3 Delivery

1)Why were the prisioners tatooed or marked on their forearms?Does this action have a religeous implication¿Why?
Prisioners were only tatooed in Auschwitz. “Incoming prisoners were assigned a camp serial number which was sewn to their prison uniforms. Only those prisoners selected for work were issued serial numbers; those prisoners sent directly to the gas chambers were not registered and received no tattoos.

Initially, the SS authorities marked prisoners who were in the infirmary or who were to be executed with their camp serial number across the chest with indelible ink. As prisoners were executed or died in other ways, their clothing bearing the camp serial number was removed. Given the mortality rate at the camp and practice of removing clothing, there was no way to identify the bodies after the clothing was removed. Hence, the SS authorities introduced the practice of tattooing in order to identify the bodies of registered prisoners who had died.”
(http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007056)


2)Who were the kapos?Why did their fellowmen fear these leaders?
"Is a concentration camp prisoner selected to oversee other prisoners on labor details. The term is often used generically for any concentration camp prisoner to whom the SS gave authority over other prisoners." They were feared because they were very tough and without mercy.
(http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007315)


3)How did SS officers selected their victims?Support your answer

They had SS doctors on duty, to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated since by reason of their youth they were unable to work.

(http://www.auschwitz.dk/Docs/new_page_3.htm)

Night; 3 Summary

Elie and his father were transferred to Buna a concentration camp. They were incorporated to kommandos which were a group of persons commanded to do an specific job and then they were assignated to a block. They were sent to a medic exam, Elie had a gold crown in his teeth, so he was numbered.
Fortunately they were chosen to form part of the orchestra’s block. They started working in a warehouse of electrical materials; the job was neither difficult nor dangerous.
One day Elie was summoned to the dentist to remove his gold crown, he said he was ill so he was told to come later , but two weeks after the dentist was arrested for stealing the gold he removed, so Elie kept his crown. In another occasion Elie was hit by the man in charge of the block because he was angry and he let go all the anger against the first person he saw (Elie), a French woman help him and told him some courage words. One day a foreman saw Elie’s crown and ask Elie to handed it to him but Elie refused so the foreman search for a reason for Elie to hand over his crown, and hi found that reason in his father, he did not know how to march in step so all the days he tormented his father, until finally he gave in and gave his golden crown to the foreman. Some days before the poles left Elie saw Idek copulating with a girl so Idek punished him very hard. One day while they were working an alarm started to sound and American airplanes passed over them, in this moment 2 cauldrons of soup were left behind in the middle of the street, all were looking anxiously toward them but no one dare to go, the fear was greater than the hunger, but then a boy started approaching but he was shooted. In another occasion the power failed at the central electric plant in Buna, further investigation showed that it had been a sabotage and the persons responsible were hanged.

Night; Second Summary

Elie and his family were sent to a unknown place in train. Everybody is very nervous, and they are very crowded and hungry. Things get worst because there was a crazy woman screaming and that make everyone more nervous.
The wagon stopped and an SS officer told them to get out of the wagon and leave everything, then they were separated, women right, men left and that was the last moment he saw her mother and sisters. Then they were classified into the ones that had good health and could work and into the ones that could not work because of their age or health. The ones that could not work were sent to the chimney. Fortunately Elie and his father had received and advice from an inmate to tell a different age, Elie was told to say that he had 18 years and his father was told to say he was 40, because of that they were choose to work and to live.
They were transferred to a barrack where they would sleep; they were received by old comrades that were sent weeks before to that place .Next morning they were taken to the showers and to pick cloth. Later an SS officer told them they were in Auschwitz a concentration camp and that to live they must work. Next morning they were moved to another camp. They were received by a man who told them some words of hope and they went to sleep. They stayed in Auschwitz three weeks and their objective was to stay away from the transport , to achieve that they had to be mediocre workers and be in good health. Finally they were told that it was their turn to leave so they leave that camp to somewhere else.

Location of some camps

Green:Concentration Camps

Red:Extermination Camps

(http://www.mikekemble.com/ww2/belsen/campmap.jpg)

Differences between a Concentration Camp and an Extermination Camp

"Concentration camps

The concentration camps formed an important part of the Nazi regime’s systematic suppression of Jews, gypsies, political dissident, homosexuals and other groups that were viewed as socially and racially “undesirable” in the Nazi state.

The concentration camps were established with different purposes. For instance, there existed “ordinary” concentration camps, forced labour camps, work- and reformatory camps, POW camps and transit camps.

Their common denominator was the fact that the living conditions were extremely horrible and cruel for the inmates. With very insufficient food, the terrible conditions resulted in the deaths of an enormous amount of prisoners, especially in the work camps.

