Note: Although Night is not necessarily a memoir--as discussed in the "Overall Analysis and Themes" section--I will often refer to it as a memoir, since that is the genre which closest approaches the mixture of testimony, deposition and emotional truth-telling that is in Night. Finally: it is clear that Eliezer is meant to serve, to a great extent, as the author Elie Weisel's surrogate and representative. With alterations of minor details, what happens to Eliezer is what happened to Weisel himself during the Holocaust. Please bear in mind, however, that there is a difference between the persona of Night's narrator, Eliezer, and that of the author, Elie Weisel.
             Night is narrated by Eliezer, a Hungarian Jewish teenager. At the book's opening, Eliezer is studying the Cabbala, Jewish mysticism. His instruction is cut short, however, when his teacher, Moche the Beadle, is deported. In a few months, Moche returns, telling a horrifying tale. The Gestapo (German secret police) had taken charge of his train, led everybody into the woods, and systematically butchered them. Nobody believes Moche, who is taken for a lunatic.
             In the spring of 1944, the Nazis occupy Hungary. Not long afterwards, after a series of increasingly repressive measures are passed, the Jews of Eliezer's town are herded onto cattle cars. A nightmarish journey ensues: after days and nights crammed into the car, exhausted and near starvation, the passengers arrive at Birkenau, the gateway to Auschwitz.
             On Eliezer's arrival in Birkenau, he and his father are separated from his mother and sisters, whom they never see again. They soon endure the first of many "selections" that will occur throughout the memoir: the Jews are evaluated, to determine whether they should be killed immediately or put to work. Eliezer and his father seem to pass the evaluation, but before they are brought to the prisoners' barracks, they stumble upon the open-pit fur
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