Struggle and Hope: A Tale of Survival During Unimaginable Times
Moshe, a devoted scholar, witnesses the horrors of the Holocaust and tries to warn fellow Jews in Sighet, who initially dismiss his warnings. As their village is taken over by the Nazis, they face ghettos and brutality, testing their resilience and hope for liberation amidst unimaginable suffering and loss.
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Presentation Transcript
Moshe chooses to live in poverty, doing odd jobs so that most of his time can be spent devoted to religious study. Eliezer wants to study Jewish mysticism (against his father s wishes). Moshe becomes Eliezer s respected teacher and role model.
All foreign born Jews are deported, including Moshe. Moshe returns and tells the story of mass execution by the Nazis. Moshe escapes and is a changed man; a man without faith or joy. He warns the townspeople, but they refuse to believe him. Even Eliezer doubts him and feels pity on his old teacher who people believe has gone mad.
The war has not yet touched them directly. They feel their remote village is insignificant to the Nazis. The end of the war is in sight, and the Jews of Sighet are optimistic that the Russian army will liberate them.
There are two ghettos in Sighet. All Jews must live in one and wear a gold star. The Jews soon feel a false sense of autonomy in the ghettos as they set up councils to handle health care, communication with captures, law enforcement and sanitation. The Jews hope that they will live out the rest of the war in this fashion.
Before the Nazis occupy Sighet, Eliezer urges his father to sell his shop and move to Palestine. His father refuses; he feels he is too old to start over in a new place. The Weisels' former servant, Martha, begs the family to live with her; the elder Wiesel is too proud to accept. Shortly before the evacuation of the ghetto, someone knocks on the Wiesels window, but is gone before anyone can answer. Eliezer later finds out that the police inspector was trying to warn his family to flee.
The Hungarian police mercilessly beat the Jews during the evacuation. The Jews are forced to sit or stand long hours in sweltering heat without food or drink. Jews are packed 80 to a cattle car; they can barely breathe, let alone sit or stand. The journey takes several days and nights. Madame Schachter screams about an all consuming fire that is invisible to the rest of the passengers.
The deportees are sympathetic toward Madame Schachter when she begins her decent into madness, but as her hysteria increases, some become less tolerant of her. They beat her into submission.
Madame Schachters cries were prophetic. Upon arriving at Auschwitz the deportees are shaken by the sight of the black smoke from the gigantic chimney. They are seeing the crematory, and its purpose becomes the central source of horror throughout their time in the camps.
Selection is the process by which it is decided which prisoners will live as laborers and which will feed the crematory. Selections are conducted quickly and dispassionately. First, men and women are segregated. Groups march toward the infamous Dr. Mengele; he questions them about age, health, and occupation. The questions are cursory and the decisions are random.
Eliezer and his father lie to save their lives. While marching toward Mengele, another prisoner asks their ages and corrects their reply; Eighteen and forty he orders. If the two were truthful, they would be too young and too old for labor. Eliezer quickly lies about his occupation calling himself a farmer. A student may be considered useless.
Birkenau is euphemistically described as the reception center for Auschwitz, the death camp where Jews and others are slaughtered and burned. The prisoners are selected for either labor or death at Birkenau.
Being subjected to one atrocity after another takes its toll physically, emotionally, and spiritually. But, it is the ditch filled with babies that forever shakes Eliezer s steadfast faith in God. Eliezer never questions God s existence, but he condemns a God that permits such atrocities.
Eliezer sees a second ditch and it seems that he is being directed toward it. Deciding that he wishes to be the master of his own fate he quickly plans to break ranks and throw himself against the electrified fence. He offers a final prayer. Two steps before the ditch, the prisoners are herded into the barracks instead.
The prisoners are quickly stripped of independence and individuality and are left naked and vulnerable as their captors examine them. Kept awake through the first cold night, broken, sickened, and weeping, prisoners are forced to run for what seems like an eternity the next day. They are dosed with disinfectant, showered and dressed in ill- fitting prison garb. Eliezer s father receives a savage beating for asking to go to the bathroom; even Eliezer does nothing to help his father. They are to work and if their work is not satisfactory they will die.
The prisoners offer total submission to their captors. They lose the independent will to object to their treatment, and they are willing to turn on other prisoners to save themselves. In using prisoners to maintain order, the Nazis are able to easily control large groups of people.
An unidentified prisoner advises Eliezer and his father on the ages they must reply to survive the selection. Many prisoners cling to hope and humanity through religion. They are able to accept the existence of the camps by rationalizing that God is testing them. Often the prisoners in charge are as brutal as their captors. The Polish block leader is an exception; he offers kind words and emphasizes that prisoners must not lose their faith or abandon each other. Eliezer lies to a relative who asks him about his wife and children. Eliezer gives the man the last happiness he ever knows by saying that he has not heard from them.
