The Night TrilogyBy Jesse Maplesden

Night Chapter One

In 1941, Eliezer is a twelve-year-old boy living in the Transylvanian town of Sighet.

Eliezer studies the Talmud, the Jewish oral law. He also studies the Jewish mystical texts of the Kabbalah and one that goes against his father’s wishes.

Eliezer finds a sensitive and challenging teacher in Moshe the Beadle. Moshe is deported by the Hungarians. After several months, having escaped his captors, Moshe returns and tells how the deportation trains were handed over to the Gestapo at the border.

There, he explains, the Jews were forced to dig mass graves for themselves and were killed. The town takes him for a lunatic and refuses to believe his story.

In the spring of 1944, the Hungarian government falls into the hands of the Fascists, and the next day the German armies occupy Hungary

The Jewish community leaders are arrested, Jewish valuables are confiscated, and all Jews are forced to wear yellow stars.

The Jews are confined to small ghettos, crowded together into narrow streets behind barbed-wire fences. The Nazis then begin to deport the Jews in increments, and Eliezer’s family is among the last to leave Sighet.

They watch as other Jews are crowded into the streets in the hot sun, carrying only what fits in packs on their backs. Eliezer’s family is first herded into another, smaller ghetto. Their former servant, Martha, visits them and offers to hide them in her village. They decline the offer.

Night Chapter 2

Packed into cattle cars, the Jews are put into nearly unbearable conditions. There is almost no air to breathe, the heat is intense, there is no room to sit, and everyone is hungry and thirsty.

After days of travel the train arrives at the Czechoslovakian border, and the Jews realize that they are not being relocated.

A German officer takes official charge of the train, threatening to shoot any Jew who refuses to give up his or her valuables and to exterminate everybody in the car if anybody escapes.

The doors to the car are nailed shut, further preventing escape.

Madame Schachter soon cracks under the oppressive treatment. On the third night, she begins to scream that she sees a fire in the darkness outside the car. They believed that she was crazy like Moshe. Finally, she is tied up and gagged so that she cannot scream.

The prisoners on the train find out, when the train eventually stops, that they have reached Auschwitz station. They are told that they have arrived at a labor camp where they will be treated well and kept together as families.

With nightfall, however, Madame Schachter again wakes everyone with her screams, and again she is beaten into silence. The train moves slowly and at midnight passes into an area enclosed by barbed wire. Through the windows, everybody sees the chimneys of vast furnaces. There is a terrible odor in the air. This concentration camp is Birkenau, the processing center for arrivals at Auschwitz.

Night Chapter 3

At Birkenau “selections” occurred, during which individuals recognized as weaker or less useful are weeded out to be killed.

Eliezer and his father remain together but Eliezer’s mother and younger sister were separated. Eliezer and his father meet a prisoner, who counsels them to lie about their ages.

In a central square, Dr. Mengele stands, determining whether new arrivals are fit to work or whether they are to be killed immediately.

Taking the prisoner’s advice, Eliezer lies about his age, telling Mengele he is eighteen. He also says that he is a farmer rather than a student, and is motioned to Mengele’s left, along with his father.

Nobody knows whether left means the crematorium or the prison. As the prisoners move through Birkenau, they are horrified to see a huge pit where babies are being burned, and another for adults. Eliezer cannot believe his eyes, and tells his father that what they see is impossible, that “humanity would never tolerate” such a barbarism.

In the barracks, the Jews are stripped and shaved, disinfected with gasoline, showered, and clothed in prison uniforms. When Eliezer’s father asks for the bathroom, he is beaten by the Kapo.

Soon they make the short march from Birkenau to Auschwitz, where they are quartered for three weeks, and where their prison numbers are tattooed on their arms. Eliezer and his father meet a distant relative from Antwerp, a man named Stein, who inquires after news of his family. Eliezer lies and tells him that he has heard about Stein’s family, and that they are alive and well.

Finally, they are escorted on a four-hour walk from Auschwitz to Buna, the work camp in which they will be interned for months.

Night Chapter 4

After the medical inspection, including a dental search for gold crowns, Eliezer is chosen by a Kapo to serve in a unit of prisoners whose job involves counting electrical fittings in a civilian warehouse.

