Answers to Night Questions

Rebecca Martinez
Mrs. Bosch
Honors English 10P
8 December 2007

Night: Answers to Questions

1.) Eliezer Wiesel was born in Sighet of Transylvania. It’s so small it doesn’t appear on maps.

2.) The cabala is a collection of very old Jewish writings that contain interpretations of Hebrew Scriptures and the secrets of Jewish mysticism.

3.)When Elie was young he wanted to know the truths of this world like why people pray, why they lived, and why did they breath, just simple questions that were unanswered for him. Elie was ignorant of the truths of cruelness and of those who killed the faith of many people, and of the understanding of hell.

4.) Moshe the Beadle is a significant character because he foreshadows what is to come in the future and the horror and devastation they will see. Moshe tells Elie that the questions we ask bring us closer to God and he answers them but we can’t understand them ‘cause they come from the very depth of the soul and the only way to find the truth is within oneself. Every question has some kind of power but the power doesn’t lie in the answer. Moshe was prescient in his admonition to Elie because he knew what horrors were to befall the Jews of Sighet and the Jews in other places.

5.) The people of Sighet ignore Moshe the Beadle after he returns because they figure he just wants them to take pity on him and they don’t believe anything like that could have happened. They don’t realize how evil the Germans were or how close they were getting.

6.) Madame Schachter was a fifty year old lady who had been separated from her husband and her sons, except one, which completely broke her and she began to go crazy. In her crazy distress she would yell out “Fire! Fire! ...Jews, listen to me! I can see a fire! There are huge flames! It is a furnace!” No one believed her as there was no fire to be seen and thought she was crazy. She is similar to Moshe the Beadle because he also had news of an ill fate that was to befall many more people and tried to warn them to leave and to get away while they still could but he was not to be believe as she was not to be believed as there was no fire to be seen. Neither of them had proof of the brutality. Those on the train thought she was extremely thirsty and that’s why she was making exclamations of fire and the people thought that Moshe just wanted pity. Neither was the case, but both were to warn. Later on the train came to a concentration camp with mighty flames and a furnace were many died.

7.) I think it is so horrible that a young boy should ever have to witness what Elie did and to have his dreams and his faith ripped from him in the discovery of such evilness. No one should have to witness what all those Jews saw and heard as people were constantly delivered to the furnaces of the crematories. The inhumanity of it is very overwhelming. I don’t think anybody could ever forget what they saw, heard, and had to go through in those concentration camps and especially their first day when they discovered what was to become of them.

8.) The passage which is given is a memory that will live with Elie Wiesel for the rest of his life and remind him of what he lost and what his main desires became and what he strived for in those dark dismal days of his past. Elie’s theology changed at that time from being a firm believer in God to one whose faith was shaken and mostly destroyed. As time goes on and more terrible events take place, he loses all his faith and does not believe in God anymore. The passage given sets up the attitude he has toward God throughout the book and throughout his experience. It is also a snapshot of his whole experience and the feelings he had being in the concentration camps and for sometime after being freed.

9.) Elie’s understanding of God and his presences and absence change throughout Night with the events that happen. When really bad things happen they challenge Elie’s faith and he blames God and gets mad. In the beginning, Elie was very pious but as more and more bad things happened, he began to lose his faith and was finally consumed in the fiery furnace of the concentration camp of Auschwitz. He had not known how evil men could be until that time and then could not understand why God would let men do such vile things to his children. As life goes on in the concentration camps, Elie begins to settle into this new life and does not rebel against God but when holidays or something harsher happens than is usual, he gets angry at God and rebels. The first night after getting off the train at Auschwitz, him deciding not to pray anymore, the hanging of the young pipel, the fasting for Yom Kippur, and later on he prays to God, who he doesn’t believe in anymore, that he will have the strength not to do what a boy did to his father in abandoning him are all points in his life where he has continual changes toward God. Sometimes he’s really angry, sometimes he’s just mad, and something he’s not mad at all.

10.) In Night, the most of the horrific events happen at night including the death of many. In the winter, the nights were the hardest because of the extreme coldness of the weather and the welcoming invitation to sleep which led many men to their deaths. It not only represents death but fear and uncertainty. The night brought out the darkness in them and the terrible things they could do. But it also left darkness in their souls, to overtake them and make them less than men. It also marks many times for Elie like the last night at home, the last night on the train, and the last night at Buna. His whole experience was like one never ending nightmare in a formidably dark and long night.

11.) I think Night is such a slim book with out a lot of detail because people can only handle so much horror and evilness at a time. Elie Wiesel actually had a hard time getting his book of memoirs published because no one wanted to remember the devastation of the Holocaust and how many lives were lost to it. Nobody wanted to read something that sad and depressing.

12.) Night is a memoir of a tragedy and a triumph. Elie Wiesel memories are horrible and tragic but he got through the concentration camps and survived. He was triumphant over all those trials and tribulations and escaped the jaws of death and the gates of hell. He made it. He survived. And even though he lost all those he care about, he survived and became a free man once more. It was tragic what happened but Elie Wiesel was triumphant.