Night opens with a brief description of a poor man named Moch the Beadle, who lives in the narrator's hometown of Sighet, Transylvania (modern-day Romania; at the time that the novel opens, the town is under Hungarian control). I venture to say she was given the age of seven in Night to make her appear more vulnerable, and her death even more of a barbaric crime. The final version of the book of 245 pages was edited by Mark Turkov who specialized in Polish Yiddish. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Along with Eliezer, they make a plan to move to Palestine after the war. A fifty-year-old woman whose husbands and two sons were separated from her. Eliezer is scheduled to leave in the last transport, and he watches people in the first group march by. When he returns from the meeting, he tells them that all the Jews are to be deported to an unknown destination and that they will only be allowed one bag per person. Nisel Bash was the daughter of Moshe and Yehudit (or Mindil) Bash (or Basch). He only wants us to know that she was young or a child. A ten-year-old girl is quite a bit more mature than a seven-year old. However, Night is far from a coldly objective and distanced analysis of human psychology. Actually, according to his cousin Yaakov, he wasnt even alive, having died in 1943! Elie Wiesel, Memoirs: All Rivers Run to the Sea, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1995. He found a kabbalist in Sighet to teach him. Franek. It also does not appear in the complete list of his books at The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. But, while he received a U.S. green card sometime after recovering from his accident, he did not become a citizen until 1963. WebHilda Wiesel Birth 28 Aug 1922 - Sighetu Marmatiei, Maramures, Romania Death Unavailable - France Mother Sarah Feig Father Shlomo Elisha Wiesel Quick access Family tree New search Hilda Wiesel family tree Family tree Explore more family trees Parents Shlomo Elisha Wiesel 1894 - 1945 Sarah Feig 1905 - 1944 Wrong Hilda Wiesel ? Hes selected at Block 36 and no one remembers his request for a Kaddish. One of Eliezers fellow prisoners. Wiesel writes that Grandma Nisel sat at the cash register in his fathers store, but also helped out at her son Mendels store: Maybe (Grandma Nisel) was trying not to show favoritism toward any of her children. Zalman is trampled to death during the run to Gleiwitz. Once again, however, life returns to "normal," with the Jews setting up organizations and socializing happily. After he moved to an orphanage in Paris, he heard that his sister Hilda was alive and searching for him. Immediately after the Wiesel family arrived at Auschwitz, Elie and his father were separated from his mother and sisters. Wiesel is in the second row of bunks, seventh from the left. 6. A villager who reports that fascists are harming Hungarian Jews in Budapest. The father is depicted as somewhat confused, a poor decision maker, and as having difficulty adjusting to camp life, both physically and psychologically. Sources: David Aikman, Great Souls, (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1998). 20% Perhaps my uncle had had dreams of taking them with him?, Nisel lived in her own house that was close to her son Shlomos home. In 1988, he established his own humanitarian foundation, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, to explore the problems of hatred and ethnic conflicts. The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Why did Wiesel start campaigning for the Nobel Prize the same year Mark Turkov died? Hes a kind, respected member of the Jewish community and suffers as Elie does through their time in the camp. As we know, there were many Eliezer Wiesels (Vizels) in Sighet, let alone in Hungary, at the time. Eliezer feels nothing as he looks at the house he grew up in, but his father begins to weep. One day his work foreman, named Franek, noticed the gold and told Eliezer he wanted it. Even after the townspeople hear that the Fascists have come into power in Hungary, no one really worries until the Germans actually invade Hungary and arrive at Sighet itself. She knew she would never come home. Nisel related to her grandson that when she was told of his death: I learned what catastrophe meant, and I knew my mourning would never end. (All Rivers, p 8 ), On page 9, Wiesel relates a story that when he returned to Sighet as an adult, he first went to the cemetery to find his grandfathers grave. Upon arrival, he tried to immigrate to Palestine but was not allowed. From 1945 to 1947, he was in different homes in France found for him by a Jewish group called the Childrens Rescue Society. Copyright 1999 - 2023 GradeSaver LLC. Eliezers Struggle to Maintain Faith in a Benevolent God, Sample A+ Essay: Analysis of Eliezer's Relationship with His Father. