Night Case

"Night" is a representation of what occurred during the Holocaust. It gives detailed descriptions of how prisoners were selected and what the prisoners had to endure. It is hard to believe people really had to endure this type of treatment and is even more unbelievable that people endured this treatment. I personally do not believe I would have survived during the Holocaust because I would have tried to rebel from the beginning and would have been killed.

"Night" is a story about Eliezer, a twelve year old Jewish boy who lives in Sighet, Transylvania. He is the only son in an Orthodox Jewish family that strictly adheres to Jewish law and tradition. His parents are shopkeepers, and his father is highly respected within the Sighet Jewish community. Eliezer has two older sisters, Hilda and Béa, and a younger sister named Tzipora. Eliezer studies the Talmud and the Jewish mystical texts of the Cabbala. Eliezer has a teacher named Moshe the Beadle, a local pauper, who is a sensitive and challenging teacher. The teaching does not last for long because the Hungarians expel all foreign Jews from the country. After several of months, Moshe returns to Sighet, having escaped from his captors, telling how the deportation trains were given to the Gestapo at the Polish border. From there the Jews were forced to dig massive graves for themselves, then killed by the Gestapo. The town sees Moshe for a lunatic and do not believe anything he says. In the spring of 1944, the Hungarian government falls into the hands of the Fascists, and the next day the German armies occupy Hungary. The Germans soon move into Sighet with series of increasingly oppressive measures forced on the Jews. The community leaders are arrested, Jewish valuables are confiscated, and all Jews are forced to wear yellow stars. Eventually, the Jews are confined to small ghettos, crowded together into narrow streets behind barbed wire fences. The Jews then begin to deport the Jews from Sighet, Eliezer's family being one of the last to be deported. The family's former servant Martha, a gentile, offers to hide the family in her village. The family declines the offer a few days later are led onto cattle cars bound for Auschwitz.

On the way to Auschwitz, the Jews are plagued by nearly intolerable surroundings. It is hard to breathe, it is very hot, everyone is hungry, tired, and thirsty, and there is no room to sit. The emotions of people begin to come out, both sexually and the expression of the conditions the people are in. After several of days in these practically unbearable conditions, the train finally arrives to the Czechoslovakian border, causing the Jews to realize things are only going to worsen. A German officer takes official charge of the train, threatening to shoot anybody who refuses to surrender their valuables and to kill everybody in the car if anybody escapes. The doors to the car are nailed shut in order to ensure nobody escapes from the train. While everyone is on the brink of losing it, Madame Schächter, who is on the train with her ten year old son, loses it. She begins to scream that she sees a fire in the middle of a dark sky, despite the fact that there is no fire. Everyone is at first terrified, but then notice there is no fire so they just see her as being crazy. Madame Schächter has to be tied up and beaten in order to be kept quiet. The train finally arrives to Auschwitz, where the families realize they are going to have to work at a labor camp at Birkenau, which is a processing center for Auschwitz, but will be kept together which is a relief to the families.

At Birkenau, the Jews are being selected between the people are strong enough to work and the weaker people. The people who are categorized as strong enough to work are moved on while the weaker people are killed. Eliezer and his father remain together while his mother and younger sister from the two, whom he never sees again. Eliezer and his father meet a prisoner who tells them to lie about their ages, Eliezer is told to say that he is eighteen as well as a farmer and his father is told to say he is forty in order for the two to stay together. The young Jews are contemplating to rebel against the camp, but the older Jews convince them to rely on faith. Eliezer is happy that he is able to stay with his father, but is uncertain for what is about to happen next. As the prisoners move through Birkenau, they pass a pit of babies being burned and another pit for adults. Eliezer is astonished by what he sees and tells his