Who Is Madame Schachter?

Madame Schächter is a Jewish woman from Sighet who is deported in the same cattle car as Eliezer. She is one of the prophet-like characters in Elie Wiesel’s Night.
Madame Schachter’s madness derives from the smoke that only she sees. She attempts at warning the other Jews in the train carriage although nobody believes her. Her constant cries result in her beating and when off of the train, her crematory. It is later told that what she was seeing was, in fact, true. When Elie and his father are saved from the crematorium, Elie’s father questions him “Remember Madame Schachter?”.
Throughout the long nights in the train, she punctuates the imprisoned Jews’ journey with screaming and rambling about fire and flames, warning and begging the Jews to see the fire. Unwilling to listen to her warnings, the Jews beat her rather than acknowledge the danger they are in. She not only foresees the death that is to come for all of them, but the literal way everybody will die — their bodies burned in the crematoria of Auschwitz.