![]() In the first section of Night, there is a shroud of gloom behind every word. Whether Jews could have escaped the horrors of Holocaust if they had acted wisely in time will always remain a vexed question in the memories of those who survived the horrific events. Soon, the Nazis and the Hungarian police bundle them in cattle cars bound for Auschwitz. Not knowing what fate has in store for them, they decline the offer. Eliezer’s family is first moved into a smaller ghetto where their former servant, Martha, visits them and offers to hide them in her village. They see other Jews crowding the streets of Sighet under the hot sun with their backpacks on. Eliezer’s family is among the last to leave their hometown. Eventually, they are huddled in small ghettos behind the barbed-wire fences.įinally, the Nazis start deporting Jews in installments. The Jewish community leaders are arrested, their valuables confiscated, and wearing yellow stars is made mandatory for them. The Germans move into Sighet and start the oppression of the Jews. The Jews were of the belief that Nazi anti-Semitism would be limited only to the capital city of Budapest, but soon they were proven wrong. In 1944, the Hungarian government is overthrown by the fascists, and the next day, the German army takes over Hungary. However, no one in Sighet believes him, and he is taken for a lunatic. He also narrates how the Jews were forced to dig mass graves for themselves and were subsequently killed. He narrates how trains full of Jewish prisoners were handed over to the Gestapo near the border of Poland. A few months have passed Moshe escapes from the captivity and returns to Sighet to tell a grisly tale. Momentarily, this anti-Semitic act draws the anger of Jews in Sighet but soon they forget about it. Soon, the Hungarians banish all foreign Jews, including Moshe. ![]() Eliezer takes lessons from a sensitive but challenging teacher, Moshe the Beadle, a local pauper. It is unusual for a preteen and Eliezer’s father is also not very happy about it. ![]() He studies the Talmud - the Jewish oral law - and the mystical Jewish texts of Cabbala (spelled Kabbalah). Eliezer has three sisters: two older sisters, Hilda and Bee, and Tripura, the younger. Eliezer’s father is a highly respected person in Sighet’s Jewish community. The 12 year old is the only son in an Orthodox Jewish family, all of whom are shopkeepers by profession. In 1941, Eliezer, the narrator of the story, is a preteen boy from Sighet, a Transylvanian town annexed by Hungary but now part of Romania.
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