There were at least 22 main camps distributed all over Germany and Europe, more than 1,200 affiliate camps and Aussenkommandos, and tens of thousands of smaller camps. Many hundreds of thousands of non-Jews and tens of thousands of Jews perished in these camps.


Extermination camps

Unlike the concentration camps, six extermination camps were established between 1941 and 1943 with only one purpose: to exterminate the Jews. A total of three million Jews were murdered in these camps.

The extermination camps can be divided into two groups: the “pure” extermination camps and the combined extermination- and concentration camps.

“Pure" extermination camps:

Chelmno and the Operation Reinhard camps.
Four camps, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka (the Operation Reinhard camps) and Chelmno were all “pure” extermination facilities. Only a few hundred Jews survived their encounter with these four extermination camps.

Combined camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek

Both of these camps were originally concentration camps. In time, however, they were included in the organised mass murder of the Jews, following the construction of gas chambers. Only one in every fourth of the Jews that arrived in these camps was selected for forced labour – the rest were gassed to death immediately upon arrival.

At least one million Jews were killed in Auschwitz and between 60,000 and 80,000 Jews in Majdanek."
(http://www.holocaust-education.dk/lejre/koncudd.asp)

What a is a ghetto?

“During World War II, ghettos were city districts (often enclosed) in which the Germans concentrated the municipal and sometimes regional Jewish population and forced them to live under miserable conditions. Ghettos isolated Jews by separating Jewish communities from the non-Jewish population and from other Jewish communities. The Germans established at least 1,000 ghettos in German-occupied and annexed Poland and the Soviet Union alone. German occupation authorities established the first ghetto in Poland in Piotrków Trybunalski in October 1939.
There were three types of ghettos: closed ghettos, open ghettos, and destruction ghettos.
The largest ghetto in Poland was the Warsaw ghetto, where over 400,000 Jews were crowded into an area of 1.3 square miles. Other major ghettos were established in the cities of Lodz, Krakow, Bialystok, Lvov, Lublin, Vilna, Kovno, Czestochowa, and Minsk. Tens of thousands of western European Jews were also deported to ghettos in the east.”
(http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005059)

Night; First Chapter Summary

The story takes place in a small town in north Romania named Sighet which is in Transylvania, near the Hungarian border. In that little town lived many Jews. This Jews lived in peace and harmony doing all their religion procedures without any disturbance. Between those Jews lived a boy named Elie that was about to gain 13 years old, he was a very dedicated person toward his religion. During day he studied Talmud and in the night he went to the synagogue to pray.
His father was a very wise person and the Jewish community held him in highest esteem, he gave advice in many aspects to the community. Elie’s parents run a store.
He had 3 sisters which helped to run the store. Elie was very interested in Jewish mysticism and because of that he got to know Moishe the Beadle a shtibl. Moishe was his master in Jewish mysticism. One day all the foreign Jews were expelled from Sighet so Moishe the Beadle went away. Life passed normally through months until one day when Elie was about to enter the synagogue he saw Moishe the Beadle sitting on a bench. He told him that the Gestapo had killed all the Jews, and from that day, he told everyone he could about this tragedy and that people should be aware of danger.
Then the Germans arrived, they stayed in people’s houses and even in Jewish houses. Things started to change, Jewish no longer can go to cafeterias and needed to use a yellow David star, Jewish couldn’t had any jewelry or gold.
Then all the Jews were sent to ghettos, small pieces of the city with walls and no contact with the extern world, their lives became calmer although there was an atmosphere of fear inside the ghetto.
Then Jews were sent to unknown places and the number of Jews in the ghettos started to diminish. Elie and his family were some of the last Jews that were sent to those places.

Historical Background

"During the war, Antonescu's regime severely oppressed the Jews in Romania and the conquered territories. In Moldavia, Bukovina, and Bessarabia, Romanian soldiers carried out brutal pogroms. Troops herded at least 200,000 Jews from Bukovina and Bessarabia--who were considered Soviet traitors--across the Dniester and into miserable concentration camps where many starved or died of disease or brutality. During the war, about 260,000 Jews were killed in Bessarabia, Bukovina, and in the camps across the Dniester; Hungary's Nazi government killed or deported about 120,000 of Transylvania's 150,000 Jews in 1944. Despite rampant anti-Semitism, most Romanian Jews survived the war. Germany planned mass deportations of Jews from Romania, but Antonescu balked. Jews acted as key managers in Romania's economy, and Antonescu feared that deporting them en masse would lead to chaos; in addition, the unceasing personal appeals of Wilhelm Filderman, a Jewish leader and former classmate of Antonescu, may have made a crucial difference.