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. He is the narrator of Night, who represents the author.The book traces the teenage Eliezers experience at the concentration camp and his psychological state as he witnesses the worst instincts men are capable of and the atrocities they perpetrate, which robs him of his faith.Though Eliezer stands in for Wiesel, his narrative On the very first page of this famous novel it is written: My father was a cultured, rather unsentimental man. Right here it would have been natural to write: My father, Shlomo Wiesel, was a cultured, rather unsentimental man. It was around this time that he decided to stop attending synagogue, except on the High Holidays and to say yizkor, as a protest against what he concluded was divine injustice. (p 43). Bit by bit, starvation and sorrow became etched in the Theme of Holocaust in Novel Night Elie Wiesel Night Words: 1048 (5 pages) We make a leap of faith to believe that Eliezer Wiesel has to be Elie Wiesel. What is the significance of the novels first-person point of view? Copyright 2023 WisdomAnswer | All rights reserved. 1963 My challenge: I welcome any native Polish Yiddish speaker/reader who is also fluent in English to prove me wrong about what I have written above by providing an honest, accurate translation of Un di Velt Hot Gesvign into English so it can be compared with Night. Further, we have no information on these details for Wiesels mother Sarah Feig either, and no family member (or anyone) ever filled out a YV Holocaust victim form for her or her youngest daughter who supposedly died with her at Auschwitz. Shes alone with her ten-year-old son and her mental state falls apart. (This information is from the victim forms filled out for Yad Vashem by her nephew and grandson; see further below.) Despite Moch's warnings, news of the German invasion of Hungary, and even imminent deportation, the Jewish people refuse to believe that anything bad will happen to them. Hilda Wiesel is the sister of Elie Wiesel. She rides on the same cattle car as Eliezer and everyone thinks shes mad. His personal account of the Holocaust is what makes this story so harrowing and hard to forget. While in concentration camps, Eliezer cannot understand why God is allowing so much death and destruction to take place around him. 1 May 2023. How does Wiesel characterize himself/Eliezer in the novel? It is important to note that we learn Eliezers last name only in passing, and that it is never repeated. Hilda is Eliezers oldest sister who survives the Holocaust. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". Another important theme in the novel concerns the inadvertent role that the Jews played in their own destruction. This understanding is at the centre of the novel as Elie struggle to make sense of his experiences and what role God played or didnt play in them. In speaking out, Moishe did what Wiesel fought to do throughout his life. Wiesel was born in Sighet, a Romanian shtetl, to an Orthodox Jewish family on September 30, 1928. Or it can also be seen as a similar situation as with Tziporas age: Making the young victims even younger so they will appear more sympathetic to the reader, and making some adults older. There are no witnesses to this. At this time he would have been 39 years old. Even then, the Germans seem nice and friendly, at least until Passover, when the persecution of the Jews begins in full force. Everyone thinks he is trying to win sympathy or has simply gone insane. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. His cantata Ani Maamin (1973) presents a dialogue between the Jewish forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who have the responsibility of directing Gods attention to Israels suffering throughout the generations. Its natural to be suspicious of what is kept hidden. A musician Elie meets at Auschwitz. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. The author of Night is Elie Wiesel. He began working as a reporter and in 1949, traveled to Israel as a correspondent for the French paper LArche. In time, however, he became involved with the Irgun, a Jewish militant organization in Palestine, and translated materials from Hebrew to Yiddish for the Irguns newspaper. Tragically, the community takes Moishe for a lunatic. 24 May 1993 (aged 88) Burial. Of the 20,000 prisoners who left Buna, 6,000 reached Buchenwald. He is the first character introduced in the novel and is noted as being committed to Judaism and Jewish mysticism. Worse than that, he says he didnt even believe when he gave it to him that Turkov would publish it. Wiesel is always treated with the softest of kid gloves.). Reizels husband. It appears from his writings that Wiesel forgot all about the manuscript he gave to Turkov until the book came to him in the mail, but he does add on that page that they never did send back the manuscriptto give himself a reason for not having it and not being able to say what was actually in it. He escapes from the Gestapo in Poland and returns to tell the villagers what happened to him. No one had any strength left. Sacramento, Sacramento County, California, USA. He went to a camp doctor who operated on him. This advice proves to be one of the main themes of the book. WebA young, ordinary jewish boy, Eliezer Wiesel, is taken from his home of Sighet, Romania. Hilda and Beatrice survived and were reunited with Elie at a French orphanage after the war. Beatrice Wiesel (Bea) Elie's older sister who is the second child in the family. In the first few pages of the chapter, Moch tells Eliezer that one must seek to ask God the right questions, not to find out the right answers. Koch : The notorious sadistic monster of Buchenwald. He only mentions telling one close friend, Israel Adler, who took him out for a coffee by way of celebration.