Eliezer and his father are to be housed in the musicians’ block, which is headed by a kindly German Jew. In this block of prisoners, Eliezer meets Juliek, a Jewish violinist, and the brothers Yosi and Tibi.

Not long after Eliezer and his father arrive in Buna, Eliezer is summoned to the dentist to have his gold crown pulled. He manages to plead illness and postpone having the crown removed.

Idek, the Kapo in charge of Eliezer’s work crew, is prone to fits of violent madness.

Eliezer’s father falls victim to one of Idek’s rages

When Franek, the prison foreman, notices Eliezer’s gold crown, he demands it. Franek’s desire for the gold makes him vicious and cruel. On his father’s advice, Eliezer refuses to yield the tooth. As punishment, Franek mocks and beats Eliezer’s father until Eliezer eventually gives up. Soon after this incident, both Idek and Franek are transferred to another camp.

Night Chapter 5

At the end of the summer of 1944, the Jewish High Holidays arrive: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Despite their imprisonment and affliction, the Jews of Buna come together to celebrate Rosh Hashanah.

On this solemn Jewish holiday, Eliezer’s religious rebellion intensifies, and he cannot find a reason to bless God in the midst of so much suffering. Eliezer mocks the idea that the Jews are God’s chosen people, deciding that they have only been chosen to be massacred.

His denial of faith leaves him alone, or so he believes, among the 10,000 Jewish celebrants in Buna. Leaving the service, however, Eliezer finds his father, and there is a moment of communion and understanding between them.

Soon after the Jewish New Year, another selection is announced. Eliezer has been separated from his father to work in the building unit. He worries that his father will not pass the selection, and after several days it turns out that Eliezer’s father is indeed one of those deemed too weak to work: he will be executed.

A second selection occurred among the condemned, and Eliezer’s father survived. With the arrival of winter, the prisoners begin to suffer in the cold.

A rumor of the approaching Russian army gives him new hope, but the Germans decide to evacuate the camp before the Russians can arrive. Thinking that the Jews in the infirmary will be put to death prior to the evacuation, Eliezer and his father choose to be evacuated with the others. After the war, Eliezer learns that they made the wrong decision—those who remained in the infirmary were freed by the Russians a few days later.

Night Chapter 6 & 7 Anybody who stops running is shot by the SS. Zalman, a boy running alongside Eliezer, decides he can run no further.

He stops and is trampled to death.

After running all night and covering more than forty-two miles, the prisoners find themselves in a deserted village. They keep one another awake so they will not die in the cold.

Rabbi Eliahou finds his way into the shed where Eliezer and his father are collapsed. The rabbi is looking for his son. Eliezer falsely tells Rabbi Eliahou he has not seen the son, yet, during the run, Eliezer saw the son abandon his father, running ahead when it seemed Rabbi Eliahou would not survive.

At last, the exhausted prisoners arrive at the Gleiwitz camp, crushing each other in the rush to enter the barracks. In the press of men, Eliezer and his father are thrown to the ground. Fighting for air, Eliezer discovers that he is lying on top of Juliek.

Eliezer falls asleep to Juliek’s music, and when he wakes he finds Juliek dead, his violin smashed.

After three days without bread and water, there is another selection. When Eliezer’s father is sent to stand among those sentenced to die, Eliezer runs after him. In the confusion that follows, both Eliezer and his father are able to sneak back over to the other side.

The prisoners are taken to a field, where a train of roofless cattle cars comes to pick them up. The prisoners are herded into the cattle cars and ordered to throw out the bodies of the dead men.

Eliezer’s father, unconscious, is almost mistaken for dead and thrown from the car, but Eliezer succeeds in waking him. As they pass through German towns, some of the locals throw bread into the car in order to enjoy watching the Jews kill each other for the food.

An old man manages to grab a piece, but Eliezer watches as he is attacked and beaten to death by his own son, who in turn is beaten to death by other men.

One night, someone tries to strangle Eliezer in his sleep. Eliezer’s father calls Meir Katz, a strong friend of theirs, who rescues Eliezer, but Meir Katz himself is losing hope. When the train arrives at Buchenwald, only twelve out of the 100 men who were in Eliezer’s train car are still alive. Meir Katz is among the dead.

Night Chapter 8 & 9 The journey to Buchenwald has fatally weakened Eliezer’s father. On arrival, he sits in the snow and

refuses to move. Eliezer tries to convince him to move, but he will not or cannot, asking only to be allowed to rest.

