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