Night

Chlomo is Eliezer’s father, a man of high social standing in the Jewish community of Sighet. Eliezer describes him as “a cultured, rather unsentimental man” (15). He runs a shop and often advises members of the community in public and private matters. Despite Eliezer’s entreaties, his father refuses to emigrate to Palestine before the Fascist Party gains power in Hungary.

Like many of the other Jews of Sighet, Chlomo is unwilling to admit the danger of the impending threat to their lives posed by the Nazis. When the Jews are confined to ghettoes in Sighet and forced to wear the Star of David, which identifies them as Jewish, Chlomo dismisses the significance of the situation: “The yellow star? Oh well, what of it? You don’t die of it…” (22).

Chlomo and Eliezer are separated from the latter’s mother and sisters—Hilda, Béa, and the youngest, Tzipora—upon their arrival at Birkenau-Auschwitz. Chlomo and Eliezer endure the hardships of concentration camp life together, supporting and encouraging each other, until the last months of the war. After the forced march of prisoners from Buna to Gleiwitz in 1945, Chlomo is mentally and physically exhausted and his health begins to fail. Stricken with dysentery and fever at Buchenwald, he is clubbed by an SS guard while imploring Eliezer for a cup of water to drink. The blow shatters his skull and several hours later he dies, on January 29, 1945.

A central focus of Night’s narrative, Eliezer’s relationship with his father is complex and evolves over time. At the start of the book, Chlomo discourages Eliezer from studying the mysticism of the Cabbala. He represents a more secular type of Jewish identity that recognizes the value of accommodation with the larger, non-Jewish structure of society. As a member of the Jewish Council in Sighet, he exercises influence and authority, and his opinion on the German occupation of Sighet is valued because he has well-placed connections in the Hungarian police.

Eliezer clings to his father for protection early during their internment at Auschwitz and Buna. As malnourishment and the brutality of concentration camp life take their toll on both characters, Eliezer becomes the protector and caregiver of his weakening father as the narrative progresses. Chlomo’s last word, uttered after his skull has been cracked by an SS guard while he lies dying of dysentery, is “Eliezer.” 

Moché the Beadle is a custodian of a Hasidic synagogue in Sighet who befriends Eliezer and becomes his spiritual guide. Although he is a self-deprecating and somewhat marginalized character within the Jewish community, he is appreciated by the townspeople of Sighet. Eliezer is attracted to his dreamy eyes and gaze, which seem lost in eternity. Moché speaks little, but often chants from the Cabbala, the collection of traditional Jewish mystical teachings.

At the age of 12, Eliezer longs to study the Cabbala and finds a tutor in Moché, who approaches the young boy while he is praying and asks him why he weeps. Eliezer doesn’t know the answer but believes Moché can teach him. Moché explains that every question transcends its answer, and that a question possesses a power that does not lie in the answer. He tells the boy that the true answers to questions are found only within oneself, in the depths of one’s own soul. Thus begins Eliezer’s initiation into mysticism, and the two embark on a study of the Cabbala together, spending many nights discussing passages of the text to extract the divine meaning.

Within a few months, Moché is expelled from Sighet with all the other foreign Jews and deported to Poland, where they are ordered to dig mass graves and are systematically massacred by the Gestapo. Wounded and playing dead, Moché escapes and makes his way back to Sighet, where he incessantly retells his story of the atrocity. Eliezer sees how the experience has changed him; he no longer speaks of God or the Cabbala, and joy has fled from his eyes. He can only repeat his account of the fate of the expelled Jews but none of the townspeople believe him and assume he’s insane. Eliezer doesn’t believe him either. The young boy can’t grasp the immensity of the experience that has transformed Moché into believing himself a prophet to the Jews of Sighet, nor does he understand Moché’s despair at not being believed by those to whom he delivers his prophetic warning.

Witnessing the mass murder of his fellow Jews, Moché himself feels he has died and is living a posthumous existence among the townsfolk of Sighet. He believes he survived miraculously, not to return to his old life but to share his story and warn his community while they still have time to escape the Nazi threat. Earlier, he had told Eliezer that true answers stay in the depths of one’s soul until death. In this regard, his “death” in the forest of Galicia makes him now a living witness to the unthinkable truth confronting the Jews under the Nazis—the existential reality of their genocide.

Madame Schächter, a woman of about 50, is a mother of three who supports her family in Sighet while her husband devotes himself to religious study. She and her youngest son are occupants of the cattle car in which Eliezer and his family are being deported from Sighet. Eliezer describes her as a quiet woman with intense, burning eyes. She had often visited his home. Her husband and two eldest sons had been deported on the first transport train from Sighet, and the separation has unnerved Madame Schächter. After a day or two in the cattle wagon, she begins to hallucinate that she sees a terrible fire burning outside the car’s window.

