The Darkness Of Night
The Darkness Of Night
Night is narrated by Eliezer, a Jewish teenager who lives, at the book's opening, in his hometown of Sighet in Hungarian Transylvania. Elizer studies Torah and the Cabbala, Jewish mysticism. His instruction is cut short, however, when his teacher, Moshe the Beadle, is deported. In a few months, Moshe returns, telling a horrifying tale. The Gestapo (German secret police) took charge of his train, led everybody into the woods, and systematically butchered them. Nobody believes Moshe, who is taken for a lunatic.
In the spring of 1944, the Nazis occupy Hungary. Not long afterward, after a series of increasingly repressive measures are passed, the Jews of Eliezer's town are forced into small ghettos within Sighet. Soon after, they are herded onto cattle cars, and a nightmarish journey ensues. After days and nights crammed into the car, exhausted and near starvation, the passengers arrive at Birkenau, the gateway to Auschwitz.
On Eliezer's arrival in Birkenau, he and his father are separated from his mother and sisters, whom they never see again. In the first of many "selections" that Eliezer describes in the memoir, the Jews are evaluated to determine whether they should be killed immediately or put to work. Eliezer and his father seem to pass the evaluation, but before they are brought to the prisoners' barracks, they stumble upon the open-pit furnaces where the Nazis are burning babies by the truckload.
The Jewish arrivals are stripped, shaved, disinfected, and treated with almost unimaginable cruelty. Eventually, their captors march them from Birkenau to the main camp, Auschwitz. They eventually arrive in Buna, a work camp where Eliezer is put to work in an electrical-fittings factory. Under slave-labor conditions, severely malnourished and decimated by the frequent "selections," the Jews take solace in caring for each other, in religion, and in Zionism. In the camp, they are subject to unimaginable cruelty, including beatings and repeated humiliations. A vicious foreman forces Eliezer to give him his gold tooth, which is pried out of his mouth with a rusty spoon.
The prisoners are forced to watch the hanging of fellow prisoners in the camp courtyard. On one occasion, the Gestapo (Nazi secret police) even hang a small child who had been associated with some rebels within Buna. Because of the horrific conditions of the camps, and the ever-present danger of death, many of the prisoners themselves begin to slide into cruelty, concerned...