Night

Eliezer describes his devout life in Sighet, his study with Moishe the Beadle, the expulsion and return of Moishe bearing witness to massacres, and the community's refusal to believe him.

The Jews of Sighet are concentrated into ghettos, then loaded onto sealed cattle cars. Eighty people per car travel for days without food or water toward an unknown destination. Madame Schächter's visions of fire terrify the car.

The train arrives at Birkenau. Dr. Mengele conducts the selection on the platform. Eliezer and his father are sent right — toward the men's camp. His mother and youngest sister Tzipora are sent left. The men are marched toward the flames. Eliezer questions and then begins to abandon his faith.

Father and son are transferred to Buna, a labor sub-camp where Eliezer works in an electrical warehouse. He witnesses multiple public hangings, including the death of a child — the hanging of the pipel — which marks the memoir's most famous interrogation of God's absence.

Eliezer has an operation on his foot. The Russian army advances. Rather than be liberated by the Soviets, the SS evacuates the camps, forcing prisoners on a death march through a blizzard. Those who fall are shot. Eliezer and his father survive the march and arrive at Gleiwitz.

Survivors arrive at Buchenwald after the cattle car journey. Shlomo is dying of dysentery. Eliezer tries to care for him but is increasingly unable to prevent others from robbing him and beating him. One morning, Shlomo is gone — died in the night, beaten by an SS guard. Eliezer's first reaction is relief.

American forces liberate Buchenwald on April 11, 1945. The SS flees. The prisoners are free. Eliezer contracts food poisoning and nearly dies. When he recovers, he looks in a mirror — the first time since the ghetto — and sees a corpse.

A meta-section addressing Wiesel's decade of silence, the act of writing, the compression from 900 to 120 pages, François Mauriac's role, and the memoir's ethical argument: silence is complicity, witness is obligation.

Covers Night's publication history, Nobel Peace Prize, classroom use, continued relevance, and the imperative Wiesel spent sixty years articulating: we are all responsible to remember.