(!) WebDiscover your ancestry - search Birth, Marriage and Death certificates, census records, immigration lists and other records - all in one family search! Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. Memorial ID. SparkNotes PLUS Before deportation and in concentration camps, the Jews are put under extreme pressures and behave in ways that they generally wouldn't under normal circumstances. She is arrested nd deported to a concentration camp. One wonders just what part Elie Wiesel played in this group effort? You can view our. Eliezer is often shown to be his fathers caretaker. Did he not know? But if she is correct about her mothers age in 1944, then Sarah Feig was born in 1900. 4. Some of my readers will tell me, What does it matter? Accuracy matters, because if a source is wrong in some things that can be determined as wrong, nothing from there should be depended upon. According to Elie Wiesels 1995 memoir, All Rivers Run to the Sea1, Grandmother Nisel went with the family to Auschwitz. This novel will will also explain his thoughts/feelings during this tragic event. (one code per order). This first child of Nisel and Eliezer was probably a daughter, either Idiss or Giza. When Wiesel was released from the hospital, he did not think any of his family had survived the war. He always maintains a kind expression on his face and is compared to a biblical prophet. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. After the original document was translated from French to English, an eclectic assortment of readers gathered at Harvard University to perform the play for the first time in April 2015. A little mix-up there? Elies namesake grandfather Eliezer had been killed in the First World War in his capacity as a stretcher-bearer. Over 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust, 1.1 million were children and 6 million were Jewish. Night is approaching, night has fallen, Eliezer and his family lie awake at night. In 1955, Wiesel moved to New York City, having become a US citizen: due to injuries suffered in a traffic accident, he was forced to stay in New York past his visas expiration and was offered citizenship to resolve his status.. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". Whoever the author.Discover new and exciting books to dive into with our Book Explorer Tool. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. My father was running at my side, out of breath, at the end of his strength, at his wits end. But in truth, a 44-year-old-woman and her 10-year-old daughter could be quite useful in the labor force, and therefore could have gone on to meet some other fate. Wiesel tells us another unlikely story in All Rivers (p 277) that in Dec. 1955, back in Paris, he received a copy of the published book, edited down to 245 pages, in the mail from Turkov. All limits had been passed. Idek, also known as Idek the Kapo, is a kapo in the Buna warehouse, and he periodically feels fits of And, in fact, he didnt leave her out of his memoir, nor did Hilda leave her out of her testimony. Eliezer says that the false optimism helped pass the time and notes that the uncertainty of everyone's future erased social distinctions between people. I will remind you again that the original Night was published in 1960 categorized as Judaica/Literature in other words, fiction. Family and neighbors wait up past midnight to hear whatever news Eliezer's father has to tell them. Wiesel, then 15, followed the instructions of a fellow prisoner and told the waiting SS officer that he was eighteen, a farmer and in good health. How does Idek treat the camps prisoners? There is only 2 years between the publication of Un di Velt Hot Gesvign in 1956 and the French La Nuit in 1958, but in that time the authors name had changed. It is a strange fact that the title Un di Velt Hot Gesvign (or, in English, And the World Remained Silent) does not appear on the long list of books by Elie Wiesel at the beginning of his memoir All Rivers, nor in the original or in the new 2006 translation of Night. ( Night is usually classified as a memoir.) What happens to Beatrice and Hilda Wiesel now? Not quite 15 doesnt equate to Elie Wiesel, whose birthday is Sept. 30, 1928, so that was an oversight in Night. Shlomo Wiesel was certainly somewhere between 40 and 44 years of age in 1944. It is, however, at the beginning of the list of his books on Wikipedia. He and his father were sent to be slave laborers. Elie Wiesels failure to correct and clarify details of his family history (especially birth and death dates of his parents, sisters and other close relatives), and of the writing and publication of Un di Velt and La Nuit, mirrors his refusal to show the number A-7713 that he says is tattooed on his left arm. Almost a year later, he was reunited with Beatrice in Antwerp, Belgium. While in Auschwitz he goes through a transformation. Night traces Eliezers psychological journey, as the Holocaust robs him of his faith in God and exposes him to the deepest inhumanity of which man is capable. Forced under desperate conditions to try to survive, many of them will turn on each other with violence and cruelty. