Night

by Elie Wiesel

Then he went over to the bed where his wife lay sleeping and with infinite tenderness touched her forehead. She opened her eyes and it seemed to me that a smile crossed her lips. Then he went to wake his two children. They woke with a start, torn from their dreams. I fled.

My father was running right and left, exhausted, consoling friends, checking with the Jewish Council just in case the order had been rescinded. To the last moment, people clung to hope.

Hungarian police had entered the ghetto and were yelling in the street nearby.

The Hungarian police used their rifle butts, their clubs to indiscriminately strike old men and women, children and cripples.

There was joy, yes, joy. People must have thought there could be no greater torment in God’s hell than that of being stranded here, on the sidewalk, among the bundles, in the middle of the street under a blazing sun. Anything seemed preferable to that.

It was like a page torn from a book, a historical novel, perhaps, dealing with the captivity in Babylon or the Spanish Inquisition.

They passed me by, one after the other, my teachers, my friends, the others, some of whom I had once feared, some of whom I had found ridiculous, all those whose lives I had shared for years.

All the things one planned to take along and finally left behind. They had ceased to matter.

Open rooms everywhere. Gaping doors and windows looked out into the void. It all belonged to everyone since it no longer belonged to anyone. It was there for the taking. An open tomb.

Intent on preparing our backpacks, on baking breads and cakes, we no longer thought about anything. The verdict had been delivered.

I looked at my house in which I had spent years seeking my God, fasting to hasten the coming of the Messiah, imagining what my life would be like later. Yet I felt little sadness. My mind was empty.

My father was crying. It was the first time I saw him cry. I had never thought it possible.

“Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings!” the Hungarian police were screaming. That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors.

From behind their windows, from behind their shutters, our fellow citizens watched as we passed.

Only three days ago, people were living here. People who owned the things we were using now. They had been expelled. And we had already forgotten all about them.

The ghetto was not guarded. One could enter and leave as one pleased. Maria, our former maid, came to see us. Sobbing, she begged us to come with her to her village where she had prepared a safe shelter. My father wouldn’t hear of it.

NIGHT. No one was praying for the night to pass quickly. The stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us. Were this conflagration to be extinguished one day, nothing would be left in the sky but extinct stars and unseeing eyes.

At daybreak, the gloom had lifted. The mood was more confident. There were those who said: “Who knows, they may be sending us away for our own good. The front is getting closer, we shall soon hear the guns. And then surely the civilian population will be evacuated …” “They worry lest we join the partisans …”

This kind of talk that nobody believed helped pass the time. The few days we spent here went by pleasantly enough, in relative calm. People rather got along. There no longer was any distinction between rich and poor, notables and the others; we were all people condemned to the same fate—still unknown.

This time, there were no Hungarian police. It had been agreed that the Jewish Council would handle everything by itself.

The town seemed deserted. But behind the shutters, our friends of yesterday were probably waiting for the moment when they could loot our homes. The synagogue resembled a large railroad station: baggage and tears. The altar was shattered, the wall coverings shredded, the walls themselves bare.

They were all smiles; all things considered, it had gone very smoothly.

There was still some food left. But we never ate enough to satisfy our hunger. Our principle was to economize, to save for tomorrow. Tomorrow could be worse yet.

We realized then that we were not staying in Hungary. Our eyes opened. Too late.

A German officer stepped in accompanied by a Hungarian lieutenant, acting as his interpreter. “From this moment on, you are under the authority of the German Army.

The Hungarian lieutenant went around with a basket and retrieved the last possessions from those who chose not to go on tasting the bitterness of fear.

The doors clanked shut. We had fallen into the trap, up to our necks.

Her husband and two older sons had been deported with the first transport, by mistake. The separation had totally shattered her.

Mrs. Schächter had lost her mind. On the first day of the journey, she had already begun to moan. She kept asking why she had been separated from her family. Later, her sobs and screams became hysterical.

It took us a long time to recover from this harsh awakening. We were still trembling, and with every screech of the wheels, we felt the abyss opening beneath us.

