The Holocaust and Night

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The Holocaust and Night
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• The story of Night
• The novel begins in Sighet, Transylvania.
• During the early years of World War II, Sighet
  remained relatively unaffected by the war.
• The Jews in Sighet believed that they would be
  safe from the persecution that Jews in Germany
  and Poland suffered.

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Before the War

• Jews were living in every country in Europe
  before the Nazis came into power in 1933
• Approximately 9 million Jews
• Poland and the Soviet Union had the largest
  populations
• Jews could be found in all walks of life
  farmers, factory workers, business people,
  doctors, teachers, and craftsmen

Group portrait of members of the Jewish community
of Sighet in front of a wooden synagogue.
1930-1939.
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Anti-Semitism

• Nazi teachers began to apply the principles of
  racial science by measuring skull size and nose
  length and recording students eye color and hair
  to determine whether students belonged the the
  Aryan race.

• Basically means the hate of Jews.
• Jews have faced prejudice and discrimination for
  over 2,000 years.
• Jews were scapegoats for many problems. For
  example, people blamed Jews for the Black Death
  that killed thousands in Europe during the Middle
  Ages.

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• In 1944, however, Elie and all the other Jews in
  town were rounded up in cattle cars and deported
  to concentration camps in Poland. 
• They were sent to Auschwitz

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Former prisoners of the "little camp" in
Buchenwald stare out from the wooden bunks in
which they slept three to a "bed." Elie Wiesel is
pictured in the second row of bunks, seventh from
the left, next to the vertical beam
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• After surviving the Nazi concentration camps,
  Wiesel vowed never to write about his horrific
  experiences.
• He eventually changed his mind and wrote Night
  in 1955. Wiesel won the Nobel Prize in 1986 

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The Nazi Plan
1. Expulsion Get all Jews out of Germany 2.
Containment Put them all together in one place
namely ghettos 3. Final Solution
annihilation
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Persecution

• Most of the gas chambers used carbon monoxide
  from diesel engines.
• In Auschwitz and Majdanek Zyklon B pellets,
  which were a highly poisonous insecticide,
  supplied the gas.
• After the gassings, prisoners removed hair, gold
  teeth and fillings from the Jews before the
  bodies were burned in the crematoria or buried in
  mass graves.

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Nazis targeted other individuals and groups in
addition to the Jews

• Gypsies (Sinti and Roma)
• Homosexual men
• Jehovahs Witness
• Handicapped Germans
• Polish
• Political dissidents

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 A German police officer examines the
identification papers of Jews in the Krakow
ghetto, circa 1941.
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Jewish people were identified by the triangle and
their ID .
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Kristallnacht

• The Night of Broken Glass on November 9-10,
  1938
• Germans attacked synagogues and Jewish homes and
  businesses

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Jews, like all other German citizens, were
required to carry identity cards, but their cards
were stamped with a red J. This allowed police
to easily identify them.
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• The Nazis used propaganda to promote their
  anti-semitic ideas.
• One such book was the childrens book, The
  Poisonous Mushroom.

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After the War

• Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate camp
  prisoners on July 23, 1944, at Maidanek in
  Poland.
• British, Canadian, American, and French troops
  also liberated camp prisoners.
• Troops were shocked at what they saw.

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• Most prisoners were emaciated to the point of
  being skeletal

• Many camps had dead bodies lying in piles like
  cordwood.
• Many prisoners died even after liberation.

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