Night by Elie Wiesel is a story of a Jewish boy who was separated from the majority of his family, never to be seen by them again. Elie grew up in the town of Sighet. Sighet is a very small town in Transylvania. Moshe the Beadle is the person that teaches Elie about religion, however then he gets deported. After many years, he comes back and tells them how dangerous the German Army is becoming. The Nazis come to Sighet and set up ghettos. A ghetto is defined as a section predominantly inhabited by Jews. The ghetto had extremely poor living conditions.
The Germans begin crowding the Jews of Sighet into wagons that are normally used to transport cattle. Each of the cars has around 80 people in each, which makes it an extremely crowded ride. In Elie’s car there is a woman that all of sudden starts yelling about fire. Everyone thinks she is crazy, but when they get to Auschwitz they see furnaces and people being thrown into them. Elie and his father are taken to the same place, but they don’t know they will never see the rest of their family ever again.
Elie and his father are taken to numerous camps and forced to work and are beaten to within an inch of death. When Elie and his father are forced to walk a really far distance and many people die. Around 100 people started and after the long walk only 12 survive. Both of the Wiesel’s survive the trip, but his father gets extremely sick. His father eventually dies. On April 11, 1945 Elie is saved when good guys take over the camp. His has survived with his belief in God and the help of his father.
I think that this was a really good book. Elie had to have had a lot of courage to look back on all of this sadness and have to strength to right a compelling book. This book truly shows how much despair there was in the concentration camps. I think it is very sad that these Jews had to go through this just because of an extremely hateful and evil country. All in all it is a good book.
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