When an air raid alert drives everyone into the barracks, Eliezer leaves his father and falls deeply asleep. Part of him thinks that he will be better off if he abandons his father and conserves his strength. He finds his father almost dead. Eliezer brings him soup and coffee.

Eliezer’s father is afflicted with dysentery. The prisoners whose beds surround Eliezer’s father’s bed steal his food and beat him.

The next time the SS patrol the barracks, Eliezer’s father again cries for water, and the SS officer, screaming at Eliezer’s father to shut up, beats him in the head with his truncheon. The next morning, January 29, 1945, Eliezer wakes up to find that his father has been taken to the crematory.

Eliezer remains in Buchenwald, thinking neither of liberation nor of his family, but only of food. On April 5, with the American army approaching, the Nazis decide to annihilate all the Jews left in the camp. Daily, thousands of Jews are murdered. On April 10, with about 20,000 people remaining in the camp, the Nazis decide to evacuate and kill everyone left in the camp.

As the evacuation begins, however, an air-raid siren sounds, sending everybody indoors. When it seems that all has returned to normal and that the evacuation will proceed as planned, the resistance movement strikes, driving the SS from the camp.

Hours later, on April 11, the American army arrives at Buchenwald. Now free, the prisoners think only of feeding themselves. Eliezer is struck with food poisoning and spends weeks in the hospital, deathly ill.

Dawn Chapter 1

Palestine. The narrator had to kill an Englishman in the morning.

A beggar taught the narrator the difference between night and day when he was a boy. "Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming."

A month ago one of their fighters that had been on a terrorist operation and was taken by the police. The "Old Man" decided that things had gone far enough and now he was not going to allow the English to rule any longer, so he ordered that a military officer be kidnapped. Captain John Dawson was kidnapped.

The High Commissioner of Palestine said that the whole country would be held responsible for the murder of the Captain. The mother of the Captain demanded that the English give up the young Jew so that she could have her son back.

The Palestinians would not give up the Captain because it would show a sign of weakness. The English would not agree to the pardon because it would show a sign of weakness.

Dawn Chapter 2

The narrator's name is Elisha. "Gad had recruited me for the Movement and brought me to Palestine.

He had made me into a terrorist." Elisha was held in Buchenwald, a prison camp during World War 2. The Americans who liberated it offered to send him home, he rejected. He went to Paris and that is where he met Gad.

"The study of philosophy attracted me because I wanted to understand the meaning of the events of which I had been the victim.“

The struggle of the group was to make their homeland free from outside intervention.

"You are listening to the voice of freedom"; was said by a girl every night on the Movements own radio station. Elisha and Gad were 2 of 5 who knew the girl. Elisha walks over to look in the mirror, he only sees eyes. He was told "Death . . . is a being without arms or legs or mouth or head; it is all eyes. If you ever meet a creature with eyes everywhere. You can be sure that it is death."

Dawn Chapter 3

Elisha believes that he has killed before in raids on camps and convoys but he did not feel bad about planning the raids.

The Captain was being held at a Professor of Language's house. The first time that Elisha killed, he and 4 others raided a camp where they surrounded a group of soldiers and then began firing on them.

When he goes out to kill he calls it “putting on the gray colors of the SS.”

One night they had an operation where they went onto an army base with false documents that said that they were supposed to pick up Tommy guns and ammunition. They almost got away but the man at the gate received a message that the order was not in proper authority.

David got shot and that is when he was captured. Elisha was not there but Gad was the organizer of the operation and takes blame for the capture.

Elisha is used to losing friends every day. "This is war." is used frequently. Like they are trying to justify what they are doing.

Dawn Chapter 4

Gideon was reported on by a neighbor and he went into an asylum where a friend worked. They slapped him, and got no reaction, they also tried to make him eat, and he would not. Playing dead had changed the man’s hair color from brown to white. Gideon was called the “Saint.”

The woman was saved by a head cold. The police brought a group of women in and had an analyst listen to their voices. The voices were compared to the voice on the radio. The woman had a cold that day and her voice was not the same. She was quickly eliminated from the suspects.

