Wiesel tells us in detail about witnessing two formal executions of
prisoners by hanging. In both cases, all of the prisoners were assembled to
witness the executions. In both cases, the Germans commanded the assembled
prisoners to show their respect to the condemned by removing and replacing
their caps both before and after the hangings. There is no information in
Night that suggests that any SS-men at the Buna
camp engaged in the random murder of Jewish prisoners.
About the first execution Mr. Wiesel writes: "The thousands who had died
daily at Auschwitz and at Birkenau in the crematories no longer troubled me.
But this one, leaning against his gallows -- he overwhelmed me." Clearly,
Elie is telling us that he believed at that time that thousands of people
were being exterminated daily in the crematory ovens, where his former
neighbour, Bela Katz, had been assigned as one of the Sonderkommando. It is
clear that Mr. Wiesel is telling us that the Jews were killed in the ovens
themselves, he is not saying that the Jews were poisoned with gas or shot or
strangled and then cremated. To kill someone in an oven is not the same
thing as to kill someone and burn his body. But, remember, Mr. Katz told
Elie that he had burned his father's body, he did not tell Elie that he had
helped burn his father to death.
If either Mr. Katz or some other prisoner shared his knowledge about how
"the thousands" had met their deaths "in the crematory ovens," Elie Wiesel
does not tell us when, or where, or by whom he was told this horrifying
information. At least, it does not appear in Night.
At the end of the Jewish Year, "the Germans gave us a fine New Year's
gift." The German Jewish block commandant of the Wiesels' new block informed
them that they were all confined to the barracks. Rumour spread that there
was to be a medical "selection."
We knew what that meant. A SS man would examine us. Whenever he found a
weak one, a musulman as we called them, he would write his number down:
good for the crematory.
The prisoners were assembled by the German Jewish head of the block who
"had never been outside concentration camps since 1933", a man who "had
already been through all the slaughterhouses, all the factories of death."
It would appear that with this Jewish prisoner who had spent about eleven
years in the various concentration camps of Nazi Germany Elie would have
found an excellent source for information about how "the thousands" were
being exterminated in the crematories. If so, this information does not
appear in Night.
Dr. Mengele re-appeared to make the medical examinations. Several days
later the numbers of the "selected" prisoners are read out. Elie's father's
number was on the selection list.
Elie was forced to leave his father behind with the prisoners who had
been ordered to stay in the camp for a "decisive" second "selection". When
he returns from work -- his father was still there.
Elie reports that the "selected" were taken away to Birkenau in
ambulances. It is strongly implied that this was a very suspicious way to
transport people who had failed a medical examination. The ultimate fate of
the prisoners transported by ambulance to Birkenau is not contained in
Night.
When the winter of 1944 arrived, the prisoners were issued "slightly
thicker striped shirts" and on Christmas they were issued "a slightly
thicker soup." They were also given Christmas Day and New Years Day as
holidays.
In January 1945 Elie Wiesel himself became seriously ill. A "Jewish"
doctor examined his foot and told him that an operation would be necessary.
Elie was put into a hospital. He reports that the hospital beds were
provided with white sheets, and that he was served "good bread and thicker
soups." He even tells us that the rations in the hospital were so ample that
he had extra bread that he was able to send to his father.
After a successful surgery, this unskilled Jewish labourer who had been
separating parts in a warehouse was given two weeks to recuperate in the
hospital.
By now the Germans are preparing to evacuate Auschwitz in the face of the
advancing Soviet Army.
The Germans told the prisoners that those prisoners who were in the
infirmaries will be abandoned to the Russians and that only the healthy
prisoners will be required to leave Auschwitz. However, a rumour spread
among the prisoners that the Germans were really going to kill all of the
patients before they left.
Elie Wiesel tells us that he could have stayed in the hospital and that
he also could have managed to have his father admitted to the hospital and
then waited for the Russians. But he believed the rumours. He tells us that
he persuaded his father to allow themselves to be evacuated with the healthy
prisoners.
The rumours turned out to be false. The Germans did leave the patients
behind unharmed in the camp infirmaries. The Russians liberated them.
The Wiesels joined the exodus of prisoners marching in the snow. The
prisoners had been allowed to pile on extra layers of clothing before they
left by the Germans.
The fleeing German guards urged the prisoners on with violence. Elie
tells us that prisoners were frequently shot if they failed to keep up. He
tells us that the guards had orders to shoot any prisoner who paused too
long. He does not tell us how he knew what orders the guards had received.
