from Night
Elie Wiesel
He felt that his time was short. He spoke quickly. He would have liked to say so many things. His speech grew confused; his voice choked. He knew that I would have to go in a few moments. He would have to stay behind alone, so very alone.
“Look, take this knife,” he said to me. “I don’t need it any longer. It might be useful to you. And take this spoon as well. Don’t sell them. Quickly! Go on. Take what I’m giving you!”
The inheritance.
“Don’t talk like that, Father.” (I felt that I would break into sobs.) “I don’t want you to say that. Keep the spoon and knife. You need them as much as I do. We shall see each other again this evening, after work.”
He looked at me with his tired eyes, veiled with despair. He went on:
“I’m asking this of you. . . . Take them. Do as I ask, my son. We have no time. . . . Do as your father asks.”
Our Kapo yelled that we should start.
The unit set out toward the camp gate. Left, right! I bit my lips. My father had stayed by the block, leaning against the wall. Then he began to run, to catch up with us. Perhaps he had forgotten something he wanted to say to me. . . . But we were marching too quickly . . . Left, right!
We were already at the gate. They counted us, to the din of military music. We were outside.
The whole day, I wandered about as if sleepwalking. Now and then Tibi and Yossi would throw me a brotherly word. The Kapo, too, tried to reassure me. He had given me easier work today. I felt sick at heart. How well they were treating me! Like an orphan! I thought: even now, my father is still helping me.
I did not know myself what I wanted—for the day to pass quickly or not. I was afraid of finding myself alone that night. How good it would be to die here!
At last we began the return journey. How I longed for orders to run!
The military march. The gate. The camp.
I ran to Block 36.
Were there still miracles on this earth? He was alive. He had escaped the second selection. He had been able to prove that he was still useful. . . . I gave him back his knife and spoon.
Akiba Drumer left us, a victim of the selection. Lately, he had wandered among us, his eyes glazed, telling everyone of his weakness: “I can’t go on . . . It’s all over. . . .” It was impossible to raise his morale. He didn’t listen to what we told him. He could only repeat that all was over for him, that he could no longer keep up the struggle, that he had no strength left, nor faith. Suddenly his eyes would become blank, nothing but two open wounds, two pits of terror.
He was not the only one to lose his faith during those selection days. I knew a rabbi from a little town in Poland, a bent old man, whose lips were always trembling. He used to pray all the time, in the block, in the yard, in the ranks. He would recite whole pages of the Talmud from memory, argue with himself, ask himself questions and answer himself. And one day he said to me: “It’s the end. God is no longer with us.”
And, as though he had repented of having spoken such words, so clipped, so cold, he added in his faint voice:
“I know. One has no right to say things like that. I know. Man is too small, too humble and inconsiderable to seek to understand the mysterious ways of God. But what can I do? I’m not a sage, one of the elect, nor a saint. I’m just an ordinary creature of flesh and blood. I’ve got eyes, too, and I can see what they’re doing here. Where is the divine Mercy? Where is God? How can I believe, how could anyone believe, in this merciful God?”
Poor Akiba Drumer, if he could have gone on believing in God, if he could have seen a proof of God in this Calvary, he would not have been taken by the selection. But as soon as he felt the first cracks forming in his faith, he had lost his reason for struggling and had begun to die.
When the selection came, he was condemned in advance, offering his own neck to the executioner. All he asked of us was:
“In three days I shall no longer be here. . . . Say the Kaddish for me.”
We promised him. In three days’ time, when we saw the smoke rising from the chimney, we would think of him. Ten of us would gather together and hold a special service. All his friends would say the Kaddish.
Then he went off toward the hospital, his step steadier, not looking back. An ambulance was waiting to take him to Birkenau.
These were terrible days. We received more blows than food; we were crushed with work. And three days after he had gone we forgot to say the Kaddish. . . .
The door of the shed opened. An old man appeared, his moustache covered with frost, his lips blue with cold. It was Rabbi Eliahou, the rabbi of a small Polish community. He was a very good man, well loved by everyone in the camp, even by the Kapos and the heads of the blocks. Despite the trials and privations, his face still shone with his inner purity. He was the only rabbi who was always addressed as “Rabbi” at Buna. He was like one of the old prophets, always in the midst of his people to comfort them. And, strangely, his words of comfort never provoked rebellion; they really brought peace.
