Night is just one of many memoirs written by Eliezer Wiesel, who survived the vicious and the infamous Holocaust during the calamitous WWII. The renowned legend Eliezer Wiese, including his book Night, showed a variety of different concepts as in his dauntlessness, intrepidity, and sanguineness for his desire to survive. During this period he faced many tribulations as in tyrannical hardships; he experienced many spiritual differences as well. He had to face many crucibles during his time at the . Night is one big predicament which includes many lessons of life.
Eliezer Wiesel was a young teenage boy living in Sighet, Transylvania, at the start of World War II. He was very devout and wants to study the Kabbalah, a book of the Jewish Mysticism. His father, who was a prominent leader of the Jewish community, thinks that he is too young. Nevertheless, Eliezer starts studying the Kabbalah with Moche the Beadle, a poor and humble man who works in the Hasidic temple. Despite ominous signs, the Jews in Sighet refuse to believe that the Fascists could ever do anything to hurt them. Moche was deported along with other non-Hungarians and taken to a concentration camp.
He manages to escape and comes back to warn the townspeople of the atrocities that he had seen. They refuse to believe him; however, they thought that he was either insane or just wanted attention. In 1944, the townspeople remain foolishly optimistic even after the Fascists come to power, Germany invades Hungary, and the German army arrives in Sighet. Eliezer’s father refuses to try to escape the country. On Passover the persecution of the Jews begins. Jews are first forbidden from owning jewelry, required to wear the yellow star, and then rowded into two ghettos.
Even among the ghettos, people carry on as normal, until one day when Eliezer’s father was unexpectedly summoned to a meeting of the Jewish Council. He returns with bad news that all Jews will be deported. Eliezer goes to wake up the neighbors; everyone begins to pack in preparation for the upcoming journey. Eliezer and his family were the last to be deported. Inside the train it was so crowded that people had to take turns sitting down. A woman named Madame Schaechter was on the train and begins to lose her mind.
She starts to scream hysterically about a flaming furnace she claims to see in the distance and she scared the other occupants of the train. They tried to silence her by beating, but she screamed repeatedly throughout the night. Finally, when the train arrived at Birkenau, the prisoners saw the flaming chimney that Madame Schaechter had prophesied. Upon arriving at Birkenau, Eliezer was separated from his mother and sisters, but manages to stay close to his father. The prisoners then marched passed Dr. Mengle, who conducted the process of selection.
Eliezer and his father are told they are going to the crematory and were filled with terror as they marched closer to a fiery pit. At the last minute, the line of men turned away from the flames. The prisoners are then forced to run, bathe, and redress, while being pummeled by veteran prisoners and SS guards. Eliezer and his father are taken to the gypsies’ camp, where they are harangued by an SS officer. The prisoners then march to Auschwitz. At Auschwitz, conditions are better and the fellow prisoners are allowed to sleep. Eliezer refuses to eat his first ration, a plate of thick soup.
At the camp Eliezer and his father meet a distant relative, Stein, who is seeking news about his family. Eliezer lies to him by telling him that his family was well; Stein retains his will to live until he finds out the truth. The prisoners are then transferred to Buna. Eliezer is placed in a good work unit; his job was counting electrical fittings. He meets a Polish violin player named Juliek and also befriends Yossi and Tibi. The foreman Franek gets Eliezer’s father placed in the same block also. Eliezer is summoned to the dentist to get his gold crown removed, but he feigns illness twice.
However, Franek beat his Eliezer’s father until Eliezer gives the crown to him in exchange for some extra food. On a Sunday, an air-raid siren goes off; the prisoners regain hope that Germany will soon be defeated. Two cauldrons of soup are accidentally left out; one starving man crawls over to them and dies with his face in the soup. The SS begins having public hangings during roll call. Eliezer is disturbed by the first execution, although the man condemned to death is calm and unafraid. Afterwards, all the prisoners are required to march past his hanging body.
The only time that the prisoners weep at a hanging was when a young child, “a sad-eyed angel,” is hanged for conspiring to blow up the electric power station. The entire group of prisoners cried; a man standing behind Eliezer wonders out loud where God is. Eliezer refuses to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Eliezer’s father does not want to observe the religious holidays either, although most of the other prisoners do. The SS holds a selection for the crematories right after the New Year. Dr. Mengele holds selection once again and Eliezer runs as fast as possible past him. He passes, but his father does not.
Luckily, his father convinces the SS officers that he is still strong enough to live and escapes death. The Akiba Drummer, formerly a devout religious mystic, loses his faith, his will to live, and he goes to the crematory. During winter, Eliezer’s foot swells up from the cold, and he has to go to the hospital to get an operation. A bedmate warns him to escape the hospital before the next selection, because all the invalids will be taken to the crematory. The doctor for Eliezer’s operation was kind, although Eliezer panics that his leg has been amputated, he told him that he would be able to walk in a fortnight.
Soon, however, the camp is to be evacuated because the Russian army is approaching. Eliezer and his father decide to be evacuated with the rest of the prisoners, instead of remaining behind in the hospital. The prisoners are forced to run for more than forty-two miles without resting. Guards shoot those who fall behind; others are trampled underfoot by the crowd behind them. When they are finally allowed to rest, Eliezer and his father have to keep each other from falling asleep for dying in the snow. A man named Rabbi Eliahou comes around looking for his son, who was separated from him during the run.
Eliezer realizes that the man’s son had purposely run away from his burdensome and weak father. Eliezer prays to God for strength not to behave as callously towards his own father. When they reach Gleiwitz, the prisoners are so crowded into barracks that people are piled on top of each other. Eliezer finds himself lying on top of Juliek, who has miraculously transported his violin all the way there. In the middle of the night, Juliek plays Beethoven soulfully on his violin for an audience of dead and dying men. After three days, there was another selection; Eliezer creates a disturbance so that his father doesn’t have to go to the crematory.
The prisoners are then crammed into cattle wagons, a hundred per car. Inside the car, men are dying; Eliezer becomes indifferent to life and death. Eliezer’s father looks almost dead; Eliezer has to prevent him from being thrown out of the car when the train stops. In spite of the tribulations, Eliezer bared throughout the insurmountable journey, he survives. He had to go though many things. He faces starvation, selection, death, losing his dad, and religious changes. Night elaborates these events in descriptive detail, but it is very sagacious than a nonfictional, chronological narrative.
Eliezer Wiesel began to question many things such as optimism about humankind, trust in the world, and confidence in God. This point is illustrated especially well by one of the book’s most unforgettable moments when Eliezer describes the hanging of prisoners; one of them was a child. As the prisoners watched the child die, Eliezer heard a man saying, “For God’s sake, where is God? ” Through the medium of his experiences, he particularized a story that is full of reasons for despair, Eliezer protests against the wasting of life and testified for the mending of the world by humankind and God alike.