being poured. As he hands his father the coffee, "I shall never forget the gratitude that shone in his eyes when he swallowed this beverage. The gratitude of a wounded animal. With these few mouthfuls of hot water, I had probably given him more satisfaction than during my entire childhood"(p. 107). This sickness has so weakened his father that he is more grateful for a few swallows of a hot beverage than he is of his son's entire childhood. The phrasing "I shall never forget" also suggests that the father will soon die.

Eliezer's father suffers terribly from dysentery. He quickly tells Eliezer everything that he believes Eliezer must hear before he dies. A few days later he cries that the other prisoners have been beating him and stealing his food. He beseeches Eliezer for water, and though Eliezer knows that water is as poison for one with dysentery, he cannot refuse his dying father. The survival of the fittest concept is again brought up as the Blockalteste advises Eliezer, "Don't forget that you re in a concentration camp. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone" (p. 110). Eliezer is advised to take his father's ration, and for a moment he is tempted to do so, but quickly realizes what he is doing as so grows ashamed of himself. Eliezer's father again begs him for water in the presence of an SS officer, and for this he is violently beaten with a club. His father dies the next day, thrown into the crematoria.

Eliezer remains in Buchenwald until April 11. Following his father's death, nothing really matters to him any more. The Germans begin to take out the Jews in blocks and to shoot them. The SS finally begins to herd Eleizer's block to be shot. At that time, however, the resistance movement decides to act, and Eleizer and his block run and hide. Following the German retreat, they only see fit to feed themselves. Even as this happens, Eleizer marvels that all only think of feeding themselves, and not of revenge. A few days later Eleizer comes down with some form of food poisoning. As he recovers he look at himself in the mirror; "From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me" (p. 115). This experience has so changed Eliezer that he no longer recognizes himself; he has been through inhumane treatment, the separation from his mother and sister, and finally the death of his father. He is now almost the equivalent of a corpse, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, as he has lost his touch with God.

NIght pages 85-97

The Jews are forced to march through the icy wind and snow towards their new camp, Gleiwitz. The SS force them to increase their pace, referring to the "inferior" Jews as filthy dogs, a utilization of the process of dehumanization. The SS "had orders to shoot anyone who could not sustain the pace. Their fingers on the triggers, they did not deprive themselves of the pleasure" (p. 85). The Germans considered it service to their country, an honor, to eradicate the Jewish population. Eliezer is hampered by his foot, and bitterly contemplates the existence of two separate parts of himself: his body and him. Men collapse in the snow around him, followed by the whistle of bullets. A Polish boy, Zalman, contracts severe stomach cramps, and falls over in the snow; Eliezer briefly recalls the fact that no gunshot was heard; the fall of Zalman went unnoticed by the SS; the thousands of prisoners behind him must have trampled him to death. As Eliezer quickly forgets the fate of Zalman, "death enveloped me, it suffocated me. It stuck to me like glue. I felt I could touch it. The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me" (p. 86). Eliezer here is surrounded by the dead and the dying, by the retort of German guns and the dirty snow punctuated by spots of crimson surrounding the stricken bodies of fallen men. He fells almost as one with death, a part of death; "it stuck to me like glue". His father's presence is the only factor that restrains him from allowing himself to die by the side of the road. As Eliezer thinks of his options, he seems to leave his body, not noticing the pain in his foot or the very fact that he is running. He "returns" to his body and notes, "we were the masters of nature, the masters of the world. We had transcended everything---death, fatigue, our own natural needs. We were stronger than the cold and hunger, stronger than the guns and the desire to die, doomed and rootless, nothing but numbers, we were the only men on earth"(p. 87). As they are forced to endure these perilous conditions, Eliezer at least considers them stronger than anyone else on earth. The Kommandant that already they have covered twenty kilometers, attempting to raise the spirits of the prisoners. After another hour of marching, they are finally allowed to halt.

