Elie Wiesel The Nobel Peace Prize 1986

1. Elie WieselThe Nobel Peace Prize 1986

2. born in 1928 • Sighet, Hungary • now Romania. • Wiesel and his two older sisters survived. • Liberated from Buchenwald in 1945 by advancing Allied troops • Paris to work as a journalist.

3. outspoken on Soviet Jewry, on Ethiopian Jewry and on behalf of the State of Israel today. • New York City and is now a United States citizen. • Yale University, City College of New York, Boston University.

4. Elie Wiesel's statement, "...to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all...“ • 36 works dealing with Judaism, the Holocaust, and the moral responsibility of all people to fight hatred, racism and genocide.

5. TIMELINE----- • 1928--born in Sighet, Romania • 1944 deported to Auschwitz • Jan. 1945 father dies in Buchenwald • Apr.1945 liberated from concentration camp

6. 1948 moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne • 1948 work in journalism begins • 1954 decides to write about the Holocaust • 1958 Night is published • 1963 receives U.S. citizenship

7. 1964 returned to Sighet • 1965 first trip to Russia • 1966 publishes Jews of Silence • 1969 married Marion Rose • 1972 son is born

8. 1978 appointed chair of Presidential Commission on the Holocaust • 1980 Commission renamed U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council • 1985 awarded Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement • 1986 awarded Nobel Peace Prize • 1995--publishes memoirs

9. Section OneSummary • In 1941, Eliezer, the narrator, is a twelve-year-old boy living in the Transylvanian town of Sighet (then recently annexed to Hungary, now part of Romania). • Orthodox Jewish family • Shopkeepers, highly respected within Sighet’s Jewish community. • Eliezer has two older sisters, Hilda and Béa, and a younger sister named Tzipora.

10. Eliezer studies the Talmud, the Jewish oral law. • Cabbala (often spelled Kabbalah) Jewish mystical texts • Moshe the Beadle, a local pauper. • Moshe is deported and returns. • The town takes him for a lunatic and refuses to believe his story.

11. In the spring of 1944, the Hungarian government falls into the hands of the Fascists. • anti-Semitism beyond Budapest • the community leaders are arrested, Jewish valuables are confiscated, and all Jews are forced to wear yellow stars.

12. small ghettos • a gentile named Martha offers to hide them in her village. • Tragically, they decline the offer. A few days later, herded onto cattle cars bound for Auschwitz.

13. Analysis • Why did the Jews stay? • inability to acknowledge the cruelty of humans • Focus on relationship with father • father is a burden to him • and his guilt

14. preserve the memory of the Jewish tradition through his father. • laments the loss of this tradition • later struggle with his faith. • “Oh God, Lord of the Universe, take pity upon us….”

15. loss of faith • cannot believe God who would allow such suffering. • the most horrible of the Nazis’ deeds • metaphorical murder of God.

16. theodicy—how God can exist and permit such evil. • Night chronicles Eliezer’s loss of innocence, • his confrontation with evil, • and his questioning of God’s existence.

17. Section TwoSummary • Cattle cars, • unbearable conditions. • no air, the heat, no room to sit, • and everyone is hungry and thirsty.

18. loss their sense of public decorum. • Like MORP dancing • Flirting and ignoring • Hand over valuables or get shot. • The doors to the car are nailed shut, further preventing escape.

19. Madame Schächter, • soon cracks under the oppressive treatment • begins to scream • sees a fire in the darkness outside the car. • she is tied up and gagged

20. reached Auschwitz station. • name means nothing • bribe locals to get news. • labor camp where they will be treated well • and kept together as families. • a relief, • False hope kills

21. Madame Schächter again • she is beaten into silence. • everybody sees the chimneys of vast furnaces. • a terrible, • but undefined, odor in the air • burning human flesh. • Birkenau, the processing center for arrivals at Auschwitz.

22. Analysis • inhuman cruelty can deprive sense of morality • and humanity. • treating the Jews as less than human = • Inhuman act s • —cruelty breeds cruelty, • treated like animals, • begin to act like animals.

23. The first hint – • loss of modesty • and sense of sexual inhibition. • beat Madame Schächter • others vocally support

24. continual denial . . . • merely a work camp. • almost too awful a story to convey

25. sanity and insanity • The crazy, sees clearly into the future, • other Jews, the sane, fail to foresee their fate. • sanity and insanity become confused in the face of atrocity.

26. the extermination of six million Jews efficiently and methodically. • The world would never sit back and let this happen . . .

27. fiction and memoir. • breaks conventions of fiction writing • For example, separated from his mother and sister, Eliezer’s mother and sister are never mentioned again in Night.

