The first-person narrator of Night, Eliezer is 12 when the story begins in 1941. Living in a Jewish community in Sighet, Transylvania, he is deported with the other Jews from the town after it falls under Nazi control in 1944. He is immediately separated from his mother and sisters when the deportation train arrives at Birkenau-Auschwitz, a concentration camp in Poland. However, he and his father are able to stay close to each other at the camp and at several other camps to which they are moved over the next year.

Eliezer and his father encourage and support each other during their internment, sharing rations and protecting each other from the sudden and wanton violence of camp life. However, Eliezer’s devotion to his father begins to weaken as the ordeal of surviving the brutal conditions of imprisonment grows ever more difficult for both of them. As his father succumbs to illness and his will to live fades, Eliezer takes on the role of caregiver for the dying man. He witnesses an SS guard striking his father with a truncheon, fracturing his skull, as the old man begs his son for a drink of water. His father dies shortly afterward, and Eliezer’s

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now