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. On Page 70 he writes that on Tuesday, May 16, they were ordered out of their houses to be sent to the small ghetto. WebHilda Wiesel was the oldest, then Beatrice Bea, Elie was the third and only son, and Tzipora was the youngest. Elie Wiesel. Notes. Elie Wiesel becomes an American citizen. Discount, Discount Code 1Aikman, p. 326. Contact us Subscribe now. The Gospel According to Mark and Night: Would St. Mark Call Night a 'Religious Book'? Marion: Wiesel: Ellie's wife. In May, deportations began. . In early evening, the first American military units arrived and liberated the camp. He underwent a 10-hour operation. They had agreed to organize their own deportation voluntarily, and they are all crowded into the synagogue for an entire day. 1: Moishe C. Berkowitz: Jack of all trades. But this is typical of the scholarship carried out at this totally Jewish-run, but government funded museum. In the 1970s, he protested against South African apartheid. Eliezer and the neighbors disperse to pack and wake everyone else up. They forced the Jews to wear yellow stars. Lindon didnt like the orginal title: And the World Remained Silent. He preferred a biblical phrase, perhaps something from the Book of Jeremiah. When?! Mendel married Golda Feig, the sister of Sarah Feig, making for a tight-knit Wiesel-Feig family relationship. It is also a personal account of his loss of religious faith. Elies mentor and a man whos described as hesitant and dreamy. In the early 1990s, he lobbied the U.S. government on behalf of victims of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. He and Eliezer desperately try to remain together throughout their concentration campordeal. In the winter and spring of 1956, in the United States, Elie adapted the book to a shorter version in French, which he mailed to Francois Mauriac in Paris. He questions justice and the world hes living in, something that haunted Wiesel throughout his life. Though the innocence of the Jewish townspeople is painfully foolish in retrospect, Eliezer does not fault his family and neighbors for being so reluctant to leave Sighet. After Night was published, he wrote a second novel in 1961, Dawn, about a concentration camp survivor. Encyclopedia Judaica. What gives Eliezer the strength to survive the Holocaust? Okay, it could have been an error. These kinds of stories abound in Night and other holocaust-survivor books. What happens when Moishe is deported from Sighet? My father answered him. Part of a free Study Guide from BookRags.com. There was a pie waiting to be put in the oven. And ironically, though the days seem drawn out and monotonous, everything happens in a very short time span and their lives change almost instantaneously. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". I believe it is backwards on purpose, in order to fit Wiesels lies. Elie Wiesel is the author of Night, written in French with the assistence of his editor and probably Francois Mauriac, but he cannot have been the author of Un di Velt Hot Gesvign. He continued studying the Bible and other Jewish books and became particularly attracted to Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. Wikipedia skips over the dates, doesnt give any dates for the writing of the books because they dont fit, but says that Wiesel moved to NYC in 1955. Hilda Wiesel. His parents, Shlomo and Sarah, owned a grocery store in the village. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. There is no excuse or explanation that can be given for such a lapse, and none has ever been attempted. In 1985, Wiesel was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement. Idek beats Eliezer in one moment of rage. According to some of his biographers, it was when he was still living at home with his family. What does Rabbi Eliahous son do to his father? While this first section of the novel focuses on how the Jews inadvertently participated in their own deportation to concentration camps, later sections will describe how they actively helped destroy each other while imprisoned by the Nazis. Night also symbolizes the evil and destructiveness of the Nazis. He lived in New York City, New York, United States in 2008. (I suspect that whenever Wiesel gives an interview or allows someone to write a book about him, he obtains an agreement in advance as to what can be discussed and what is off-limits. Eliezer devotes himself to his religious studies, his father busies himself in the Jewish community, and his mother tries to find a husband for Hilda. Although Hilda said in her 1995 Shoah testimony: we were, myself and my sister, the one who was in Canada and is now deceased; my mother; my grandmother, that is my fathers mother; and, oh . A devout Jewish prisoner whose son abandons him in one of many instances in Night of a son behaving cruelly toward his father. WebNight Characters Eliezer. Best summary PDF, themes, and quotes. He doesnt tell Mauriac he has already done so, but acts like he will think about it, later accepting the guilt-ridden, elderly Catholics help in getting the book published.