1. Jewish Terms Presentation
Directions: Please follow along and fill in the blanks on your handout.

2. Major Themes
Elie’s struggle to maintain faith in a good- benevolent God.
Silence (2 types- God’s Silence AND silence of prisoners).
Inhumanity toward other humans.
The Importance (or sacrifice)of parent-child bonds.
Tradition.
Religious Observance.

3. Night : Tone
Tone
Eliezer’s perspective is limited to his own experience, and the tone of Night is therefore intensely personal, subjective, and intimate. Night is not meant to be an all-encompassing discourse on the experience of the Holocaust; instead, it depicts the extraordinarily personal and painful experiences of a single victim.

4. Night: Setting setting (time) · 1941–1945, during World War II
settings (place)
Eliezer’s story begins in
Sighet, Transylvania (now part of Romania; during Wiesel’s childhood, part of Hungary)
The book then follows his journey through several concentration camps in Europe:
Auschwitz/Birkenau (in a part of modern-day Poland that had been annexed by Germany in 1939)
Buna (a camp that was part of the Auschwitz complex)
Gleiwitz (also in Poland but annexed by Germany)
Buchenwald (Germany)

5. Night Study Guide Notes
There are five motifs to look for while reading Night:
motifs (a recurring subject, theme, or idea)
Night – pay attention to what happens at night and what that might symbolize.
Bearing Witness – Pay attention to which characters are witnesses and to what they bear witness.

6. Night Study Guide Notes
Motifs (continued):
Father-son Relationships – Pay attention to how Elie and his father’s relationship develops; in addition, notice other father-son relationships in the book.
Loss of Faith – Notice how Elie’s faith in God changes as the book progresses. Write on your study guides where these changes occur.

7. Night Study Guide Notes
Motifs (continued):
Voice vs. Silence – Who has a voice and who chooses to remain silent? Why might Elie Wiesel title his novel what he did originally (And the World Has Remained Silent), and why did he no longer remain silent?
Click here to listen to Elie Wiesel's "A God who Remembers"

8. Two Symbols:
Fire
Night

9. A Guide to Jewish References in Night
Beadle—a caretaker or “man of all work” in a synagogue. (page 1)
Cabbala—Jewish mysticism. Followers believe that every aspect of the Torah has hidden meanings that link the spiritual world to everyday life.

10. A Guide to Jewish References in Night
Hasidism—a Jewish reform movement inspired by the cabbala that spread through Eastern Europe in the 1700s. For Hasidic Jews, the divine presence is everywhere, in everything.

11. A Guide to Jewish References in Night
Passover—a Jewish holiday that is celebrated for eight days each spring to recall the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt where they were held in slavery. (page 8)
Pentecost—the Jewish holiday that commemorates the revelation of the Law on Mount Sinai. Called Shavuot in Hebrew, it is celebrated about seven weeks after Passover. (page 10)

12. A Guide to Jewish References in Night
Synagogue—a Jewish house of prayer. (page 1)
Talmud—from a word that means study or learning. A collection of teachings and commentaries on the Torah, the Five Books of Moses. (page 1)
Temple, The—a reference to the Temple in Jerusalem, which the Romans destroyed in 70 A.D. It was the center of Jewish worship in ancient times. Today Jews recall its destruction in their daily prayers. (page 1)

13. A Guide to Jewish References in Night
Zionism—the belief that Jews must once more become a nation with a land of their own in Palestine. A commitment to Zionism led a number of European Jews to settle in Palestine in the early 1900s. (page 6)

14. Terms you will encounter often
Auschwitz-Birkenau—established in 1940 as a concentration camp, a killing center was added in 1942 at Birkenau. Also part of the huge camp complex was a slave labor camp known as Buna-Monowitz.
Concentration camp—a prison camp in which individuals are held without regard for accepted rules of arrest and detention.

15. Terms you will encounter often
Death camp—a camp where the Nazis murdered people in assembly-line style. The largest death camp was Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Kapo—a prisoner forced to oversee other prisoners.
Mengele, Josef (1911–1979)—senior SS physician at Auschwitz-Birkenau from 1943–1944. He carried out “selections” of prisoners upon their arrival at the camp and conducted experiments on some of those prisoners.

16. Terms you will encounter often
“Selection”—the process the Nazis used to separate those prisoners who would be assigned to forced labor from those who were to be killed immediately.
SS—in German, Schutzstaffel; the elite guard of Nazi Germany. It provided staff for the police, camp guards, and military units within the German army.