The men sink to the snow, exhausted by the long march. Eliezer's father urges him to enter a rickety shed, really a brick factory with no roof. Eliezer sinks to the snow-covered ground and falls asleep. He is awakened by his father. His father "was completely twisted, shriveled up into himself. His eyes were glazed over, his lips parched, decayed. Everything about him expressed total exhaustion" (p. 88). The lifestyle of those in the concentration camps often involved unprecedented physical damage, often making the prisoners appear to be living skeletons. Eliezer and his father watch out for each other, making sure that the other will not fall into eternal sleep. Rabbi Eliahu appears from the shed. He is frantically searching for his son, separated in the march, whom Eliezer recalls is Zalman. Upon the Rabbi's departure, Eliezer realizes that Zalmar had seen his father and that he had run away from his father, as if in the hopes of freeing himself of a burden. As this thought crosses his mind, Eliezer finds himself praying, "Oh God, master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu's son has done" (p. 91). In this dire moment of panic, of wondering if he himself will abandon his father, Eliezer reopens his connection with God, though he is still no completely convinced in the justice of God. Night falls and the prisoners are ordered to reform into ranks. As Eliezer notes, "the dead remained in the yard, under the snow without even a marker, like fallen guards...Sons abandoned the remains of their fathers without a tear" (p. 92). This horrific experience of the camp has imposed a Darwinian survival of the fittest upon the prisoners; they have begun to care only for their own survival, leaving their fellow Jews and even their fathers without protest or even the shedding of a single tear. The SS encourage the Jews on, and even though they have caused them great suffering, the Jews still find the words encouraging. It stops snowing, and they finally arrive at the barbed wire of Gleiwitzz.

The Kapos quickly settle them into their barracks. Their is a rolling tide of bodies, and in the chaos Eliezer and his father are thrown to the ground. Eliezer ends up on top of Juliek, a violinst in the Buna orchestra. Juliek has somehow managed to smuggle a violin into the camp. After freeing himself, Eliezer hears "a violin in a dark barrack where the dead were piled on top of the living" (p. 94). As Eliezer listens, he feels as if "Juliek's soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again" (p. 95). While some are said to see their life flash before their eyes, Juliek manages to convey his life story into the music of Beethoven, a farewll of sorts to an audience of the dead and the dying. The next morning Eliezer sees Juliek dead, his violin trampled into the ground. The prisoners stay at Gleiwitz for three days without food and water. They are then forced through another selection, in which Eliezer's father is selected, but Eliezer raises a riot and in the confusion Eliezer and his father move to the side of those who have not been selected. The chapter ends as he prisoners are forced into cattle cars, one hundred to a car, and Eliezer can only comment on how skinny they are.

Night pages 66-84

The summer comes to an end; the Jewish year is almost over. The eve of Rosh Hashanah, the last day of the Jewish year, sees an increase in the tension and agitation of the Jewish prisoners. Following the evening meal, thousands of Jews gathered in silence. The prisoners begin to pray to the Lord. The faith of the narrator, however, is shattered; he wonders "Why, but why should I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because He kept six crematoria working night and day, including Sabbath and the Holy Days?" (p. 67). The narrator still believes in God, but he sincerely doubts the justice of Him. The narrator does not understand why God allows His chosen people to burn in German furnaces. The narrator remembers back, to when "in days gone by, Rosh Hashanah had dominated my life. I knew that my sins grieved the Almighty and so I pleaded for forgiveness. In those days, I fully believed that the salvation of the world depended on every one of my deeds, on every one of my prayers" (p. 68). In those bygone days, the narrator remembers somewhat wistfully and slightly cynically his unconditional conviction that the world depended upon his prayers; nows he is bitterly convinced that the Lord cares not for the fate of His people. The narrator runs to look for his father. Through all this despair and prayer for deliverance the narrator and father come to understand each other better than ever. The narrator glances into his father's face, "trying to glimpse a smile or something like it on his stricken face. But there was nothing. Not a shadow of an expression. Defeat" (69). The narrator looks to his father for comfort, for some reassurance that everything will end well, but his father has accepted their doomed position. Upon the arrival of Yom Kippur, the question of whether or not to fast is heavily debated. The narrator has already accepted that he will not fast; he no longer chooses to accept God;s silence in their suffering. He notes that he feels a great void opening within himself; this void is a spiritual obstacle barring him from his relationship with God. The narrator then ironically notes that the SS gave the Jews a "beautiful present" for the new year. This "present" is the gift of selection; those selected, who are noted for their frailty, will be thrown into the crematoria. The veterans needle the newcomers, telling them the harshness and consistency of past selections to prove the inferiority and softness of the newcomers. The narrator has been moved to a construction block, separate from his father. He is worried about his father, terrified that his father will be selected. They are advised to run about, to make them appear healthier and stronger, to add more color to their pale bodies. The prisoners are made to run past three SS officers along with Dr. Mengele. Those who go unmentioned, including the narrator, rejoice in the fact that they will live to see another day; however, "those whose numbers had been noted were standing apart, abandoned by the world. Some were silently weeping" (p. 72).

