Although we may work on this as a class, this is an individual assignment.  You are to complete your own work individually.  All of your responses are to come from your brain and the text.  No outside sources are permitted.  Those who honestly complete their own work will be rewarded with credit. Type your answers in a different color.

Night Study Questions

Section 1, pages 1-20 
Central or Main Idea: Eliezer’s relationship with God is going to play a major role throughout the book. At this point in Eliezer’s life, nothing has happened yet to shake his faith or question God’s benevolence. He doesn’t know why he cries when he prays. He doesn’t even know why he prays. He’d never thought about it before. He might as well ask himself, “Why do I live? Why do I breathe?” Who can say? But unimaginable horrors await young Eliezer. Soon these questions will be very real to him, not just rhetorical. Why does he live? Why does he pray? When he asks these questions, Moishe warns him that God’s answers aren’t necessarily within our understanding. We can only hope to ask the right questions and search inside ourselves for the answers.


1. Describe Moishe the Beadle. 
He worked at the ____________ synagogue. He was able to make himself seem __________, almost invisible. He was  ____________ , with  ____________  eyes, and did not  ____________  much. Page 3

2. Describe Elie Wiesel's father. What was his occupation? 
He was  ____________  and  ____________ . He had more concern for  ____________  than for his  ____________ . He and his wife were ____________ . Page 4

3. Why was Moshe the Beadle important to Elie Wiesel? 
Moshe became his  ____________ , or instructor in the  ____________  aspects of the  ____________  faith. Page 4, 5

4. Summarize the story Moshe the Beadle told on his return from being deported. Why  did he say he had returned to Sighet? 
He and the other ____________  Jews had been taken by ____________ through  ____________  and into  ____________ . They were taken to a forest and made to  ____________ . Then the Gestapo  ____________ . Moshe ____________ because he had been ____________, although he was just wounded. He said he returned to tell the ____________ to prepare themselves before it was ____________. Pages 6, 7


5. What was the public reaction to Moishe's story? 
People ____________ to believe him. Some would not ____________ to him. They said he just wanted their ____________. Page 7



6. What was the setting and the year for the first section of the book? What was the world's condition at the time? 
His story opens in ____________, in the town of ____________ in ____________. World War II was in progress. The author mentions ____________, then describes events in ____________. The ____________ party had taken power. Pages 3, 8

7. Describe, in order, the events that happened from the last day of Passover until Pentecost. On the seventh day of ____________ the ____________ arrested the   ____________. The Jewish residents were not allowed to ____________ for ____________  days. At the end of the ____________ the Jews had to start wearing the ____________. Then two ____________ were set up. On the Saturday before Pentecost, Stern attended an extraordinary meeting of the council. When he returned he told the others they were all to be ____________, starting the ____________. P10-22


8. How did Wiesel say he felt about the Hungarian police? 
He said he began to ____________ them because they were his and his community's first ____________. p19


9. Who was Maria? What happened when she visited the Wiesel family in the ghetto? 
Maria was a former ____________of the Wiesel family. She visited the family in the ____________ and offered them ________________. Elie's father refused V. He told Elie and his sisters they could ____________, but they refused to____________. p20


Sections 2, 3, pages 21-43 
Point of View: The point of view of the narrator is most often limited to Wiesel’s experience at the age when the events of Night take place—in the case of this first night, age fifteen. This passage is one of the instances in which the author breaks this form and comments on what is happening from his adult perspective, decades later. This allows the author to step back and take a long view while emphasizing for the reader the deep impact of the first night.
Tone/Language: Wiesel is giving a firsthand account of events that could not be more emotionally devastating. When he articulates the permanent effects these events have had upon him, he does so in purposefully simple and rhythmic language. The opening sentence repeats night three times, echoing the book’s title, and it concludes with a powerful invocation, biblical in tone, of a memory “seven times sealed.” Continuing the incantatory tone, the following six lines starkly and rhythmically repeat the phrase “Never shall I forget,” like a prayer, enshrining each memory and its terrible cost. The seventh line, acting as the seventh seal, consists of the single word, powerful in its finality: Never.

10. To what did Wiesel compare the world? 
He said it was a ____________ hermetically ____________.  Page 24


11. What did Madame Schächter see in her vision? 
She said she saw a ____________--a ____________, with huge ____________. Pages 24, 25


12. How did the other people in the car react to Madame Schächter? 
Some of the young men ____________ and ____________. Then they hit her. The others____________ the young men. Page 26


13. Where did the train stop? 
It stopped at ____________.  Page 27, 28


14. What did the Jews in the train car discover when they looked out the window? 
They saw ____________ gushing out of a ____________ into the sky. Page 28


15. When did Wiesel say the travelers left their illusions behind? 
It was when they left the ____________ at ____________. They left their cherished ____________ and____________ behind on the ____________. Page 29


16. Which notorious SS officer did they meet at Auschwitz? 
They met _____________. Page 31


17. What was Elie's main thought as the men and women were being herded from the train? 
It was to ____________ with _____________ at all costs. Page 32


18. What prayer were the people saying? Why was it unusual? 
They were reciting ______________. It was unusual because they were saying the prayer for _______________ for __________. Page 33



19. What did Elie do when the gypsy struck his father? Why? What was his father's response? 
response? He did _____________. He felt ____________, and thought he would never ____________ the gypsy. His father whispered that the _______________.  Page 39 


20. How long were Elie and his father at Auschwitz? Where did they go after that? 
They were at Auschwitz for about _______________. Then they went to ____________.  pages 44, 46



Section 4, pages 45-62 

21. Describe Elie's encounter with the dentist. 
22. What did Elie Wiesel do when Idek hit his father?  What was he thinking? 
23. Who took Elie's gold tooth? Why did Elie give it up? 
24. What were the only things in which Elie took an interest? 
25. How did Elie describe the men after the air raid? 
26. What happened to the young man from Warsaw? Why?  
27. How did Elie say the soup tasted the night the pipel (young servant boy) was hanged?  