Our terror could no longer be contained. Our nerves had reached a breaking point. Our very skin was aching. It was as though madness had infected all of us. We gave up. A few young men forced her to sit down, then bound and gagged her.

Her son was clinging desperately to her, not uttering a word. He was no longer crying.

Toward evening she began to shout again: “The fire, over there!” She was pointing somewhere in the distance, always the same place.

Confidence soared. Suddenly we felt free of the previous nights’ terror. We gave thanks to God. Mrs. Schächter remained huddled in her corner, mute, untouched by the optimism around her. Her little one was stroking her hand.

We had forgotten Mrs. Schächter’s existence. Suddenly there was a terrible scream: “Jews, look! Look at the fire! Look at the flames!” And as the train stopped, this time we saw flames rising from a tall chimney into a black sky. Mrs. Schächter had fallen silent on her own. Mute again, indifferent, absent, she had returned to her corner.

We stared at the flames in the darkness.

THE BELOVED OBJECTS that we had carried with us from place to place were now left behind in the wagon and, with them, finally, our illusions.

“Men to the left! Women to the right!” Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the moment when I left my mother. There was no time to think, and I already felt my father’s hand press against mine: we were alone.

Behind me, an old man fell to the ground. Nearby, an SS man replaced his revolver in its holster. My hand tightened its grip on my father. All I could think of was not to lose him. Not to remain alone.

“Hey, kid, how old are you?” The man interrogating me was an inmate. I could not see his face, but his voice was weary and warm. “Fifteen.” “No. You’re eighteen.” “But I’m not,” I said. “I’m fifteen.” “Fool. Listen to what I say.” Then he asked my father, who answered: “I’m fifty.” “No.” The man now sounded angry. “Not fifty. You’re forty. Do you hear? Eighteen and forty.” He disappeared into the darkness.

The other seemed ready to kill him: “Shut up, you moron, or I’ll tear you to pieces! You should have hanged yourselves rather than come here. Didn’t you know what was in store for you here in Auschwitz? You didn’t know? In 1944?” True. We didn’t know. Nobody had told us.

One of them was muttering: “Let the world learn about the existence of Auschwitz. Let everybody find out about it while they still have a chance to escape …” But the older men begged their sons not to be foolish: “We mustn’t give up hope, even now as the sword hangs over our heads. So taught our sages …” The wind of revolt died down.

This conversation lasted no more than a few seconds. It seemed like an eternity. The baton pointed to the left. I took half a step forward. I first wanted to see where they would send my father. Were he to have gone to the right, I would have run after him. The baton, once more, moved to the left. A weight lifted from my heart. We did not know, as yet, which was the better side, right or left, which road led to prison and which to the crematoria. Still, I was happy, I was near my father.

How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?

Still, I told him that I could not believe that human beings were being burned in our times; the world would never tolerate such crimes … “The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria …”

Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

My head was buzzing; the same thought surfacing over and over: not to be separated from my father. Freed from the barbers’ clutches, we began to wander about the crowd, finding friends, acquaintances. Every encounter filled us with joy—yes, joy: Thank God! You are still alive! Some were crying. They used whatever strength they had left to cry. Why had they let themselves be brought here? Why didn’t they die in their beds?

I watched darkness fade through the bluish skylights in the roof. I no longer was afraid. I was overcome by fatigue. The absent no longer entered our thoughts. One spoke of them—who knows what happened to them?—but their fate was not on our minds. We were incapable of thinking. Our senses were numbed, everything was fading into a fog. We no longer clung to anything. The instincts of self-preservation, of self-defense, of pride, had all deserted us.

His eyes were veiled. I wanted to tell him something, but I didn’t know what. The night had passed completely. The morning star shone in the sky. I too had become a different person. The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me.

I had new shoes myself. But as they were covered with a thick coat of mud, they had not been noticed. I thanked God, in an improvised prayer, for having created mud in His infinite and wondrous universe.