The SS officers leave, and officer of the narrator's block
wearily states that no one had been selected, though this is obviously untrue as "a poor emaciated Jew questioned
him anxiously, his voice trembling:
'But...sir. They did write me down!' At that, the Blockalteste vented his anger. What! Someone refused to take his word?" (p. 73). The narrator cares not for this exchange; he rushes to the block where his father resides, terrified that his father might have been selected. His father meets him with the good news of his passing and a present of a half ration of bread. A few days pass, and then the numbers of the unfortunate who have been selected are read out. It is learned that the narrator's father is one of the selected; he attempts to reassure the narrator, saying that there is to be a secondary inspection which he will surely pass, but he betrays his misgivings as he attempts to give his son a knife and a spoon, all that he has that might as yet be useful to the narrator. The narrator walks around meaninglessly all day. He notes that "I myself didn't know whether I wanted the day to go by quickly or not. I was afraid of finding myself alone that evening. How good it would be to die right here!" (p. 75-76). The narrator realizes that without his father, he would be alone in this camp; he feels that it would be better to die on the spot than to live under such condition. He rushes back to the camp; "were there still miracles on this earth? He was alive. He had passed the second selection. He had still proved his usefulness...I gave him back his knife and spoon" (p. 76). Several Jews lose their faith in the face of the selection; Akiba Drumer and a rabbi from a small town in Poland both begin to question whether God has abandoned them. He asks that they pray the Kaddish for him after he is killed; "there followed terrible days. We received more blows than food. The work was crushing. And three days after he left, we forgot to say Kaddish" (p. 77). As the harsh conditions drain the vitality of the Jews, so it drains their faith in the justice and love of God. The foot of the narrator fills with pus, and he is kept in the infirmary. Another man warns him "don't rejoice too soon, son. Here too there is selection. In fact, more often than outside. Germany has no need of sick Jews" (p. 78). Germany exploited the Jews for their labor; once they were too unhealthy to provide adequate labor, they were hastily disposed of to limit "unnecessary" food consumption.

The narrator's doctor comes to inform him of the upcoming operation on his foot. Following the operation, the narrator is terrified that his foot has been amputated. He is informed by the doctor that he will be fine, he simply needs two weeks of bed rest. Two days after his operation, rumors begin to spread that the Russian Red Army was advancing on Buna. The narrator is accustomed to such rumors, but this particular rumor appears to be well founded as they have been able to hear cannons in the distance for the last few nights. The narrator's neighbor in the infirmary gloomily reports that Hitler will annihilate the Jews before "the clock strikes twelve". When pressed for a reason why his viewpoint is such, he wearily replies, "I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all of his promises, to the Jewish people" (p. 81). The news comes that very afternoon that the camp will be evacuated. The Jews would be sent to the deepest parts of Germany. A doctor informs them that all those in the infirmary will not be evacuated. Those in the infirmary wearily prophesy that those in the infirmary will either be thrown in the furnaces or the whole camp will be blown up with mines. The narrator searches out his father to ascertain whether he should stay in the infirmary or evacuate with the others. His father hesitates, then tells hi to evacuate so as to not be separated. The narrator interjects a few years to the future when he notes that it was discovered that those in the infirmary were left alone and liberated by the Russians. The narrator returns to his block and is told to sleep, to gather strength for the coming journey. He sadly notes that it reminded him of his mother. The next morning, the block is cleaned throughout. When pressed, the reason for this seemingly meaningless task is that "For the liberating army...Let them know that here lived men and not pigs" (p. 84). THe bell rings, a funeral tone, and the blocks begin to depart from the camp.

