Into That Night: A Visual Presentation of Elie Wiesel’s Autobiography Night

Taryn Strawser- Genre Studies- Dr. Elizabeth Brown- 15 November 2012

Imagine….• Being fifteen again• Being ripped away from your home and forced into a

ghetto• Being loaded into a cattle car with almost 100 other

people• Being separated from your family without a chance to say

goodbye, not knowing that this is your last time together• Being forced to watch men, women and children alike be

forced into a crematoria and then smelling their burnt flesh as the ashes fill the air

• It is hard to imagine living through the horrors of World War II’s Holocaust, an event where six million Jewish people and thousands of people of other lineages, lifestyles, faiths and professions were slaughtered. It would be unthinkable to watch family members, friends, and even complete strangers die without reasonable cause. Living through such an event would change the survivor forever.

• Elie Wiesel’s life was changed forever by the time he spent in Concentration Camps. Unlike some survivors, Wiesel decided to write his story so all would know about the horrors that forever changed and shaped his life. His autobiography, Night, is as shocking as it is heartbreaking. Readers witness the Holocaust through the eyes of fifteen year old Wiesel as he suffers from starvation, injury, and personal loss.

• Early on in his autobiography, it becomes clear to readers as to why Wiesel mentions specific episodes from his time in camps. Elie Wiesel mentions heartbreaking moments from his time in concentration camps to highlight the evil faced by millions of Jewish people and also to serve as a warning to prevent another event of this caliber from happening.

Pre-Concentration Camp• Eliezer Wiesel was born and grew to age fifteen in Sighet,

Transylvania. • His family consisted of his father, mother, and three

sisters: Hilda and Beatrice (Bea) who were older than he and the baby of the family Tziporah.

• Young Elie was deeply religious. He studied every document important to the Jewish faith and even attempted to study those books only adults were permitted to look at. In his free time Elie enjoyed weeping over the Torah and begging for the coming Messiah.

“By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.”

-Elie Wiesel, Night, Page 3

Events Included into the Autobiography to Highlight Evil and Serve as a Warning

The Cattle Car

• Wiesel decides to include an interesting incident which occurred while in transit via a cattle car from a ghetto to Auschwitz. A woman held captive with Wiesel screams of fire and burning the whole duration of the journey. Excuses are made, men tie her down, and gag her, but at every opportunity the woman screams. Everyone thought she was mad. No one realized she was a prophet.

‘Jews, look! Look at the fire! Look at the flames!

• “We had forgotten Mrs. Schachter’s existence. Suddenly there was a terrible scream…We stared at the flames in the darkness…In the air, the smell of burning flesh…We had arrived. In Birkenau. –Elie Wiesel, Night, Page 28

The Separation of the Wiesel Family

• Elie Wiesel includes the heart wrenching story of his family’s separation. Despite the fact that his age qualified him to stay with his mother and be viewed as a child, Wiesel luckily made the decision to go with his father. Little did he know he would never see his mother and younger sister again. Wiesel did not know until much later on that his mother and sister were gassed and burnt in the crematoria upon arrival. This instance illustrates the murders of innocent people and is thus important to the autobiography.

• “‘Men to the left! Women to the right!’ Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion…Yet that was the moment when I left my mother…I didn’t know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever” (29).

• “The vanishing of a beautiful, well-behaved little Jewish girl with golden hair and a sad smile, murdered with her mother the very night of their arrival” (ix).

Lies

• Wiesel includes an instance where he lies to a family member who found him in the camps. The man, a cousin, had heard that the Wiesels of Sighet were in the camps. He was wanting to receive news on the wife and two young sons he had left behind. Elie Wiesel had not heard from the man’s immediate family in two years but he proclaimed that they were fine. The cousin was so overjoyed he cried and gave them half of his bread.

• “The only thing that keeps me alive,’ he kept saying, ‘is to know that Reizel and the little ones are still alive. Were it not for them, I would give up.’ One evening, he came to see us, his face radiant. ‘A transport just arrived from Antwerp…Surely they will have news…’ He left. We never saw him again. He had been given the news. The real news.” –Night, 45

The Tooth

• Wiesel illustrates the horrors of the camp by including a memory about his gold filling. Wiesel was told early on during his time in the camps to visit the dentist to have his gold filling removed from his tooth. He lied about illness to prevent the removal. Eventually another prisoner removed it via a rusty spoon.