He does report that some of the SS-men would shout encouragement to the
prisoners: "Keep going! We are getting there!" And they were telling the
truth. They arrive at Concentration Camp Gleiwitz.
Three days were allowed the prisoners to rest at Gleiwitz before resuming
their march. Wiesel says that there was nothing there for the prisoners to
eat or to drink. Since the prisoners had already marched more than fifty
miles through the snow to Gleiwitz it is amazing that the Wiesels now had
the stamina to resume the march. But they did.
But first they had to undergo another "selection." "The weak, to the
left; those who could walk well, to the right."
When his father was sent to the left, Elie tells us that he caused a
disruption that led to the deaths of some of the prisoners. However Elie did
succeed in getting his father and himself back into the right-hand line.
They were marched to a railway line, put into open-air cattle wagons. The
train took them slowly into central Germany. At some stops the dead were
removed from the car. Prisoners killed one another over scraps of food. The
ultimate fate of the prisoners who had been too weak to walk the train is
not contained in Night.
Finally the transport arrived at Buchenwald Concentration Camp near the
city of Weimar.
A hot shower was demanded of each prisoner before admission to the camp.
Elie's father was too exhausted or ill to go to the showers. Elie tells us
that he abandoned his father and went to the barracks where the exhausted
prisoners ignored "the cauldrons of soup" which the Germans had provided for
them.
The next day Elie looked for his father. He found him in the block where
prisoners were being issued black "coffee" -- probably an artificial coffee
substitute, as Germany was by now cut off from countries in which coffee is
grown. His father was burning with a fever.
Since Elie had abandoned his father because his father was ill and unable
to move himself at that time, the question arises: How did his father get to
the barracks where a hot beverage was being served? The other prisoners
lying about his father had also been too weak to move themselves, therefore,
the only likely explanation is that the Germans had organized the
transportation of the weak and exhausted man to the barracks.
Elie Wiesel makes it abundantly clear that he shared the belief of many
of the prisoners that prisoners who were no longer well enough to work were
automatically subject to extermination -- especially Jewish prisoners. If it
astonished him that the Germans would make an effort to save the life of an
exhausted Jew, that is not mentioned in Night.
On the third day at Buchenwald all of the prisoners were ordered into the
hot showers again: "even the sick."
Two doctors visited the block which housed Elie's father. . From their
lack of identification by the author it can be deduced that they were German
doctors. The first refused to look at Elie's father because he was a surgeon
and Mr. Wiesel was suffering from dysentery. The second screamed at the
prisoners that they were simply "lazy and want to stay in bed." The fact
that the camp authorities continued to provide medical care at this late
point in the war while German forces were being stretched to the limit as
the final collapse of the Third Reich approached is noteworthy.
On January 29, 1945, Mr. Wiesel died after being knocked unconscious by a
SS man who had become angry when the delirious man would not stop shouting .
This blow is the first and only time in Night
when either of the Wiesels was struck by a German.
When the Germans realized that Elie was both under 18 and no longer
protected from the dangers that a young male would be subject to in the
general prison population, he was transferred to the "children's block"
along with 600 other children. There he waited until April 10 when an armed
resistance group rebelled and took over the camp and the SS- men fled.
On the following day, some of the young men went to Weimar to get some
potatoes and clothes -- and to sleep with girls. But of revenge not a
sign.
This passage does not agree with the original Yiddish version of
Night, Un di velt hot geshvign (And the
World Kept Silent).
Yiddish is a language spoken and read almost exclusively by Jews. Things
written in Yiddish are unlikely to be read by non-Jews.
The Yiddish says, in translation:
Early the next day Jewish boys ran off to Weimar to steal clothing and
potatoes -- and to rape German girls. [un tsu fargvaldikn daytshe
shikses, the word shikse is a highly derogatory
term used by Jews for non-Jewish women, e.g. sluts]. The historical
commandment of revenge was not fulfilled.
Translation of this passage and a fuller discussion of the differences
between the Yiddish and non-Yiddish versions of the book
Night can be found in Naomi Seidman, "Elie
Wiesel and the Scandal of Jewish Rage", Jewish Social Studies,
December, 1966.
The Jewish boys stealing and raping in the original Yiddish version have
become non-denominational young men getting food and encountering romance,
and the Jewish commandment to get revenge has been suppressed in the version
published in languages likely to be read by non-Jews.