Night pages 47-65

The camp that the narrator and the other unskilled laborers enter at first appears empty and dead; only a few "well-dressed" inmates could be seen wandering the blocks. The head of the camp is a stocky man, and he gives an impression of kindness. He took an interest in the younger boys and gave orders for food to be brought for them. Their tent leader, as the narrator describes him, has "an assassin's face, fleshy lips, hands resembling a wolf's paws" (p. 48). To the narrator, all Germans are now enemies; they are the animals who forced himself and his father away from everything that he loved; his mother, his sisters, and his home foremost among these. The newest Jews are checked by three doctors to ascertain their state of health and whether
or not they had gold fillings and such. They are then assigned to various Kommandos; the narrator and his father are assigned to the orchestra's block. It is explained to them that they will work in a warehouse of electrical materials. The narrator is sent to the dentist to have
his gold crown removed, but he pretends that he is ill; a few days after this the dentist is thrown in prison for keeping gold fillings from other prisoners for his own personal gain.

In the warehouse the narrator often works next to an Aryan Frenchwoman. One day the narrator happens to cross Idek, the Kapo, who is venting his fury; "he threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with even more violent blows, until I was covered in blood" (p. 53). The Frenchwoman helps him to dress his wounds, speaking soothingly to him in German,
which previously he had believed that she did not understand. Many years later, as the story skips to that point, the narrator again meets this woman, and discovers that in fact she was a Jew, not an Aryan. Another time Idek against grows furious and begins to beat the narrator's father with an iron bar; the narrator does nothing to help his father, and grows ashamed of himself and of his father as of how the life in the concentration camp has changed them. The foreman, Franek, attempts to bargain with the narrator for his gold crown, but the narrator refuses. Franek begins to torment the narrator's father until the narrator is forced to give up his gold crown, even paying Franek for said "service" with his own ration. The narrator mistakenly observes Idek having sexual relations with a young woman, and for it he is brutally whipped.

On a certain Sunday, the narrator's father along with half of the group is working while the other half, including the narrator, took the opportunity to rest. Suddenly an alarm goes off; two cauldrons full of steaming soup were left untended, and hundreds of men sit around it; they are starving, but their fear outweighs their hunger. The door of Block 37 suddenly opens slightly, and a man appears, crawling towards the soup. "hundreds of eyes were watching his every move...All hearts trembled, but mostly with envy. He was the one who had dared" (p. 59). The men soon learn that the alarm has been sounded due to the bombing of the Buna factory. The narrator is anxious for the safety of his father, but he also was glad for the opportunity of the hated factory to burn. Following the raid, the man who dared to eat the soup is hung and all those who did not eat the soup are given a ration of the soup. Following the hanging, the narrator remarks that the soup tasted better than ever. The narrator here is following the basic mentality of better you than me. Soon after, however, comes a question of a hidden stash of weaponry, and three men are hung, including a beautiful little boy. Following this hanging, the narrator remarks that "that night, the soup tasted of corpses" (p. 65). To the narrator, this death of a seeming innocent, an angel among this world of brutal enemies, depresses him far more than the death of a strong man does.

Night pages 29-46

"The beloved objects that we had carried with us from place to place were now left behind in the wagon and, with them, finally, our illusions" (p. 29). These Jews, even while under this severe oppression and inhumane conditions in the cattle cars have clung to an illusion that this will soon end, and that they may soon return to their normal lives. This illusion finally ends for them as they are stripped of their beloved possessions. Every few yards there is an SS man with his machine gun trained on them. An SS wielding a club directs the men and the women to separate; "eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion...Yet that was the moment when I left my mother" (p. 29). The loss of his mother scars the narrator; it leads to his despair, anger, and eventual doubt of the justice of God. An inmate interrogates the narrator, insisting that the narrator and his father lie about their ages before he angrily disappears. Another inmate appears and curses at the newly arrived, asking why they have come to this camp; "you should have hanged yourselves rather than come here. Didn't you know what was in store for you in Auschwitz?" (p. 30). A few of the tough young men wish to assault the Germans, to make public the occurrences at Auschwitz, but their fathers earnestly attempt to dissuade them from this suicidal course of action. The newly arrive, including the narrator, are interviewed by a one Dr. Mengele. The narrator, his father, and a group of the others are pulled to the left, unknowing whether this path led to prison or the crematoria. They observe huge flames rising from a ditch ; "something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold; small children" (p. 32). The Germans, as influenced in the film viewed in class, wished to permanently eradicate the Jewish population, and to do this they chose to elimiate the next generation of Jews, involving the death of untold young children unfortunate enough to be Jewish at the time. For this crime the
narrator grows angry with the Lord; "the Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank him for?" (p. 33).

