This is your central page for our study of Elie Wiesel's Night.
See students' recreations of Wiesel's words in Night.
Looking for more on the Holocaust? Try one of these critically acclaimed movies that depict it:
Chapters of study
| Chapter 1 | Chapter 4 |
| Chapters 2 & 3 |
From the fourth chapter back to top
Important Passages"Please...I would have liked to be with my father." (page 37)
“I thought of my father. But I was glad all the same. To see the whole works go up in fire- what revenge!” (p. 44)
"I witnessed other hangings. I never saw a single one of the victims weep. For a long time those dried-up bodies had forgotten the bitter taste of tears" (p. 46). "The camp looked as thought it has suffered an epidemic: empty and dead." page35 "Then the whole camp, block after block, had to march past the hanged man and stare at the dimmed eyes, the lolling tongue of death. The Kapos and heads of each block forced everyone to look him full in the face". (Page 46 Night) "I felt the sweat run down my back. 'A-7713' I came forward. 'A box' he ordered. They brought him a box. 'Lie down on it! On your stomach!' I obeyed. Then I was aware of nothing but the strokes of the whip. 'One...two...,' he counted. He took his time between each stroke. Only the first ones really hurt me. I could hear him counting." (p. 42). "Where is God now?". " I had watched the whole scene without moving. I kept quiet. In fact I was thinking how to get farther away so that I would not be hit myself. What is more, any anger I felt at that moment was directed, not against the kapo, but against my father. I was angry with him, for not knowing how to avoid Idek's outbreak. That is what concentration camp life had made of me."
From the second and third chapters
back to top
Questions
Regarding motives- Why Jewish people?
- Why did they kill them anyway?
- Why did the Germans want everything, from shoes to all the hair on your body?
- How could you be made to have to place bodies into a
crematorium? That's terrible.
- Sheehy adds - and your father, at that. What do you think his feelings were concerning his father at that moment? Looking at Eliezer's dispassionate reaction to his father's being struck (p. 29), how do you think he would react if he were made to do the same thing?
- All Knowing One takes this one on and personalizes it.
- Ninja Kitty considers how difficult it is and has a pracitical perspective.
Regarding what happened
- Why did they willingly go when they had already been warned by others that it was a terrible place?
- Why did they kill them all at the town?
Regarding characters' actions
- Why were they so calm when they went?
- Why didn't people believe Madame Schachter when she was right about the fire?
- How did they know, when they got off the train, that the smell
was burning flesh?
- Sheehy adds: I'm not sure they knew - Wiesel may have been employing dramatic irony, telling us what they smelled, though they wouldn't learn it for a few more minutes.
- Was he trying to help them by telling them to say different
ages?
Observations or Pressing Thoughts
- They should have tried escaping before leaving the ghetto.
- They should have hid and fought back.
- Sheehy adds - before taking this on again, consider p. 23.
- They should have listened to Moshe.
- They were given no chance of escaping.
- Everyone was beaten after.
- Everything got taken from the Jews for no reason.
From the first chapter back to top
Questions about Moshe
- Why didn't people want to believe Moshe about what happened to the expelled Jews?
- Why didn't people care to listen to Moshe?
- Why didn't people believe Moshe was telling the truth about stuff when it was getting bad?
- Did Moshe change how he was because no one wanted to believe him?
- Why didn't Moshe help them?
- Michael takes this question on and suggests an interesting and controversial answer.
- Why didn't anyone but Moshe flee when every bad thing was
happening?
- Most Short 1 makes the important point.
Questions about the Germans
- Why would the Germans want to live with the Jews when they were
going to move them?
- Gamebuddy suggests a possible strategy from the Germans.
- Why would the German armies stay in Jewish homes?
- What was the main reason Hitler hated the Jews?
- Mostshort1 addresses this difficult question . . .
Questions about the Jews
- Why were the foreign Jews the only ones who got expelled?
- Why didn't anyone but Moshe flee when every bad thing was happening?
- Why did Elie's father not want to go to the safe place when the servant Martha offered it to them?
- How come nobody fought back?
- Michael makes a solid point about this.
- Randi03 also understands a bit about human nature.
- Woofie sees it by looking at the German strategy.
- And NinjaKitty tackles this question as well.
- Why didnt' they take the news and leave when it started?
Questions for clarity
- What was the ghetto?
- For a basic answer about WWII ghettos, see the Wikipedia entry.