Section 5, pages 63-80 
Personal Narrative: The author’s narrative is composed of a series of memories. Many of these remembered events, like this one, correspond to the category of “just when you think it can’t get more brutal / heartless / shocking, it does.” Yet it is worth analyzing the components of this hanging to understand why the author included it in Night. For one thing, the customary “show” execution serving as an example and deterrent to prisoners contrasts with the tender age and angelic beauty of the boy being executed. Significantly, even the SS guards appear uneasy, perhaps feeling a rare burn in their own consciences. Secondly, the horrible spectacle of the boy caught between life and death on the gallows resonates with the reader as a symbol of the living hell the author is describing. Finally, it serves as one more example of God’s absence—or annihilation—for the author.

Author’s Purpose and Point of View: One of the first things we learn about Eliezer is that he is keenly observant. At this point in the story, much of what was true about him has been stripped away, but this observant quality remains intact. Does Eliezer see himself in the angelic young boy being put to death? The boy appears young and innocent, just as Eliezer was before life in the camp. But Buna has transformed Eliezer and possibly changed the angelic boy, as well, leading him to take up the risky cause of rebellion. His innocence may have been illusory, but Eliezer mourns the loss of the boy’s rare, 
angelic beauty in a setting of such ugliness.

Central or Main Idea: This passage demonstrates that there are fates worse than death. For the hanged boy, death—or a quick death—would be a mercy. For Eliezer in Buna, death has invaded life, and God seems to be killed constantly, in the form of every victim of Nazi brutality. In Chapter 1, Moishe the Beadle told Eliezer that coming closer to God lies in our questions, not His answers, and that we have the “real answers” to those questions inside us. When someone asks “where is God?”, the answer comes from somewhere deep inside Eliezer. God is the boy hanging from that noose.

28. What did the men do on the eve of Rosh Hashana?  
29. How did Elie feel while the others were praying?  
30. What was Elie's decision about fasting on Yom Kippur? Why did he make that decision?  
31. What was Elie's "inheritance" from his father? Why was his father giving it to him?  
32. Did the men remember to say the Kaddish for Akiba Drumer?  
33. What did Elie dream of when he dreamed of a better world?  
34. What happened to the patients who stayed in the hospital instead of being evacuated?  
35. What was the last thing the head of the block ordered the men to do before they evacuated?  Why?  
36. What was the weather like during the evacuation?  



Sections 6, 7, 8, 9, pages 81-109 
Author’s Purpose and Point of View: The Nazis have stripped Eliezer of his humanity, or so he thought. Previously, he described himself as having been reduced to little more than primal survival instincts. When he saw his father being beaten with an iron bar, what he thought of in that moment was how his father’s inability to survive in the camp was going to hinder his own chances of survival. This passage reflects Eliezer’s hope that there are aspects of his humanity that have remained untouched by the pollution of deadening immorality. If he abandoned his father, maybe that would help his chances of survival, but aren’t there some things more important than survival?

Central or Main Idea: This passage represents a step in the recovery of Eliezer’s faith; it marks his return to prayer, even if he might doubt that his prayer will be heard, let alone answered. Eliezer stopped praying after Auschwitz, believing that he now lived in a world left to chaos and horror by a “murdered” God. Equally significant is what he prays for—the strength not to abandon his father the way Rabbi Eliahu’s son may have done. Not only does this mirror Eliezer’s relationship with his father, it also mirrors his relationship with his faith. He does not want to separate from his father the same way he separated from God. And it gives him solace to know that Rabbi Eliahu, a man of God, is still looking for his son. Family ties can thrive, even in this hateful setting.

Personal Narrative: A recurring aspect of the coming-of-age tale is what happens when the central figure must confront what lies ahead alone. Early in the journey, Eliezer relies on his father. Later, Eliezer stays alive for the sake of his father. And at several points throughout the book, Wiesel indicates to the reader that his father will not survive. Will Eliezer abandon his father? When he no longer has his father by his side and must travel the road ahead alone, what kind of man will he be?

37. While running, an idea began to fascinate Elie. What was the idea? What kept him from carrying out his idea?  
38. What did Elie realize about Rabbi Eliahou and his son?  
39. What was the name of the camp to which the men walked?  
40. Describe Elie's meeting with Juliek.  
41. How long were they at Gleiwitz? Where did they go next?  
42. Who was Meir Katz? What happened to him?  
43. How many men started out in the train? How many were left when they arrived at Buchenwald?  
44. What happened to Mr. Wiesel, Elie's father?  
45. What was Elie's only desire?  
46. What happened on April 10, 1945?   



answers the question's