Review: Night
As this is an autobiography, readers see what events Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel focused on. The chapters alternate “Before” and “During” his time in concentration camps.
The story begins with Hungary becoming an ally to Germany as they believed they would be getting back the land they had lost in World War I.
Moishe the Beadle warns Eliezer and others of the pending evil. He tells them of being made to dig graves for mass extermination and says the Nazis would come for them but most ignore Moshie the Beadle thinking he is mad.
Eliezer tried to talk his dad into leaving but his dad told him he was too old to leave this land. Hungarian authorities, under German influence, deported Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Eliezer's dad buries their gold and silver in the cellar before they are taken to the Holocaust cattle car.
In the cattle car, we see many parallels not only between the treatment of humans to cattle and Nazis to Jews but also by the prisoners beating Madame Schächter as her young son looks on. Her screams foreshadow the crematories at Auschwitz.
Eliezer quickly learns that the Nazis choose who is fit to work and who is not. His mother and younger sister are taken to the gas chamber on the night of their arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau. His father and he were transported to Buchenwald.
Eliezer was tattooed, like an animal, with an identity number A-7713.
Readers are witnesses to the struggle for survival, the sexual slavery, and the deplorable and unprecedented loss of life that is taking place.
Tragically, Eliezer last sees his dad on the night of Jan 28th, 1945. The camp was liberated on April 11, 1945.