He came into the shed and his eyes, brighter than ever, seemed to be looking for someone:
“Perhaps someone has seen my son somewhere?”
He had lost his son in the crowd. He had looked in vain among the dying. Then he had scratched up the snow to find his corpse. Without result.
For three years they had stuck together. Always near each other, for suffering, for blows, for the ration of bread, for prayer. Three years, from camp to camp, from selection to selection. And now—when the end seemed near—fate had separated them. Finding himself near me, Rabbi Eliahou whispered:
“It happened on the road. We lost sight of one another during the journey. I had stayed a little to the rear of the column. I hadn’t any strength left for running. And my son didn’t notice. That’s all I know. Where has he disappeared? Where can I find him? Perhaps you’ve seen him somewhere?”
“No, Rabbi Eliahou, I haven’t seen him.”
He left then as he had come: like a wind-swept shadow.
He had already passed through the door when I suddenly remembered seeing his son running by my side. I had forgotten that, and I didn’t tell Rabbi Eliahou!
Then I remembered something else: his son had seen him losing ground, limping, staggering back to the rear of the column. He had seen him. And he had continued to run on in front, letting the distance between them grow greater.
A terrible thought loomed up in my mind: he had wanted to get rid of his father! He had felt that his father was growing weak, he had believed that the end was near and had sought this separation in order to get rid of the burden, to free himself from an encumbrance which could lessen his own chances of survival.
I had done well to forget that. And I was glad that Rabbi Eliahou should continue to look for his beloved son.
And, in spite of myself, a prayer rose in my heart, to that God in whom I no longer believed.
My God, Lord of the Universe, give me strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahou’s son has done.
Shouts rose outside in the yard, where darkness had fallen. The SS ordered the ranks to form up.
The march began again. The dead stayed in the yard under the snow, like faithful guards assassinated, without burial. No one had said the prayer for the dead over them. Sons abandoned their fathers’ remains without a tear.
On the way it snowed, snowed, snowed endlessly. We were marching more slowly. The guards themselves seemed tired. My wounded foot no longer hurt me. It must have been completely frozen. The foot was lost to me. It had detached itself from my body like the wheel of a car. Too bad. I should have to resign myself; I could live with only one leg. The main thing was not to think about it. Above all, not at this moment. Leave thoughts for later.
Our march had lost all semblance of discipline. We went as we wanted, as we could. We heard no more shots. Our guards must have been tired.
But death scarcely needed any help from them. The cold was conscientiously doing its work. At every step someone fell and suffered no more.
From time to time, SS officers on motorcycles would go down the length of the column to try and shake us out of our growing apathy:
“Keep going! We are getting there!”
“Courage! Only a few more hours!”
“We’re reaching Gleiwitz.”
These words of encouragement, even though they came from the mouths of our assassins, did us a great deal of good. No one wanted to give up now, just before the end, so near to the goal. Our eyes searched the horizon for the barbed wire of Gleiwitz. Our only desire was to reach it as quickly as possible.
The night had now set in. The snow had ceased to fall. We walked for several more hours before arriving.
We did not notice the camp until we were just in front of the gate.
Some Kapos rapidly installed us in the barracks. We pushed and jostled one another as if this were the supreme refuge, the gateway to life. We walked over pain-racked bodies. We trod on wounded faces. No cries. A few groans. My father and I were ourselves thrown to the ground by this rolling tide. Beneath our feet someone let out a rattling cry:
“You’re crushing me . . . mercy!”
A voice that was not unknown to me.
“You’re crushing me . . . mercy! mercy!”
The same faint voice, the same rattle, heard somewhere before. That voice had spoken to me one day. Where? When? Years ago? No, it could only have been at the camp.
“Mercy!”
I felt that I was crushing him. I was stopping his breath. I wanted to get up. I struggled to disengage myself, so that he could breathe. But I was crushed myself beneath the weight of other bodies. I could hardly breathe. I dug my nails into unknown faces. I was biting all round me, in order to get air. No one cried out.