Elisha was once saved by laughter. During his stay at a prison camp, he was supposed to go outside in very cold weather in his rags. The cell block was getting cleaned. He thought that the exposure would kill him because he had a cold, so he snuck into the barracks while they were not looking. When the cleaning crew found him the leader grabbed him by the throat; Elisha’s head swelled up and he looked funny. The leader let him go and started to laugh uncontrollably.

Catherine befriended Elisha at summer camp in Normandy after the war. She was the only person that could talk to him. Catherine taught him what women did to men. On a walk one night Catherine told him that some of the other girls spoke German, Elisha expressed that he had nothing to say to them. She replied. "You don't have to say anything . . . all you have to do is love them.”

Dawn Chapter 5

Elisha has a dream where all of the people in the room are people that he had known or killed. He kept asking people why they were all there but no one would answer, the beggar answered with "This is a night of many faces.“

A boy says that all of the people were there to witness him become a murderer. Elisha’s mother could only say "Poor boy, poor boy." They told the man in the dungeon that he was going to die at dawn and the man said that he was hungry.

Elisha thought that it was impossible for the man to be hungry, because he believes that the stomach tells the brain it is not hungry because it is going to die. Elisha goes to give the prisoner the food, but he states that he does not want to be alone with the prisoner.

Gad ended up taking the food down to the prisoner.

Gad came from watching the Captain eat and he said that the man was not hungry but he ate with good appetite. Gad handed Elisha a revolver.

Elisha asked if the prisoner had laughed. Gad replied "no" The stories that the prisoner told were funny but Gad said that he did not laugh.

Elisha feels that David will come to the rescue. Elisha wants to go down and get to know who he is murdering. Elisha does not want anyone, including the ghosts to go with him to the dungeon.

Dawn Chapter 6

The cell was less stuffy than the room that everyone was in. "Under other circumstances he might have been my friend.“

The Captain asks for some paper for a letter that will be sent to his son after the execution. Elisha knew an artist who had his right hand cut off by the Nazis; the Captain had hands like the artist.

Elisha cannot hate the Captain, even though hate is needed for murder. The Captain asks "Why must you try to hate me ...” Elisha thinks that this is a good question and says "In order to give my action a meaning which may somehow transcend it.“

It is now 10 to 5. They talk about feelings. Three minutes to five and Elisha promises that he will mail the letter the same day.

The Captain is smiling. Elisha asks why and the Captain says. "I'm smiling . . . because all of a sudden it has occurred to me that I don't know why I am dying." The captain's last word was the name of Elisha. The ghosts started to leave the cell and the Captain walked beside the little boy.

Day Chapter 1

Eliezer is in Times Square with his girlfriend Kathleen. The two then decided to go see a film. While crossing the street to the theatre. Eliezer is hit by a cab and dragged several feet through the intersection.

He then falls into a coma and does not wake up for five days. He is then driven to New York Hospital and is placed under the care of Dr. Russell.

After three days he has surgery. Although because of complications they only focus on his hip and decided to deal with his other various aliments another time.

On the fifth day in the hospital he regains consciousness. He realizes upon waking that he would have preferred to die. Dr. Russell visits him and informs him that his enemy is now a fever, which if it rises, will kill him.

Day Chapter 2

Eliezer recalls the night he first met Kathleen on a cold winter's evening in Paris. They're introduced by a friend, Shimon Yanal.

Kathleen and Eliezer are introduced and are immediately attracted to one another. They walk around Paris for a few hours without talking.

They eventually come to The Seine, a prominent commercial waterway in Paris, Eliezer stares into the river and thinks about death and his Grandmother. Eventually Kathleen touches him on the arm and they go to her apartment.

Day Chapter 3

Back in the hospital, Eliezer is woken up by a nurse giving him shots to control the fever. He's extremely thirsty but can’t have any water because it will only make him sicker.

He compares his feeling of being in a cast with his Grandmother dying in the gas chambers.

Dr. Russell comes in and tells him that Kathleen is in the hallway, Lost in his thoughts, Eliezer thinks that his Grandmother is waiting for him and he says that he doesn't want to see her, Kathleen comes in and talks with Eliezer.

Day Chapter 4

Back in Kathleen’s apartment in Paris, on the night they first met, she asks Eliezer to tell her about himself. He remarks that if he does she'll likely end up hating him.

He was on a boat heading to South America. It was night and he was by himself starring out into the sea. A stranger came out to join him, but Eliezer could not make out the man's face. The two talk about the power of the sea, and how it can make a man feel powerless.