Wiesel’s Beating

• Wiesel mentions the physical abuse both he and his father faced in the camps. He mentions, often in passing, short instances where either he or his father received beatings at random and without reason. One episode he does elaborate on his when he was lashed several times for accidently witnessing an official in the throes of passion with a young Polish girl.

• “Twenty four….twenty five’ I had not realized it but I had fainted… Then I heard someone yell ‘Stand up!’ I felt myself fall back on the crate. How I wanted to get up! At Idek’s command, two inmates lifted me and led me to him… ‘Listen to me, you son of a swine…So much for your curiosity. You shall receive five times more if you dare tell anyone what you saw! Understood?’ I nodded, once, ten times, endlessly. As if my head had decided to say yes for all eternity.” –Page 58

The First Hanging

• Wiesel mentions two hangings in his autobiography. The first was of a young prisoner who had stole something (Wiesel does not mention what) during an air raid. Wiesel mentions that this boy’s murder troubled him at a time when he watched millions of Jews go to the crematoria daily.

• “Caps off!’ Ten thousand prisoners paid their respects. ‘Cover your heads!’ Then the entire camp… filed past the hanged boy and stared at his extinguished eyes, the tongue hanging from his gaping mouth. The Kapos forced everyone to look him squarely in the face.” –Page 63

Reality Check

“Afterward, we were given permission to go back to our block and have our meal. I remember the soup tasted better than ever…”

--Page 63

The Second Hanging

• Wiesel viewed many hangings, but The second instance he mentions focuses on the hanging of a young boy called a pipel. The pipel, according to Wiesel, had an angelic face and was loved by all. The horrific part of the story comes when the chair holding the young boy is kicked from beneath him.

• “Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing…And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death…He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue as still red, his eyes not yet extinguished. –Page 65

That night, the soup tasted of corpses

Sickening Irony

• Eliezer Wiesel had to undergo a foot operation while in the camps. While still in the prisoner hospital, Wiesel heard a rumor that any prisoner left in the building would be burnt. Wiesel and his father decided to be evacuated with the other prisoners.

• “Well father, what will we do?’ He was silent. ‘Let’s be evacuated with the others,’ I said… [His father replied] ‘Let’s hope we don’t regret it, Eliezer.”

• “After the war, I learned the fate of those who had remained at the infirmary. They were, quite simply, liberated by the Russians, two days after the evacuation.” –Page 82

The Final Memories

• Wiesel ends the book describing his journey with his father. The pair ran hundred of miles under the instruction of guards. It was due to the snowy conditions they ran in that his father fell ill. His father succumbed to his illness right before the camp was liberated.

• “I woke up at dawn on January 29. On my father’s cot there lay another sick person. They must have taken him away before daybreak and taken him to the crematorium. Perhaps he was still breathing…” Page 112

Four Important ElementsIn Night

GOD

• Elie Wiesel’s relationship with God is a reoccurring element. Readers witness a transformation as Wiesel first devotes his life to God then slowly loses faith in Him.

• [Wiesel is referring to his reaction to an inmate conducted service for Rosh Hashanah] Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would 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 day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces? ---Page 67

Food

• Wiesel constantly mentions food, especially soup. He mentions how he didn’t eat it when he first arrived at the camps. He mentions when he received extra soup. He mentions how different events make the soup taste. He even tells a story of a prisoner who was murdered while crawling to a soup bowl.

Father-Son Relationship

• Wiesel mentions his father constantly. He also mentions other inmates and their fathers. For example, he tells of a pipel who beat his father for not making a bed properly. He tells of a Rabbi’s son running away from his father to avoid the responsibility of caring for another person. He mentions a son beating his father for bread.

Violence

• Wiesel mentions violence against everyone: himself, his father, their friends, and random strangers. The crematoria is also mentioned frequently.

Oprah Visits Auschwitz with Elie Wiesel

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slZMOkYJFO0

“Remember What You Saw”

• Elie Wiesel lived through a horrible two years in the concentration camps of the Holocaust. He shares heartbreaking memories in his autobiography Night. These memories included both provoke emotion in readers and open their eyes to the horrors faced by six million Jews. Wiesel also tells a cautionary tale by weaving all of the these instances together in one unforgettable story.

• From page 34: “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemed to live as long as God Himself. Never.

Discussion

• Do you agree with my thesis statement as to while Wiesel included these memories into his autobiography?

• What would you have included?• What would you have left out?• Any other questions?

THE END