"Night" by Elie Wiesel essay

Eliezer arrives with his parents and sisters in Poland at Auschwitz-Birkenau, known as Auschwitz II, the death camp (Todeslager), one of three main camps and 40 subcamps in the Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, erected by the Germans on the grounds of an abandoned Polish army barracks.[19] Men and women are separated on arrival; Eliezer and his father to the left; his mother, Hilda, Beatrice, and Tzipora to the right. He learned years later that his mother and Tzipora had been sent straight to the gas chamber.

For a part of a second I glimpsed my mother and my sisters moving away to the right. Tzipora held Mother's hand. I saw them disappear into the distance; my mother was stroking my sister's fair hair ... and I did not know that in that place, at that moment, I was parting from my mother and Tzipora forever.[20]

The remainder of Night describes Eliezer's initial, desperate efforts not to be parted from his father, not even to lose sight of him; his grief and shame at witnessing his father's decline into helplessness; and as their relationship changes and the young man becomes the older man's caregiver, his resentment and guilt, because he fears that his father's existence threatens his own. The stronger Eliezer's instinct for physical survival becomes, the weaker grow the bonds that tie him to other people.

His loss of faith in human relationships is mirrored in his loss of faith in God, who remains silent. During the first night in Auschwitz, he and his father wait in line to be thrown into a firepit. He watches a lorry draw up beside the pit and deliver its load of children into the fire. While his father recites the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead — "I do not know whether it has ever happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have ever recited the prayer for the dead for themselves"[21]— Wiesel considers throwing himself against the electric fence. At just that moment, he and his father are ordered instead to go to their barracks. But "the student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me."[22]

Members of the Sonderkommando burn corpses in the firepits at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Photographer Alberto Errera, August 1944. Courtesy of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, Poland.[23]

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
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 and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.[24]

Ellen Fine writes that this passage summarizes all the themes of Night: the death of God, children, innocence, self. With the loss of his sense of self, Eliezer also loses his sense of time.[25] This défaite du moi, dissolution of the self, is a recurring theme in Holocaust literature, writes Fine.[26]

I glanced at my father. How he had changed! ... The night was gone. So much had happened within such a few hours that I had lost all sense of time. When had we left our houses? And the ghetto? And the train? Was it only a week? One night — one single night?[22]

God is not lost to Eliezer entirely. Later, during the hanging of a child, which the camp is forced to watch, he hears someone in the crowd ask: Where is God? Where is he? Not heavy enough for the weight of his body to break his neck, the boy dies slowly and in agony, "struggling between life and death." Wiesel files past him, sees his tongue still pink and his eyes still clear, and weeps.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking: Where is God now?
And I heard a voice within me answer him: ... Here He is – He is hanging here on this gallows.[27]

Fine writes that this is the central event in Night, evoking the imagery of a religious sacrifice, Isaac bound to the altar or Jesus on the cross.[28] Alfred Kazin wrote of the scene that it has "made this book famous ... It is the literal death of God ..."[29] Shortly after the hanging, the other inmates celebrate Rosh Hashanah, but Eliezer cannot take part.

Blessed be God's name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because He kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces? ... But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man