Back at Kathleen’s apartment, she tells him that Shimon told her that Eliezer was a saint because he's suffered so much. He laughs at this, saying that saints die while he is alive. He also says that suffering, like he has, brings out the worst in people, Rather than being appalled by this, Kathleen wants him to continue.

He finally relents and tells her his life story. By the time he has finished telling his story he's wet with perspiration and morning has come. Kathleen says that she still thinks he's a saint. Eliezer remarks that he can’t be a saint since he desires her. He then decides to show her he's not a saint by making love to her but not committing anything, since saints commit themselves in every task they do in life, they then make love.

Day Chapter 5

Back in the hospital, Eliezer’s fever vanished. The nurse comes into shave his beard. He refuses to look into a mirror. The nurse obliges.

Friends and colleagues come to visit him, and try to cheer him up by, they tell him that he'll be able to sue the cab company for a lot of money and will soon be rich.

It's nearly 7 p.m., when Kathleen finally arrives. She's overly cheerful and flighty, almost as if she’s hiding something. She tells him she’s contacted a lawyer to help them sue the cab company.

A lawyer comes to visit Eliezer to talk to him about the accident. As they go over the details, Eliezer wants to make sure the cab driver won't have to pay for any of this. The lawyer tells him that only the cab company will pay for it, not the driver, Eliezer is relieved to hear this.

Five years after they separated Kathleen contacts Eliezer. Both have moved to America now, Kathleen to Boston, Eliezer to New York. She asks him to come meet her in an apartment at a hotel in New York, to which he agrees. She asks Eliezer to help her, with a marriage that she just recently got out of.

Day Chapter 6

Kathleen asks Eliezer about something he said when he was in a coma. During those five days the only thing he said was Sarah. Eliezer tells her that Sarah was his mother’s name.

When he was a boy his teacher told him that when he died an angel would come to his grave after three days and ask who he was. He was to answer, "I am Eliezer, the son of Sarah." If he was to forget his mother's name, the angel would not take him to heaven and he would be doomed to spend all eternity in purgatory.

As a child he lived in constant fear of forgetting his mother's name, because he would have to know it at the time of his death.

Day Chapter 7

Sarah, Eliezer remembers, was also the name of a woman he'd met in Paris years before he'd met Kathleen. She asked him if he wanted to go make love, and after some urging he agreed to go with her to a hotel room.

She was in her underwear when Eliezer told her he no longer wanted to make love; instead, he wanted her to tell him about herself. Like him, she too had been in the concentration camps.

She told him that the officers and other high rankings officials used her sexually. It happened constantly, and thus prostitution eventually became her "career".

Day Chapter 8

Eliezer recalls how things were when he and Kathleen first reunited in New York. They had a relationship that was essentially devoid of romance.

They saw each other every night, often going out and doing social things like going to the theatre.

Despite his trying to cure her, she became more and more detached from life and began to waste away. One day she told Eliezer that she loved him; she was very embarrassed by this revelation. Eliezer, still treating her like a sick person, told her he did as well. She didn’t believe him and thought he was saying it because he pitied her.

Day Chapter 9

For the ten weeks that he was in the hospital, three people visited Eliezer everyday: Kathleen, Dr. Russell, and his painter friend Gyula.

When he first comes to visit him in the hospital he tells Eliezer that he's going to paint his portrait. Gyula tells him he can't die until it's finished. Each day Gyula would come to paint him and they'd talk.

Eliezer tries to tell him about the accident, but Gyula doesn’t want to hear about it. He tells Eliezer that he doesn't need to hear his stories to know.

When he's finally finished with the painting he shows it to Eliezer. Looking at it Eliezer realizes that Gyula knows the accident was more of a suicide attempt than an actual accident. It's then that Gyula tells him he needs to stop thinking of the dead, for they no longer suffer.

He needs to abandon them and care only for the land of the living, the land of his lover Kathleen and friends, like Gyula. Eliezer is hesitant to agree, since he doesn't want to abandon his past. Gyula insists that he must, and says he should chase his past away with a whip if necessary. Then on the day before Eliezer is released from the hospital, Gyula burns the portrait as a symbolic gesture. In the end, only the ashes are left behind in the room.

HIIII!!!!

THE END