In her memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel uses different literary devices to illustrate the horrors of the Holocaust. Foreshadowing is one of the most common.
One of the examples of foreshadowing in Wiesel’s novel comes when Moishe the Beadle tells the people of Sighet about the atrocities that he witnessed being carried out by the Nazis against Jews in Galicia, and from which he managed to escape. This foreshadows the dire fate that awaits the Jews of Sighet.
One more example of foreshadowing appears before Eliezer, his family, and the other Jews on the train to the concentration camp. Madame Schachter was a Jewish woman from Sighet who was deported in the same cattle car as Eliezer. She is considered crazy and annoying by the passengers riding with her on the train. She screams about a fire and about everyone being burned up, and her fellow passengers want nothing more than to silence her, thinking that she is hysterical. However, Madame Schachter's vision of fire foreshadows the crematorium where people were sent, dead or alive, to be burned if they cease to be useful to the Nazi party.
Foreshadowing is also seen when Eliezer’s father, Shlomo, is selected as a weak one and therefore as someone to be killed. This foreshadows that his father is, in fact, growing weaker and will soon die.