The barrack they are assigned to is long; "this is what the antechamber of hell must look like. So many crazed men, so much shouting, so much brutality" (p. 34). They are ordered to strip down to their belts and boots in order to attain prison garb. A few of the SS officers wander through, searching for strong, sturdy men to load the dead into the crematoria. They are shaved
to appear even less human, and then allowed to go out and search for old acquaintances. The next morning they are made to soak in disinfectant, then given prison garb. As the narrator notes, "In a few seconds, we had ceased to be men" (p. 37). This fits into the German plan of dehumanization, making their victims appear as animals to lessen the feeling of guilt at the murder of the Jews. The Jews are then given new barracks, and finally it is explained to them that they are in a concentration camp. They are split into specialists and unskilled workers. The narrator's father asks simply to go to the toilet, and for this "offense" he is slapped brutally.

The narrator's first impression of Auschwitz is that it is better than Birkenau. The group is made to sprint to their new barracks, where they are greeted by a young Pole. He tells them, "by driving out despair, you will move away from death. Hell does not last forever..." (p. 41). This young Pole already is likening their dawning experience at Auschwitz to be a Hell of sorts, and he warns them to join together, else they all fail separately. The narrator notes that these were the first human words. They are given numbers; the narrator becomes A-7713. The narrator's father, Wiesel, is then found by Stein, a distant relative. The narrator moves to comfort Stein by telling him that his wife and children are safe, a statement that is most likely untrue. A transport arrives from Antwerp, the region from whence Stein and his family came, and Stein goes for news of his family. The narrator never sees Stein again, as Stein realizes he has been lied to. Evenings the men pray in Hasidic melodies. The narrator remarks that "I concurred with Job! I was not denying his existence, but I doubted his absolute justice" (p. 45). The simple laborers, among them the narrator and his father, are sent in a transport to a new camp, Buna.

NIght pages 23-28

The cattle cars carrying the narrator and the other prisoners is cramped, with little room to sit. There was little air, and after two days of travel under these conditions, the heat and their thirst grew intolerable. The narrator remarks that "our principle was to economize, to save for tomorrow. Tomorrow could be worse yet" (p. 23). These Jews are living for the future, not caring or considering their hunger or desire in the present. The train stops in Kaschau, a small town on the Czechoslovakian border. A German officer, through the interpretations of a Hungarian lieutenant, informs them that those with valuable objects must hand them over or risk being shot. He informs them that "there are eighty of you in the car...If anyone goes missing, you will all be shot, like dogs" (p. 24). The Germans dehumanized the Jews, calling them dogs so that it felt more like killing mad, mangy animals than humans. The two officers leave, and "the doors were nailed, the way back irrevocably cut off. The world had become a hermetically sealed cattle car" (p. 24). http://www.gendercide.org/case_jews.html . The way back to Sighet is cut off with the closing of the doors; their whole world becomes the cattle cars and where they are traveling.