Buna is a labor camp and the two Wiesels are selected for labor. Upon leaving Auschwitz the prisoners march for hours to Buna. With so many Germans fighting in the war the workforce has been depleted; the workforce is supplemented with prisoners, and Eliezer works at a warehouse with civilians.
As the child dies, one of the prisoners asks, Where is God? At that moment the child, who is silently suffering a prolonged, agonizing, public death on the gallows, symbolizes God to Eliezer.
Kapos are prison officials in charge of the work crews. They are characterized as being brutal, sadistic, and having enough power to be corrupt.
The prisoners realize that a single bomb could kill hundreds of prisoners, but they welcome the bombs joyfully. Periodic air raids mean that the war is moving closer to the camp, and when the front line reaches the camp the surviving prisoners will be liberated. One air raid lasts an hour and Eliezer wished it would last one hundred hours. Prisoners cheerfully clear away the ruins of the raid.
Upon facing the possible death by Allied bombs Eliezer says, we were no longer afraid of death, at any rate, not of that death. A death that would also bring about the death of their captors is not frightening after what they endured.
Eliezers anger towards God deepens. Eliezer admonished God for tormenting the other prisoners minds with his continued presence. Eliezer accuses God of active responsibility for torturing the Jews. Eliezer s rebellion against God leaves a profound void in his heart.
The prisoners run about in preparation for the display to get some color in their flesh. They run past Mengele to create an illusion of strength and to prevent Mengele from being able to note their identification numbers.
Father gives Eliezer his only belongings: a knife and a spoon. Eliezer s father believes that this will be his final good-bye to his son. Eliezer tries to refuse them, but his father insists, and Eliezer takes his inheritance.
Eliezers foot becomes painfully swollen during the January cold. The doctor says the he needs an operation. Another patient warns him that being hospitalized makes one prime target for selection. Faced with possible amputation if the foot is not cured, he accepts the danger of the hospital. The operation is done without anesthetic. He learns that his foot will heal, but he must recover for two weeks, making him vulnerable to the next selection.
Two days after the operation, rumors spread that the Russian army is on its way to liberate Buna. The prisoners learn that they will be marched from the camp. Eliezer leaves the hospital to find his father. They must choose either: Eliezer leaving the hospital and joining the father in the march, or his father joining Eliezer in the hospital. They choose the march believing that the Nazis will surely kill any prisoners left behind.
The realization that his death would leave his father alone helps Eliezer summon the strength to continue. The two Wiesels take turns inspiring each other to continue.
Eliezer prays that he should not do the same to his father. It is difficult for Eliezer to fight the feelings that his own chances for survival would increase without his father to support. Speaking with the abandoned Rabbi helps refocus Eliezer s commitment to his father.
As the elder Wiesel is sent to the left with the obviously weak, Eliezer creates a confusion that allows him to bring his father back to the right. Since the Nazis are pressed for time because of the approaching Russian army, the selection process breaks down. Many prisoners are killed in the process, but Eliezer and his father survive.
An elderly mans son lunges at him for a morsel of bread, even as the father tries to share it with him. The two incite the other hungry prisoners, and after the fight, the father and son are both dead. If the bond between father and son is broken, then genocide is realized even if the crematory fires are extinguished; they no longer need the fires to kill them; they are destroying each other.
Eliezers father suffers from dysentery and will surely die; the doctors see no point in treating him. Caregivers are no longer willing to waste any resources on the dying.
Eliezer feels intense guilt and blames himself for doing nothing when the guard attacks his father. Eliezer s father is gone after their phenomenal struggle, yet Eliezer cannot cry. Worst of all he cannot fight the feeling that he is free at last. Eliezer cannot save his father, so his feelings of guilt are irrational.
As the front approaches the surviving Jews are ordered to gather in the camp. News spread that they will be executed on the spot. The camp resistance movement interferes with the execution, and instruction is given to ignore the order. Five days later the resistance movement stages a rebellion , freeing the prisoners shortly before liberation by the American army.
The prisoners eat. Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. We thought only of that. Not of revenge, not of our families. Nothing but bread.
After surviving the selection, the abuse, and the starvation of the camps, Eliezer nearly dies of food poisoning after liberation. Ironically, the very sustenance he needs to survive almost kills him when he finally gets it.
Eliezer has not looked at himself in the mirror since deportation from the ghettos. When he finally regains enough strength to look at himself in a mirror, he says he sees a corpse. Physically he is alive, but Eliezer s spirit has died.
