Night #2
1. Primo Levi, who was also at Auschwitz-Birkenau, wrote in his novella, Survival in Auschwitz:
It is not possible to sink lower than this: no human condition is
more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing
belongs to us any more; they have taken away our clothes, our
shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if
they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away
our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find ourselves
the strength to do so, to manage so that behind the name something
of us, of us, as we were, remains.
How are Levi's responses to his initiation into Auschwitz similar to
those of Elie? What differences seem most striking?
2. Elie describes two hangings. He tells the reader that he witnessed many others. Yet he chose to write only about these two. Why are these two hangings so important to him? How do they differ from the others?
3. Why do you think the Germans chose to hang a few prisoners in public at a time when they are murdering thousands each day in the crematoriums?
4. When the young boy is hanged, a prisoner asks, "Where is God now?" Elie thinks to himself, "He is hanging here on this gallows.." What does this statement mean? Is it a statement of despair? Anger? Or hope? Explain.
5. Wiesel said the following of inmates who tried "to show the killers they could be just like them":
No one has the right to judge them, especially not those who did not
experience Auschwitz or Buchenwald . The sages of our Tradition
state point-blank: "Do not judge your fellow-man until you stand in
his place." In other words, in the same situation, would I have acted
as he did? Sometimes doubt grips me. Suppose I had spent not
eleven months but eleven years in a concentration camp. Am I sure I
would have kept my hands clean? No, I am not, and no one can be.
How does Wiesel try to help us understand why it is so difficult to judge those who "tried to play the executioner's game"?
Wiesel writes that he prefers to remember "the kindness and compassion" of his fellow prisoners rather than those who were cruel or violent. Why does he view both as victims?
6. What is the meaning of the title, Night ?