A certain woman among them, Mrs. Schachter, has been totally shattered by the mistaken deportation of her husband and two oldest with the first transport. She is in her fifties, traveling with her ten-year-old son. As the trip commences she quickly loses her mind. On their third night, as everyone else is sleeping, Mrs. Schachter screams "Fire! I see a fire! I see a fire!" (p. 24). The narrator as well as the other Jews are initially terrified, jumping up to press against the bars of the cattle car, but soon they calm themselves, murmuring that "She is mad, poor woman..." (p. 25). She continues to scream and to sob fitfully, as if she were possessed by a evil spirit. They attempt to reason with her, but all in vain. A few men force her to sit down, then bind and gag her. Somehow, however, she manages to free herself of her bonds. And once again, "the young men bound and gagged her. When they actually struck her, people shouted their approval" (p. 26). To ease their own fears and anxieties, the other members of the transport deal out their stress to the only person who appears to be the external focus and voice of their fears, Mrs. Schachter. Once more she screams out for the fire, but no one possesses the energy to beat her again. They soon pull into a station; "Someone near a window read to us: 'Auschwitz.' Nobody had ever heard that name" (p. 27). Their lack of knowledge concerning Auschwitz reveals the disinterest of those who chose to ignore the torture of the Germans as long as they themselves were protected, a disgusting practice of self-preservation that denies and pollutes the humane virtue of charity.

The train moved no more. Two men were given permission to find water; "when they came back, they told us that they had learned, in exchange for a gold watch, that this was the final destination" (p. 27). It surprised me that they still had a gold watch to barter, given that they were to hand all such items to the Germans under penalty of death, and reveals a certain boldness and bravado in the Jews and laxity from the Germans. They eat what is left of their food and prepare to sleep when again Mrs. Schachter cries out, "Look at the fire! Look at the flames! Over there!" (p. 27). The others quickly leap to observe the fire, but once again are disappointed as there is only darkness. The men in the transport call for a German officer to escort her to a hospital car, but he tells them to be patient. The train begins to move again once morning sets in, and a final time Mrs. Schachter cries, "Jews, look! Look at the fire! Look at the flames!" (28). These flames are later determine to be the flames of a crematoria (http://youtube.com/watch?v=WG1-k0Uu52w&feature=related). They have arrived at Birkenau.

Night pages 3-22

This first chapter commences with a description of Moishe the Beadle, a shtibl, poor and living in utter penury. At first glance this character appears insignificant, as he managed to perfect the art of "rendering himself insignificant, invisible" (p. 3). The narrator first enters the story following the description of Moishe; he is unnamed and speaks in first-person. The narrator is young, Jewish, and appears to be well educated. At the time of the story's occurrence he was "almost thirteen and deeply observant. By day I studied the Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple" (p. 3). Moishe the Beadle first becomes truly significant as he agrees to teach the narrator "the Zohar, the Kabbalistic works, the secrets of Jewish mysticism" (p. 5). The narrator's father, however, "wanted to drive the idea of studying Kabbalah from my mind" (p. 4). It was interesting to me that the narrator's desire to learn Kabbalah was so great that he was prepared to go against the will of his father, in effect performing an act against the Fourth Commandment.

Soon, however, all foreign Jews, including Moishe the Beadle, were expelled from Sighet, "crammed into cattle cars by the Hungarian police" (p. 6). http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/images/Jews%20being%20deported%20from%20France.jpg
Life for the Jews in Sighet gradually returns to its normal rate. After several months, however, Moishe returns. He explains to the narrator how the Jews "were forced to dig huge trenches...the Gestapo...shot their prisoners, who were forced to approach the trench one by one and offer their neck" (p. 6). What I perceived as particularly atrocious and horrendous behavior was Moishe's note that "infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for machine guns" (p. 6). The act of these human infants being treated as clay pigeons for target practice is incredibly cruel and heartless behavior. Following this horrendous affair, Moishe makes it his goal in life to warn the other Jews of this event to safeguard them against the Nazi assault.

Finally, in spring 1914, German soldiers begin their march into Sighet (http://youtube.com/watch?v=9yqRStyKYdo). The Jews are initially apprehensive, but they soon discover that the Germans appear to be friendly. As the narrator aptly remarks, "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" (p. 10). The Jews consider those who cry out against German oppression to be fools, though their own conviction in German pacifism eventually leads to their own foolhardy demise. The Germans issue edicts, including the prohibition of Jews from leaving their residences, up until the formation of the ghettos. The Jews were separated from the non-Jewish populace in Sighet into two ghettos. The Jews at first welcome the change, as they now lived solely amongst their "brothers". Soon, however, transports are called for, and the Jews are carted off. The narrator's family is the last to go.