Dawn, “I” listens and questions.Night opens in 1941 when Eliezer is 12 years old. At the time he is living in the Hungarian town of Sighet. He is the only son in an Orthodox Jewish household, highly observant of Jewish tradition. Eliezer keen interest in Judaism brings him to avidly study the Cabbala, a book based on Jewish mysticism. His instruction is cut short, however, when his teacher, Moche the Beadle, is deported. Moche returns after a few months with a horrifying tale. The Gestapo, or German secret police, took charge of his train, led everybody into the woods, and systematically butchered them. Nobody believes Moche and the small town quickly takes him for a lunatic. Yet, the reality of Moche’s experience becomes evident when a series of increasingly repressive measures are passed by the Nazi’s who occupy Hungary in the spring of 1944. The Jews of Eliezer’s town are herded onto cattle cars, commencing a nightmarish journey: after days and nights crammed into the car, exhausted and near starvation, the passengers arrive at Birkenau, the gateway to the concentration camp, Auschwitz.At Aushwitz, he and his father are separated from his mother and sisters, whom they never see again. They are then stripped, shaved, and disinfected while their captors treat them with almost unimaginable cruelty. Eventually, they are marched to a work camp, Buna, where Eliezer is put to work in an electrical-fittings factory. Under slave-labof conditions, severely malnourished and decimated by the frequent “selections,” the Jews take solace in caring for each other, in religion, and in Zionism. But with the conditions of the camps, and the ever-present danger of death, many of the prisoners themselves begin to slide into cruelty, concerned only with personal survival: sons begin to abandon and abuse their fathers. Eliezer himself begins to lose his humanity, and his faith.After many months in the camp, Elieze...
