Summary
Elie Wiesel's novel, Night, tells the tragic tale of Wiesel's experience in a Hungarian ghetto and, later, Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buna concentration camps. Prior to being deported and imprisoned in a concentration camp, Eliezer and his family live in Sighet, a town that was annexed to Hungary. His parents are shopkeepers, devoutly religious, and well-respected members of the Jewish community. Night takes a dark turn when Jewish people from Sighet quickly lose their rights under the Nazi regime in Europe. Eliezer's family loses their business and possessions and are forced to move into a crowded ghetto. Later, the Nazis and Hungarian police begin to deport Jews in increments; Elizer's family is one of the last groups of people to leave the ghetto before they are rounded up into cattle cars and taken to Birkenau concentration camp. There, Eliezer and his father are immediately separated from his younger sister and mother; he never sees them again. As time passes, Elizer and his father are moved to Auschwitz and then Buna to work various jobs; in each camp, they witness horrible atrocities: babies being burned in crematoriums, prisoners being beaten, overworked, and starved, and previously devout Jews losing their faith. When Eliezer witnesses a child executed by hanging for trying to steal some soup, he completely loses his faith, believing that God died with the child. When Buna is evacuated because the Soviet Union is closing in on the camps, Eliezer and his father leave with many other prisoners, to end up running on a 42-mile death march before being starved on another cattle car (headed for Buchenwald) for 10 days to witness sons kill their fathers over scraps of food thrown in by S.S. soldiers. At Buchenwald, Eliezer's father dies of dysentery, and Eliezer is horrified by his feeling of relief (that he only has to care for himself) instead of sadness. On April 11, 1945, Buchenwald is liberated by American forces; when Eliezer catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror, he does not recognize his reflection, and instead regards himself as a corpse.