Romania supplied the Nazi war effort with oil, grain, and industrial products, but Germany was reluctant to pay for the deliveries either in goods or gold. As a result, inflation skyrocketed in Romania, and even government officials began grumbling about German exploitation. Romanian-Hungarian animosities also undermined the alliance with Germany. Antonescu's government considered war with Hungary over Transylvania an inevitability after the expected final victory over the Soviet Union. In February 1943, however, the Red Army decimated Romania's forces in the great counteroffensive at Stalingrad, and the German and Romanian armies began their retreat westward. Allied bombardment slowed Romania's industries in 1943 and 1944 before Soviet occupation disrupted transportation flows and curtailed economic activity altogether."
http://countrystudies.us/romania/22.htm

Sighet Map(http://www.restromania.com/RegionsOfRomania.htm)

Elie Wiesel Biography

"Elie Wiesel was born in the small town of Sighet in Transylvania, where people of different languages and religions have lived side by side for centuries, sometimes peacefully, sometimes in bitter conflict. The region has long been claimed by both Hungary and Romania and, in the 20th century, has changed hands repeatedly, a hostage to the fortunes of war.


Elie Wiesel grew up in the close-knit Jewish community of Sighet. While the family spoke Yiddish at home, they read newspapers and conducted their grocery business in German, Hungarian or Romanian as the occasion demanded. Ukrainian, Russian and other languages were also widely spoken in the town. Elie began religious studies in classical Hebrew almost as soon as he could speak. The young boy's life centered entirely on his religious studies. He loved the mystical tradition and folk tales of the Hassidic sect of Judaism, to which his mother's family belonged. His father, though religious, encouraged the boy to study the modern Hebrew language and concentrate on his secular studies. The first years of World War II left Sighet relatively untouched. Although the village changed hands from Romania to Hungary, the Wiesel family believed they were safe from the persecutions suffered by Jews in Germany and Poland.

The secure world of Wiesel's childhood ended abruptly with the arrival of the Nazis in Sighet in 1944. The Jewish inhabitants of the village were deported en masse to concentration camps in Poland. The 15 year-old boy was separated from his mother and sister immediately on arrival in Auschwitz. He never saw them again. He managed to remain with his father for the next year as they were worked almost to death, starved, beaten, and shuttled from camp to camp on foot, or in open cattle cars, in driving snow, without food, proper shoes, or clothing. In the last months of the war, Wiesel's father succumbed to dysentery, starvation, exhaustion and exposure.


After the war, the teenaged Wiesel found asylum in France, where he learned for the first time that his two older sisters had survived the war. Wiesel mastered the French language and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, while supporting himself as a choir master and teacher of Hebrew. He became a professional journalist, writing for newspapers in both France and Israel.

For ten years, he observed a self-imposed vow of silence and wrote nothing about his wartime experience. In 1955, at the urging of the Catholic writer Francois Mauriac, he set down his memories in Yiddish, in a 900-page work entitled Un die welt hot geshvign (And the world kept silent). The book was first published in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Wiesel compressed the work into a 127-page French adaptation, La Nuit (Night), but several years passed before he was able to find a publisher for the French or English versions of the work. Even after Wiesel found publishers for the French and English translations, the book sold few copies.

In 1956, while he was in New York covering the United Nations, Elie Wiesel was struck by a taxi cab. His injuries confined him to a wheelchair for almost a year. Unable to renew the French document which had allowed him to travel as a "stateless" person, Wiesel applied successfully for American citizenship. Once he recovered, he remained in New York and became a feature writer for the Yiddish-language newspaper, the Jewish Daily Forward (Der forverts ).

Wiesel continued to write books in French, including the semi-autobiographical novels L'Aube (Dawn), and Le Jour (translated as The Accident ). In his novel La Ville de la Chance (translated as The Town Beyond the Wall ), Wiesel imagined a return to his home town, a journey he did not undertake in life until after the book was published.


As these and other books began to win him an international reputation, Wiesel took an increasing interest in the plight of persecuted Jews in the Soviet Union. He first traveled to the USSR in 1965 and reported on his travels in The Jews of Silence. His 1968 account of the Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors appeared in English as A Beggar In Jerusalem . In time, Wiesel was able to use his fame to plead for justice for oppressed peoples in the Soviet Union, South Africa, Vietnam, Biafra and Bangladesh.

He has written plays including Zalmen, or the Madness of God and The Trial of God (Le Proces de Shamgorod ). His other novels include The Gates of the Forest, The Oath, The Testament, and The Fifth Son. His essays and short stories are collected in the volumes Legends of Our Time, One Generation After, and A Jew Today. Although Wiesel still writes his books in French, his wife Marion now collaborates with him on their English translation.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed Elie Wiesel Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. In 1985 he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Freedom and, in 1986, the Nobel Prize for Peace. The English translation of his memoirs appeared in 1995 as All Rivers Run to the Sea. Since 1976, he has been Andrew Mellon Professor of Humanities at Boston University. He makes his home in New York City with his wife and their son, Elisha."

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/wie0bio-1