28. first-person narration • powerful immediacy of emotion. • limited perspective • and lack of knowledge • all the more terrifying.

29. the beginnings of doubt: “Why should I bless His name?” Eliezer asks, “What had I to thank Him for?” • AkibaDrumer, whose faith in divine redemption raises the prisoners’ spirits.

30. the beginning of his loss of faith in man. • The guard beats his father • guiltily silent. • silence in the face of evil allows evil to survive.

31. the most famous, and the most moving, paragraphs in all of Night. • Eliezer looks back on his first night in Birkenau and describes not only what he felt at the time but also the lasting impact of that night:

32. Never shall I forget that night . . . which has turned my life into one long night . . . .Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God. . . . Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

33. repetition of “Never shall I forget” • forever burned into his mind. • personal mantra for Wiesel

34. the child’s murder • symbolically enacts the murder of God. • God must not exist in a world where an innocent child can be hanged on the gallows. • “Where is He?” • Eliezer asks rhetorically, and then answers, • “He is hanging here on this gallows.”

35. the death of Eliezer’s own innocence. • He has lost his faith • Beginning to lose his sense of morals and values as well.

36. Eliezer’s dominant goal. • only to feed himself. • angry at his father for failing to learn

37. sheer luck. • disrespectful of the memories of those millions who did not survive.

38. Final Summary • High Holidays are the time of divine judgment. • Rosh Hashanah like sheep before the shepherd • the SS (Nazi police) performs a selection on the prisoners at Buna. • Dr. Mengele, the notoriously cruel Nazi doctor • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mengele • God’s role

39. the Holocaust tests father-son bonds • the Binding of Isaac, known in Hebrew as the Akedah • Night reverses the Akedah story—the father is sacrificed so that his son might live. • God fails to appear to save the sacrificial victim at the last moment. • God is powerless, or silent.

40. must record the events of the Holocaust, honor his father’s memory, and repay his sacrifice. • not limited to the Holocaust—humanity has an unimaginably wicked streak in it.

41. “I’ve got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He’s the only one who’s kept his promises . . . to the Jewish people.” • Akiba Drumer’s death • humankind requires faith and hope to live. • the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead • betrayal not just of God but also of his fellow human beings.

42. All Rivers Run to the Sea, Wiesel speaks at far greater length about his religious feelings after the Holocaust. • “My anger rises up within faith and not outside it,” he writes. “I had seen too much suffering to break with the past and reject the heritage of those who had suffered.” • His narrator, Eliezer, unable to reject the Jewish tradition and the Jewish God completely, even though he declares his loss of faith

43. ends with Eliezer a shattered young man, faithless and without hope for himself or for humanity • The mere fact of writing Night seems to conflict with Eliezer’s hopelessness.

44. Buchenwald has fatally weakened Eliezer’s father. • he sits in the snow and refuses to move.

45. Eliezer’s father is afflicted with dysentery, • extremely dangerous to give water to a man with dysentery. • The prisoners steal his food and beat him.

46. Eliezer’s father again cries for water, the SS officer screams at Eliezer’s father to shut up, beats him in the head • The next morning, January 29, 1945, Eliezer wakes up to find that his father has been taken to the crematory. • To his deep shame, he does not cry. Instead, he feels relief.

47. Final Timeline • On April 5, with the American army approaching, the Nazis decide to annihilate all the Jews left in the camp. • On April 10, with about 20,000 people remaining in the camp, the Nazis decide to evacuate—and kill—everyone left in the camp. • on April 11, the American army arrives at Buchenwald. • Eliezer is struck with food poisoning and spends weeks in the hospital, deathly ill. • When he finally raises himself and looks in the mirror—he has not seen himself in a mirror since leaving Sighet—he is shocked: “From the depths of the mirror,” Wiesel writes, “a corpse gazed back at me.”

48. Night Study Guide Notes • There are five motifs to look for while reading Night: • Night – pay attention to what happens at night and what that might symbolize. Remember what we learned when we talked about archetypes and what night might symbolize. • Bearing Witness – Pay attention to which characters are witnesses and to what they bear witness.

49. Night Study Guide Notes • Motifs (continued): • Father-son Relationships – Pay attention to how Elie and his father’s relationship develops; in addition, notice other father-son relationships in the book. • Loss of faith – Notice how Elie’s faith in God changes as the book progresses. Write on your study guides where these changes occur.

50. Night Study Guide Notes • Motifs (continued): • Voice vs. Silence – Who has a voice and who chooses to remain silent? Why might Elie Wiesel title his novel what he did originally, and why did he no longer remain silent?