Post on 02-Jan-2016
Elie Wiesel’s Night
The story of a Holocaust survivor
Elie Wiesel• Born 1928• Family was Jewish:
both ethically and religiously
• Lived in the village Sighet, Hungary
• Deported in May, 1944
• Rescued in April 1945 from Buchenwalk concentration camp
After His Rescue
• Lived in France with his two surviving sisters
• Worked as a French journalist
• Would not speak about his Holocaust experiences for 10 years
• Night first appeared in 1956 – much longer and written in Yiddish
• Won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986
Context of Night: The Holocaust
The Beginning
• January 1933: Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany; Germany has a Jewish population of around 556,000
• March 1933: The concentration camps Dachau and Buchenwald are opened
• Over the next two years, Jews are systematically stripped of power and privileges
The Nuremburg Laws
• Enacted in September 1935
• Defined Judaism as a race rather than a religion
• Set up strict laws such as– No citizenship– No intermarrying with “Aryan races”– Required to carry identification cards that
clearly labeled them as Jewish
The Makings of War
• March 1938: German troops “peacefully” occupy Austria
• November 1938: Kristallnacht: The Night of Broken Glass
• September 1939: Germany invades Poland – WWII starts
• November 1939: Polish Jews required to wear the yellow Star of David
• June 1940: Germany occupies Paris
“The Final Solution”
• July 1941: “The Final Solution” begins over the next 4 years 6 million Jews will be murdered
Why?
“But if I would show the good that came of it
I must talk of things other than good.”
OR
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
~Dante’s Inferno
Night
• Based on Elie Wiesel’s experience but not an exact account
• Contains many literary elements
• First published 1956
• First written in Yiddish, then French, then English