THE HOLOCAUST

and NIGHT by Elie

Wiesel

Jews Murdered in European Countries During the Holocaust

Austria 40,000 20%Belguim 40,000 67%

Czechoslovakia 315,000 88%Denmark 130 2%Estonia 1,500 33%France 90,000 30%

Germany 170,000 32%Greece 60,000 80%

Hungary 200,000 50%Italy 8,000 16%

Latvia 80,000 84%Lithuania 217,000 97%

Luxembourg 700 23%Netherlands 105,000 75%

Poland 2,850,000 88%Romania 425,000 50%

Soviet Union 1,252,000 44%Yugoslavia 60,000 80%

Country Number of Jews MurderedPercentage of the JewishPopulation They Made Up

Facts

• Type of work  · Literary memoir• Genre  · World War II and Holocaust

autobiography• Language  · Wiesel first wrote a 900-page text

in Yiddish titled Un di Velt Hot Geshvign (And the World Remained Silent). The work later evolved into the much-shorter French publication La Nuit, which was then translated into English as Night.

• Time and place written  · Mid-1950s, Paris. Wiesel began writing after a ten-year self-imposed vow of silence about the Holocaust.

More Facts

• Narrator  · Eliezer (a slightly fictionalized version of Elie Wiesel)

• Point of view  · Eliezer speaks in the first person and always relates the autobiographical events from his perspective.

• Tone  · Eliezer’s perspective is limited to his own experience, and the tone of Night is therefore intensely personal, subjective, and intimate. Night is not meant to be an all-encompassing discourse on the experience of the Holocaust; instead, it depicts the extraordinarily personal and painful experiences of a single victim.

• Tense  · Past• Setting (time)  · 1941–1945, during World War II

More Facts• Settings (place)  · Eliezer’s story begins in Sighet,

Transylvania (now part of Romania; during Wiesel’s childhood, part of Hungary).

• The book then follows his journey through several concentration camps in Europe: Auschwitz/Birkenau (in a part of modern-day Poland that had been annexed by Germany in 1939), Buna (a camp that was part of the Auschwitz complex), Gleiwitz (also in Poland but annexed by Germany), and Buchenwald (Germany).

• Protagonist  · Eliezer• Major conflict  · Eliezer’s struggles with Nazi

persecution, and with his own faith in God and in humanity

Final Facts

• Themes  · Eliezer’s struggle to maintain faith in a benevolent God; silence; inhumanity toward other humans; the importance of father-son bonds

• Symbols  · Night, fire• Foreshadowing  · Night does not operate like a

novel, using foreshadowing to hint at surprises to come. The pall of tragedy hangs over the entire novel, however. Even as early as the work’s dedication, “In memory of my parents and my little sister, Tzipora,” Wiesel makes it evident that Eliezer will be the only significant character in the book who survives the war. As readers, we are not surprised by their inevitable deaths; instead, Wiesel’s narrative shocks and stuns us with the details of the cruelty that the prisoners experience.

My Home. My Town

Dachau Concentration Camp

• Tower and fenced area

Entrance to museumMemorial

Where Barracks Once Stood

Dachau Barracks

Another View

Jewish Memorial

Entrance to Camp

Furnaces

Crematorium and Gas Chamber• The gas chamber and cremation ovens, at the far left corner of the

campsite, were in a red brick building which looked a little like a standard duplex house.  Inside were three ovens with pallets at the entrance to each.  

•  A sign mentions that the rafters above the ovens were used to hang prisoners.  

• To the left of the ovens a green door led to the inside of the gas chamber.

Protestant Church of Reconciliation

Catholic Mortal Agony of Christ Chapel

The commemorative mass grave dedicated

to the unknown dead at Dachau

Buchenwald

• Prisoners during a roll call at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Their uniforms bear classifying triangular badges and identification numbers. Buchenwald, Germany, 1938-1941

Buchenwald

• One of the first and largest of the Nazi German concentration camps established on German soil.

• It stood on a wooded hill about 4.5 miles (7 km) northwest of Weimar, Germany.

• Set up in 1937; initially housed political prisoners and other targeted groups

Roll Call• Newly arrived prisoners, mostly Jews arrested during

Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass"), at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Buchenwald, Germany, 1938.

Buchenwald Barracks

• This photograph was taken after the liberation of the camp. Buchenwald, Germany, after April 11, 1945.

Remains

• One of many piles of ashes and bones found by U.S. soldiers at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Germany, April 14, 1945.

Wedding Rings

• Found by U.S. army soldiers near the Buchenwald concentration camp. Germany, May 1945.

Survivors

• Gather around trucks carrying American troops. Germany, May 1945. 

Auschwitz/Birkenau• Was the largest of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp

complex. Located in German-occupied southern Poland.

Auschwitz/Birkenau Gate

Roll Call

Auschwitz

• At the Auschwitz complex, 405,000 prisoners were recorded as slaves between 1940 and 1945.

• It was the largest graveyard in human history. – The number of Jews murdered in the gas chambers

of Birkenau is estimated at up to one and a half million people: men, women, and children.

– Almost one-quarter of the Jews killed during World War II were murdered in Auschwitz. Of the 405,000 registered prisoners who received Auschwitz numbers, only a part survived; and of the 16,000 Soviet prisoners of war who were brought there, only 96 survived.

MENGELE- ANGEL OF DEATH

Oskar Schindler

• German industrialist

• Saved about 1,100 Polish Jews by diverting them from Auschwitz to work for him, first in his factory near Kraków and later at a factory in what is now the Czech Republic.

Extra Credit- MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE

• FOR CREDIT: You must purchase a ticket and attach it your two-page typed, double spaced, report on your findings, thoughts, impressions, etc. on what you discovered. Also, bring the sheet that gives the final information of the child you are given at the beginning of your journey.

• Museum admission includes access to: Adults $15.50 Seniors (62+)$12.50 Students with I.D. & Youth 5 -18 $11.50 (Under 5 no charge) 

• Museum of ToleranceSimon Wiesenthal Plaza9786 West Pico Blvd (southeast corner of Pico Boulevard and Roxbury Drive)Los Angeles, CA 90035General Information: 310-553-8403

• CLOSED ON SATURDAYS

• DUE: October 1st • VALUE: 50 POINTS