A man walked in the house. He was about to hang up his coat when he heard his wife say, "No John! Don't do it!" There was a shot and the woman was dead. There was a police officer, a doctor, and a lawyer standing next to her. The woman's husband knew that the police officer did it. But how did the husband know?

AGENDA

New Teams

Discussion: End: The Metamorphosis Begin: Night

Author Introduction: Elie Wiesel

Historical Context

Summary

QHQ

1. You must change at least 50% of your team after each project is completed.

2. You may never be on a team with the same person more than twice.

3. You may never have a new team composed of more than 50% of any prior team.

“The Metamorphosis”

Themes and Characters

Alienation

Father-Son Antagonism

Escapism

Isolation

Self-sacrifice

Betrayal

Gregor Samsa

Grete Samsa

Mr. Samsa

Anna Samsa

The Chief Clerk

Three Lodgers

Charwoman

Potential Theoretical Approaches

New Criticism

Psychoanalytic Theory

Trauma Theory

Feminist Theory

Elie Wiesel

Known As: Wiesel, Eliezer; Wiezsel, Eli; Wiesel, Elie

American Writer ( 1928 - )

Born in Sighet, Romania (Then Transylvania)

He survived Birkenau and later Auschwitz and Buna and Buchenwald. His father, mother, and youngest sister did not. After the war, he was reunited with his two older sisters who also survived.

“The only way to stop the next holocaust… is to remember the last one.”

After his release from the war camps, he boarded a train for Belgium, which was ultimately diverted to France. He stayed there, completing his education at Sorbonne, University of Paris, from 1948-51.

Wiesel immigrated to the United States in 1956, and received his U.S. citizen in 1963

He eventually married Marion Erster Rose, and together they had one son, Shlomo Elisha.

Other novels by Wiesel about the Jewish experience during and after the Holocaust include Dawn and The Accident, which were later published together with Night in The Night Trilogy

The other two books in the trilogy have concentration camp survivors as their central characters.

Dawn concerns one survivor just after World War II who joins the Jewish underground efforts to form an independent Israeli state.

The Accident is about a man who discovers that his collision with an automobile was actually caused by his subconscious, guilt-ridden desire to commit suicide.

Some content courtesy of Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2013. From Literature Resource Center.

Night takes place in Romania, Poland, and

Germany during WW II (1939-1945)This war, sparked by German aggression, had its roots in the ending of an earlier war. With Germany’s defeat in WWI, the nation was left with a broken government. a severely limited military, shattered industry and transportation, and an economy sinking under the strain of war debts. Many Germans were humiliated and demoralized

The Nazi party (The National Socialist German Workers Party) came to power in late 1920s. The party aimed to restore German pride.

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler, the party leader,

spoke at rallies of Germany’s long military tradition, its national character, and its entitlement to greatness. To explain Germany’s fallen state, Hitler blamed the Jews and others he said were not “true” Germans.

Soon after he took control, he took away German Jew’s citizenship and right to work, barred Jews from public schools and gathering places, made it so they could no longer marry non-Jews, and he attacked their homes and businesses frequently.

He defined Jews as those with at least one Jewish grandparent, whether or not they observed their religion

The people he “targeted” were imprisoned in ghettos, where they were often starved or murdered

.

It is believed that eleven million people were killed by the Nazis. These included political opponents (particularly Communists), Slavs, gypsies, mentally and/or physically disabled, homosexuals, and other "undesirables.” An estimated six million men, women, and children were killed because they were Jews.

The Nazis forced concentration camp inmates to wear various symbols on their uniforms. The Jews wore a yellow "Jewish Star" (made of two inverted yellow triangles). The homosexual inmates wore an inverted "Pink Triangle.” (In some camps, such as Schirmeck, homosexuals wore blue bars on their uniforms.) This chart from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's archives depicts the various other groups and their respective colors; such as black for "A-socials" (including lesbians and feminists), purple for Jehovah's Witnesses, red for political prisoners, green for criminal prisoners, brown (maroon) for gypsies.

Night In the spring of 1944, the Nazis entered the

Transylvanian village of Sighet, Romania, until then a relatively safe and peaceful enclave in the middle of a war-torn continent. Arriving with orders to exterminate an estimated 600,000 Jews in six weeks or less, Adolf Eichmann, chief of the Gestapo's Jewish section, began making arrangements for a mass deportation program. Among those forced to leave their homes was fifteen-year-old Elie Wiesel, the only son of a grocer and his wife. A serious and devoted student of the Talmud and the mystical teachings of Hasidism and the Cabala, the young man had always assumed he would spend his entire life in Sighet, quietly contemplating the religious texts and helping out in the family's store from time to time. Instead, along with his father, mother, and three sisters, Wiesel was herded onto a train bound for Birkenau, the reception center for the infamous death camp Auschwitz.

Wiesel at age 15http://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/life/

Genre: Non-fiction; Holocaust

autobiography

Type of Work: Memoir

(narrative composed from

personal experience)

Time Period: 1941-1945 (during

WWII)

Setting: story begins in Sighet,

Transylvania (now part of

Romania) and follows Wiesel to

concentration camps in Europe

(Auschwitz/Birkenau – modern

day Poland) & Germany

Survivors at Buchenwald Concentration Camp remain in their barracks after liberation by Allies on April 16, 1945. Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize winning author of Night, is on the second bunk from the bottom, seventh from the left. (Photo : Corbis)

Group Discussion:

Main/Significant Characters and QHQ

Main/Significant CharactersMoshe the Beadle: After his deportation, Moshe returns with a report on the

massacre of those deported. The community dismisses him as a madman.

Madame Schächter: On the journey to Auschwitz, she goes out of her mind. At night she shrieks "I can see fire!” The last time she shrieks, everyone looks, and they see the flames of the crematory.

Chlomo Wiesel: Eliezer's father, Chlomo, is a "cultured, rather unsentimental man … more concerned with others than with his own family.” However, while he is in the death camps, he lives to keep his son alive

Eliezer Wiesel: The narrating survivor of the camps is Eliezer, who becomes A-7713.

Franek: The foreman in the electrical warehouse; he terrorizes Eliezer's father when Eliezer refuses to give up his gold crown.

Idek: A Kapo, a prisoner put in charge of a barracks. One Sunday, he takes the prisoners under his charge to the warehouse for the day so he can be with a woman. Eliezer discovers them and is whipped.

QHQs1. Q: What does Wiesel mean by “Because if we forget,

we are guilty, we are accomplices” ? (Wiesel 118).

2. Q: What is the significance of the title Night, and its purpose inside the story?

3. Q: What is the significance of Moshe the Beadle in the beginning of the story?

a. Q. Why don’t the residents of Sighet listen to Moshe the Beadle?

4. Q: On page 62-65, why did the deaths of the young man and the pipel have a different impact on the inmates?

QHQ1. Q: Why do the Jews treat each other badly when

suppressed by the Nazis?

2. Q: Why do the camp veterans taunt the less experienced prisoners?

3. Q: How is genocide of this magnitude possible?

4. Q: Has the Holocaust become so famous and integrated into the mainstream education of countries all over the world because of the nature of the event itself or because of the efforts of storytellers such as Wiesel?