Screaming uncontrollably, she upsets the other passengers to the extent that several young men beat, bind, and gag her, in order to silence her shrieks, while her 10-year old son watches. This happens repeatedly during the journey to Auschwitz, as her screams fray the patience and sanity of the other deportees. Upon their arrival at Birkenau, other occupants see fire leaping from a tall chimney against the black sky, the ominous spectacle that Madame Schächter had foreseen in her hallucinatory visions. She, however, now lies subdued and indifferent in a corner of the car, oblivious to the anxious shouts of the other occupants.

Like Moché the Beadle, Madame Schächter serves as an unheeded prophet to the Jews of Sighet, warning them of the fate that lies in wait. Unlike Moché, who is taken for mad by the townspeople after his return and thus ignored, she has suffered a genuine mental break with reality. Her visual hallucination of fire, however, is not mere delusion; it is a visionary foretelling of the unspeakable horror that actually occurs at the concentration camp. 

Stein is the husband of Reizel, Eliezer’s cousin. He and his family live in Antwerp before he is deported to Auschwitz in 1942. At the camp, he hears a transport from Sighet has recently arrived and seeks out Eliezer and his father, desperate for news about his wife and children. Eliezer lies to him, saying he has heard they are all doing well. Stein weeps for joy, and the news temporarily sustains his will to live. A few weeks later, a transport from Antwerp arrives at the camp and Stein receives the real news about his family. Eliezer and his father never see him again; presumably, he dies.

Franek is the foreman of Eliezer’s work detail in an electrical supplies warehouse at Buna. He is a Pole, a former student, kindly, and intelligent. After a few weeks, however, he notices the gold crown in Eliezer’s mouth and demands it. When Eliezer refuses, he beats the boy’s father for being unable to march in step. After two weeks of daily beatings, Eliezer gives in and submits to having the crown removed. Franek exults in his victory and allows Eliezer a little extra soup occasionally. He is transferred to another camp within a fortnight, however, and Eliezer feels he has lost his gold crown for nothing.

Juliek is a Polish violinist who works at the electrical warehouse in Buna. Eliezer meets him again later at Gleiwitz, after the prisoners endure a brutal forced march in the cold. Near death, Juliek plays a fragment of Beethoven’s violin concerto with such poignant beauty that Eliezer feels as if the Polish boy’s entire life was gliding past on the strings. He is dead in the morning.

Mengele is an SS doctor who inspects prisoners at Auschwitz, selecting those who are to die in the gas chambers. Eliezer describes him as “typical,” and not unintelligent. Eliezer sees him first at Birkenau, when the deported Jews of Sighet arrive at Auschwitz, and later at Buna, where a selection occurs after Rosh Hashanah.

Yossi and Tibi are brothers whose parents are murdered at Birkenau. They are Czech Jews whom Eliezer first meets in the musicians’ work block at Buna, where he is assigned to labor in an electrical supplies warehouse. Eliezer becomes friends with the brothers, and they often hum Hebrew chants together, extolling the beauty of Jerusalem and Jordan. The boys agree to emigrate to Palestine as soon as the liberation of Europe, if they survive to see that day.

Drumer is a devout Hasidic Jew who shares Eliezer’s barracks at Auschwitz and Buna. Blessed with a beautiful singing voice, he tries to encourage his fellow inmates, saying that God’s testing of the Jews is proof of his love for them. Like Eliezer had been, Drumer is a devotee of the Cabbala and trusts in the inscrutable yet benevolent will of God. His faith eventually deserts him and with that, his will to survive erodes. Eliezer believes that if Drumer could have maintained his belief in God, he would have evaded the selection. His friends promise Drumer that they will pray the Kaddish for him after he is sent to the crematorium but they forget to do so.

Idek is the Kapo (a foreman who is also a prisoner) of the electrical supplies warehouse where Eliezer and his father work at Buna. He is unpredictable and sadistic, beating Eliezer, his father, and other prisoners without warning. Eliezer sees him having sex with a young girl in the barracks and bursts out in laughter. Enraged, Idek has Eliezer lashed twenty-five times as punishment.

The kind and gentle rabbi of a small Polish community, he is among the evacuees from Buna who are forced to march to Gleiwitz. His fellow prisoners love and esteem him; despite the suffering of camp life, he possesses an inner serenity and spiritual purity that enables him to comfort them. During the forced march, he loses sight of his son and searches for him among the dying and dead bodies lying in the snow. Eliezer tells him he has not seen his son, but then remembers he had been running alongside him on the road. It occurs to Eliezer that the son had wanted to rid himself of his father, who was growing weak and becoming a burden to him. Eliezer prays, in spite of himself, that he will never abandon his father as Rabbi Eliahou’s son has done.