The Summary
Chapters 1-2
The book begins when Elie Wiesel saw Moishe the Beadle in Sighet, Transylvania where Elie himself lives, he was just a pauper, knowledgable, and religious. Elie Wiesel is training himself to study Kabbalah and the Talmud. Moishe the Beadle then disappeared to a concentration camp. He later exclaimed a warning to every Jew living in Sighet that the Hungarian police officers were going to come and put you into the concentration camp by the SS officers. Unfortunately, not a single Jew believed in Moishe. Chapter 2 begins with Elie Wiesel on a freight train and then he would later encounter a woman that is Madame Schachter. Madame Schachter in the freight train while everyone else was on the train saw a fire and she exclaimed the news to everyone on the freight train. Like Moishe the Beadle, not a single person believed that there was a fire. She was then found mad. When Elie Wiesel arrived, he noticed the smell of burning dead bodies.
Chapters 3-4
Chapter three begins when Elie Wiesel arrives at the concentration camp. And every couple yards there is an SS soldier with a machine gun that aims at the inmates just in case. Then the moment came when Elie Wielsel and his father is separated from their female relatives. Eight simple words were exclaimed "Men the the left! Women to the right!" A man then walks up to Elie Wiesel, could not see his face but could tell that he has a weary and warm voice. He states" Hey, kid, how old are you?" Elie then answers "fifteen." Despite giving his actual age, the inmate scoulds Elie and states: "No. You're eighteen." The inmate then scoulds his father when he gave out his age as fifty. But then the inmate told him that he is forty years old in the camp. Meanwhile there was an inamte that also told the nightmarish conditions of Auschwitz. Tell the arrived Jews in the camp the process in the burning and the extermination of the Jews. Elie and a group of other Jews were stunned nd petrified at the horrors of what the inamte said about the crematorium, the chimney, and the ashes that the Jews thought they'd turn into.Dr. Mengele appears again in the book with a baton Elie Wiesel had a brief conversation with Josef Mengele and told him the age that the inmate earlier in the chapter gave to him. He stated that he was eighteen and then Mengele then asked for his occupation and told him that he was a Farmer. Mengele’s baton then pointed to the left, and he faced a near-death situation. An inmate came to an inmate and asked them if they were satisfied. One inmate replied yes. Then, they were scolded when the inmate told them that they were heading to the crematorium. When Elie and a couple of inmates had only a couple more steps to go to the crematorium, Dr. Mengele once again appeared and told the inmates that were two steps from the crematorium. The inmates then were given new clothes and all their heads shaved. Then Elie Wiesel declared that the black flames had taken over which meant that he was a different person. Elie and his inmates marched again to another concentration camp. Josef Mengele appears once again in the book, he states “You are in a concentration camp. in Auschwitz…” Mengele then stated contemplating words that later would be remembered by Elie Wiesel himself. Shlomo then had a colic attack, he asked an inmate that was made in charge of the barrack where the bathrooms are. The inmate would then slap his father in the face. This event petrified Elie. Elie and his inmates marched once again through Auschwitz, and they all saw the sign “Arbeit macht frei” at the gates of Auschwitz. One morning, a couple veterans came to Auschwitz and offered all the inmates black coffee and one bowl of thick soup for all the inmates. The same day in the afternoon, Elie Wiesel and his fellow inmates were all given identification tattoos. Stein was then introduced in the book and asked Elie and Shlomo about the rest of the family. Elie said yes but he is lying about the letters that his mother received. They marched again for four hours Buna and that ends chapter four
Chapters 3-4
Elie notices the differences between Buna and Auschwitz when he arrived at Buna. The inmates were then once again given new clothes. Regular events happened in the earlier chapters including roll-call. five musicians were in the block, they would play marches. Yossi and Tibi are both introduced in the chapter as children when their parents was exterminated in Birkenau. They both became one of Elie's friends and both the brothers considered moving to Palestine after the war. A German Jew by the name of Alphonse was the leader of Elie's block. He tells Elie that after he eats his meal, he has to go to the dentist. He told the dentist that he did not feel good and the dentist excused him, the same reason a week later when Elie was not feeling good. But then the dentist was hanged for stealing prisoners' golden teeth for money. He meets a French girl in the camp as a forced labor inmate, then years later after the war, he meets her again in Paris and talked briefly. Back in the book, Idek in the freight train was having a melt down, and then he watched his father get beat. The even followed when Franek asked for Elie's golden teeth, Elie refuses. Elie Wiesel heard bomb threat at the Buna factory and he quickly thought about his father who was at work at the time. In a response to this threat, the SS came over by the command of Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler that the prisoner who stole the air raid was sentenced to death. Every inmate was silent as this was a warning to every single one of them. Shortly after, the inmate was executed by hanging. A pipel came to the camp and he was generous to everyone, but they were treated more harshly than the older inmates. The pipel was then sentenced to death by hanging.
Chapters 5-6
Chapter five begins on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Elie Wiesel still kept his views on God, calling him "Terrible Master of the Universe" During Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday that involves fasting, Elie decides that he does not want to fast during Yom Kippur because he was fasting all the time in the camp and his father discouraged him from fasting. Dr. Mengele returns once again to bring Elie, Yossi, and Tibi to the crematorium but then he was told that he was too weak and too skinny. Shlomo gave Elie half a ration of bread and a piece of rubber that could be used to repair a shoe. Akiba Drumer dies in the book by selection.There has also been a rabbi from Poland whose talent was reciting entire pages from the Talmud. He once said during the camp "It's over. God is no longer with us." During marching, Elie suffered frostbite and the docotrs got to decide if amputating his leg would cure his body. Elie Wiesel's leg did not end up getting removed. The snow was falling heavily into the concentration camp.