The fact that Elie Wiesel did not considered the "rape" of German girls
to be a violent action of revenge is suppressed.
We must remember that as late as his 1979 essay, "An Interview Like Any
Other," Mr. Wiesel was telling the world that he had published his memoir
La Nuit after a 10-year vow of silence and only at the urging of Mauriac,
whose account of his meeting with the young survivor appears as a foreword
to Night's French and English editions;
but according to Wiesel's 1994 memoir, All Rivers Run to the Sea, the
Yiddish version was composed and submitted for publication in 1954 -- four
years before the French version that was subsequently translated into
English as Night; therefore, the fact that our
Night is not the original version has
also been suppressed.
Wiesel's story that had broken his "10-year vow of silence" only at the
urging of Mauriac is also a lie.
A careful reading of Night prompts
several questions.
Upon their arrival at Auschwitz, the men were sent one way, the women,
another. Elie Wiesel writes:
Yet it was at that moment when I parted from my mother. I had not had
time to think, but already I felt the pressure of my father's hand: we
were alone. For a part of a second I glimpsed my mother and my sisters
moving away to the right. Tzipora held Mother's hand. I saw them
disappear in the distance...I did not know that in that place, at that
moment, I was parting from my mother and Tzipora forever.
In his book he tells us that his father, his mother, his two older
sisters and his younger sister were deported to Auschwitz. Since his book
omits a dedication to the "memory" of his two older sisters, we might well
conclude that they survived their imprisonment. Why doesn't Elie Wiesel ever
mention his older sisters again?
Later, Wiesel writes about his feelings on the very next day:
Those absent no longer touched even the surface of our memories. We
still spoke of them -- "Who knows what may have become of them?" -- but we
had little concern for their fate.
Clearly the future Nobel Peace Prize winner and his father did not
manifest the level of concern that had been displayed by the "Stein of
Antwerp" for news of his loved ones.
Elie Wiesel had told his readers that the Germans had announced that
families would be kept together at Auschwitz. Elie and his father were
always kept together in the men's camps. It is likely that Mrs. Wiesel and
the three girls were kept together in the women's camps. It is logical that
they could have told Elie Wiesel how his mother and Tzipora had perished.
Why doesn't Elie Wiesel tell us what his sisters told him?
Our author frequently refers to people being "exterminated in the
crematories." He even asserts that people were being burned alive. Why
doesn't our author ever tell us about the gas chambers that are nowadays
believed to have been in the cellars of the crematories? He tells of a
number of public executions by hanging, he tells us about some prisoners
being shot during the forced march through the snow, he tells about his
father dying of dysentery after arriving at Buchenwald; but he never tells
us more than that "thousands ... died daily at Auschwitz and at Birkenau in
the crematory ovens."
Despite giving example after example of prisoners passing on false
rumours, and giving example after example of prisoners surviving for years
in Auschwitz, and example after example of the ease with which prisoners
communicated among themselves and with outsiders; Mr. Wiesel never even once
uses the words "gas chamber," "Zyklon-B," or "cyanide"; in the English
version of Night when he writes about
prisoners sent to the crematory.
There is an extremely vague and fleeting allusion to the concept of
gassing in the English version of Night.
Wiesel addresses God at one point, and says to Him: "But these men here,
whom You have betrayed, whom You have allowed to be tortured, butchered,
gassed, burned, what do they do? They pray before you!"
He does not tell how he knew that people were gassed, where they were
gassed, when they were gassed, or what they were gassed with. Perhaps this
is the reason that in the German translation of this book Die Nacht zu
begraben (Ullstein, 1962), on 14 occasions the word "crematory" used in
the English version of Night has been
translated in German as "Gaskammer" ("gas chamber.)" There is no word in
French that could be translated into English equally as "crematory" and as
"gas chamber".
Six members of the Wiesel family were deported to Auschwitz. One died of
dysentery or of a blow to the head, two died of unknown or unreported
causes.
"Genocide" is defined as "the systematic and planned extermination of an
entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group." "Exterminate" means
"to get rid of by destroying completely." "Completely" means "absolutely,"
"totally," i.e., without exceptions.
There is no evidence presented in Night
that the death of Elie Wiesel's father was part of a systematic planned
extermination. The cause of the deaths of his mother and his sister Tzipora,
if known, are withheld from us. The fifty percent mortality suffered by the
Wiesel family while in German captivity is tragic, but it is not evidence
that the Germans were following a policy aimed at their complete and total
extermination.
