WHAT EVENTS CAN SUDDENLY CHANGE THE COURSE OF A PERSON’S LIFE?

Think about the following question and write down your

thoughts.

Think about events that unexpectedly happen, like natural disasters or death. What are some effects and emotional reactions you or others might have to these types of events.

NightBy Elie Wiesel

Meet the author: Elie Wiesel“Look, it’s important to bear witness. Important to tell your story…. You cannot imagine what it meant spending a night of death among death.”

Wiesel was the only son of a Jewish family in the village of Sighet, Romania.

Sighet was home to 15,000 Jews.

Like most of their neighbors, the Wiesel’s were poor but intensely committed to education.

Young Elie spent most of his evenings studying sacred Jewish texts such as the Torah and Talmud.

At age 12, he started exploring cabbala, an approach to Bible study that analyzes hidden meanings in the text.

Elie’s father, Chlomo began helping Jews escape from Poland, risking his life to helpothers escape Nazi persecution.

In 1944, during WWII, Germany’s armies invaded Sighet. Elie and his family were sent to concentration camps at Auschwitz and at Buna, both in Poland and Buchenwald, in central Germany.

Auschwitz Buna

Buchenwald

Wiesel and his older sisters

Wiesel was freed in April of 1945 when he was sixteen years old.

He went to a French orphanage and was later reunited with his older sisters.

Elie completed his education, working as a tutor and translator to help him pay tuition.

Elie Wiesel settled in the United States in 1956.

He married Holocaust survivor Marion Erster Rose in 1969.

He has written many other novels: Dawn, The Accident, The Town Beyond the Wall, The Gates of the Forest

The Nobel Peace Prize

Elie Wiesel teaches humanities at Boston University

He helped organize and found the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his activism and courageous works

Wiesel wrote Night nearly 10 years after the end of WWII.Though the story is written in narrative form it is not a novel, it is a memoir. A memoir is a brief autobiographical work in which the author recounts events he has witnessed and introduces people he has known.

Background and Setting of Night• Night takes place in

Europe during World War II (1939-1945)

• Germany’s government was broken, their military was limited, and their industry was shattered due to debts from WWI.

• Many Germans were humiliated and demoralized during WWI

Germany after World War I: bread lines

The Nazi Party• In German NAZI stands

for National Socialist German Workers Party

• Came to power in 1920s

• Leader Adolf Hitler blamed the Jews and others whom he said were not true Germans for Germany’s problems

• Looking for answers, many Germans responded enthusiastically to Hitler’s ideas and he became the leader of the country in 1933.

• Hitler was able to restore Germany’s economy and soon began to invade lands around Germany that were struggling with the Great Depression • Britain and France declared war in 1939, the US in 1941

In 1941, when Night begins, Hitler seemed unstoppable. By 1942 he controlled or was allied with most of Europe, including Romania, which was pro-German.

As the story progresses, Elie Wiesel is confined in a total of three concentration camps: Auschwitz and Buna, in Poland, and later Buchenwald, in central Germany.

Did you Know?

• Hitler was a hater of Jews who viewed them as an inferior race.

• However, Judaism is not a race, but rather a religion

Some symbols of Judaism

Did you Know?

• Hitler defined Jews as anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent.

• Hitler and his secret-police, the Gestapo, attacked and imprisoned Gypsies, people with handicaps, and homosexuals.

• Those who disagreed with Hitler’s political views such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Soviet prisoners of war were also imprisoned, enslaved, and murdered.

Did you know?• Of the 11 million people killed

during the Holocaust, six million were Polish citizens, three million were Polish Jews and three million were Polish Christians.

• Most of the remaining mortal victims were from other countries including Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Holland, France and even Germany.

Vocabulary

Chapter 1

Cabbala: medieval and modern style of Jewish religion; religious books

Fascism: political philosophy that exalts nation and race over the individual; headed by a dictator

Gestapo:Secret police organization operating against people using terrorist methods

Ghetto:A section of the city where Jews were forced to live

Mysticism: experience having a spiritual meaning

Nazism: Political and economic beliefs of the National Socialist German Workers party

Revelation:Act of making known or communicating a divine truth

Talmud:Authoritative book of Jewish tradition

Schutzstaffel (SS): elite guard; unit of the Nazis created to guard Hitler