Suddenly I remembered. Juliek! The boy from Warsaw who played the violin in the band at Buna. . . .
“Juliek, is it you?”
“Eliezer. . . the twenty-five strokes of the whip. Yes . . . I remember.”
He was silent. A long moment elapsed.
“Juliek! Can you hear me, Juliek?”
“Yes . . . ,” he said, in a feeble voice. “What do you want?”
He was not dead.
“How do you feel, Juliek?” I asked, less to know the answer than to hear that he could speak, that he was alive.
“All right, Eliezer. . . . I’m getting on all right . . . hardly any air . . . worn out. My feet are swollen. It’s good to rest, but my violin . . .”
I thought he had gone out of his mind. What use was the violin here?
“What, your violin?”
He gasped.
“I’m afraid . . . I’m afraid . . . that they’ll break my violin. . . . I’ve brought it with me.”
I could not answer him. Someone was lying full length on top of me, covering my face. I was unable to breathe, through either mouth or nose. Sweat beaded my brow, ran down my spine. This was the end—the end of the road. A silent death, suffocation. No way of crying out, of calling for help.
I tried to get rid of my invisible assassin. My whole will to live was centered in my nails. I scratched. I battled for a mouthful of air. I tore at decaying flesh which did not respond. I could not free myself from this mass weighing down my chest. Was it a dead man I was struggling against? Who knows?
I shall never know. All I can say is that I won. I succeeded in digging a hole through this wall of dying people, a little hole through which I could drink in a small quantity of air.
“Father, how are you?” I asked, as soon as I could utter a word.
I knew he could not be far from me.
“Well!” answered a distant voice, which seemed to come from another world. I tried to sleep.
He tried to sleep. Was he right or wrong? Could one sleep here? Was it not dangerous to allow your vigilance to fail, even for a moment, when at any minute death could pounce upon you?
I was thinking of this when I heard the sound of a violin. The sound of a violin, in this dark shed, where the dead were heaped on the living. What madman could be playing the violin here, at the brink of his own grave? Or was it really an hallucination?
It must have been Juliek.
He played a fragment from Beethoven’s concerto. I had never heard sounds so pure. In such a silence.
How had he managed to free himself? To draw his body from under mine without my being aware of it?
It was pitch-dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek’s soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings—his lost hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again.
I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget that concert, given to an audience of dying and dead men! To this day, whenever I hear Beethoven played my eyes close and out of the dark rises the sad, pale face of my Polish friend, as he said farewell on his violin to an audience of dying men.
I do not know for how long he played. I was overcome by sleep. When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse.
Making Meanings
from Night
1. Wiesel was just fifteen years old when he arrived at Auschwitz. Imagine what it would have been like to experience what he experienced at that age. How might it have changed you? Look over your Quickwrite notes as you formulate your answer.
2. In the first excerpt, what do you think is the cause of Madame Schächter’s terrible vision?
3. In the second excerpt, how has Akiba Drumer “begun to die” when he starts to lose his faith in God? What do you think kept Wiesel from giving up?
4. In the third excerpt, why is it ironic that Rabbi Eliahou will “continue to look for his beloved son”? Why is Wiesel glad that he will keep looking?
5. At the end of the third excerpt, why do you think Wiesel uses the metaphor of “a strange overwhelming little corpse” to describe Juliek’s violin? What might the violin symbolize for Wiesel?
6. Select at least two passages from this text that create, for you, the dreadful atmosphere of the camps where Wiesel was held prisoner. Which specific words help create that atmosphere? Be sure to share your passages in class.
7. When Wiesel accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, he said that “[i]ndifference is the greatest source of evil and danger in the world.” He also suggested that if humanity ever forgets the Holocaust, “we are guilty, we are accomplices.” What do you think Wiesel meant? Do you agree? What actions could people take to help combat such indifference to human suffering?
8. In his humanitarian work, Wiesel struggles against what he calls “selective sensitivity,” in which “people are sensitive only to one category of victims and not to the others.” He demands instead that “[i]f one is sensitive to one injustice, one must be sensitive to all injustice.” Discuss situations in the world today where you find this “selective sensitivity” at work.