Discussion Questions For Night By Elie Wiesel

The night is a frightening tale of a Jewish teenager who is deported to the Nazi extermination camps that becomes a witness to the death of his family and his God. In the face of absolute horror, the devout protagonist asks himself: How can He allow these atrocities to take place in the God in whom I have believed so far with such fervor? Question that we ask ourselves every day when we see all the war conflicts and social injustices that are taking place all around the world. Elie Wiesel, author of this magnificent novel, begins by explaining that when he was 15 years old, news of the horrors the Nazis were spreading throughout Europe had not reached his village, Sighet, “The little town in Transylvania.” The life of

The people, considering that the front was far away, confidently affirmed what seemed obvious “The Germans will not come this far.” Thus, the Jews of his community hold to an optimism without limits and they continue embracing that hope day after day. “AND THEN, one day all foreign Jews were expelled from Sighet.” The Hungarian Police began to deport them in trains to what they thought were going to be labor camps. On the last train traveled the teenager Elie, who saw his world break apart in one night because this was the last time he would see his mother and his sister, remaining with his father as their only companion. I can imagine the absolute scare of a poor 15 years old boy coming from a village at that time to immerse himself in that shock. We know that with that age one is always fragile, imagine what a village teenager would be then. Wiesel looked years later for the words to explain the transformation he felt and this is reflected in his work by expressing: “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed…Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.” This line is