The Summary of Elie Wiesel's Novel Night

Night is tell by Eliezer, a Jewish teenager who, when the memoir commence, living in his hometown of Sighet, in Hungarian Transylvania. Eliezer studies the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) and the Cabbala (a doctrine of Jewish mysticism). His education is cut short, however, when his instructor, Moshe the Beadle, is deported. In a few months, Moshe returns, telling a frighten narrative: the Gestapo (the German secret police force) took command of his train, led everyone into the woods, and methodically slaughterer them. Nobody trust Moshe, who is taken for a madman.

In the spring of 1944, the Nazis occupy Hungary. Not long afterward, a succession of increasingly repressive measures are passed, and the Jews of Eliezer’s village are hurried into small ghettos within Sighet. Soon they are drove onto cattle cars, and a nightmarish expedition ensues. After days and nights crammed into the car, fatigued and near starvation, the passengers arrive at Birkenau, the gate to Auschwitz.

Upon his arrival in Birkenau, Eliezer and his father are separated from his mother and sisters, whom they never see again. In the first of many “selections” that Eliezer portray in the memoir, the Jews are evaluated to decide whether they should be killed promptly or put to work. Eliezer and his father seem to pass the evaluation, but before they are brought to the prisoners’ barracks, they stumble upon the open-pit furnaces where the Nazis are burning infant by the busload.

The Jewish arrivals are undress, shaved, sanitize, and treated with almost unimaginable harshness. Eventually, their captors march them from Birkenau to the main camp, Auschwitz. They finally arrive in Buna, a work camp, where Eliezer is put to work in an electrical-fittings workshop. Under slave-labor conditions, severely underfed and decimated by the habitual “selections,” the Jews take comfort in caring for each other, in religion, and in Zionism, a movement favoring the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, considered the sacred land. In the camp, the Jews are exposed to beatings and repeated humiliations. A corrupt foreman forces Eliezer to give him his golden tooth, which is pried out of his mouth with a rusty spoon.

The prisoners are forced to watch the hanging of fellow prisoners in the camp courtyard. On one occasion, the Gestapo even hang a weak kid who had been associated with some rebels within Buna. Because of the frightful circumstances in the camps and the ever-present risk of death, many of the prisoners themselves start to slip into harshness, concerned only with personal survival. Sons start to abandon and abuse their fathers. Eliezer himself begins to destroy his humanity and his faith, both in God and in the community around him.

After months in the camp, Eliezer undergoes an operation for a foot injury. While he is in the hospital, however, the Nazis choose to evacuate the camp for the Russians are advancing and are on the brink of liberating Buna. In the middle of a blizzard, the prisoners commence a death march: they are forced to run for more than fifty miles to the Gleiwitz concentration camp. Many perish of exposure to the severe weather and fatigue. At Gleiwitz, the prisoners are herded into cattle cars once again. They commence another fatal journey: one hundred Jews enter the car, but only twelve remain alive when the train reaches the concentration camp Buchenwald. Throughout the ordeal, Eliezer and his father support each other to survive by means of joint support and concern. In Buchenwald, however, Eliezer’s father dies of dysentery and physical abuse. Eliezer survives, an empty shell of a man.