During the Second World War, the Nazi party, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler tried to kill all the Jews in Europe.. The Nazis and their collaborators murdered six million Jewish people, including 1,500,000 children. This terrible period in history is now referred to as the Holocaust.
Jewish people had lived in Europe for over 2000 years. Originally Jews lived in Palestine but the Romans drove them out of this land in ancient times. Consequently the Jews settled in different places around the world. They often lived peacefully alongside their non-Jewish neighbours.
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Germany was experiencing great economic and social hardship. The Germans had been defeated in the First World War, and had been forced to pay huge reparations to the Allies. As a result, Germany suffered terrible inflation and mass unemployment. Hitler blamed the Jews for the hardship that weighed down upon his country. His anti-Semitic policies eventually led to an intricate plan to exterminate the Jewish people. It is unknown whether this was his original intention, as it seems he initially planned simply to force the Jews out of Germany.
http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/voices/info/backgd/backgd.html
http://ro.iio.org.uk/transylvania/Transylvania-map.jpg
Biography
Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in the town of Sighet, now part of Romania. During World War II, he, with his family and other Jews from the area, were deported to the German concentration and extermination camps, where his parents and little sister perished. Wiesel and his two older sisters survived. Liberated from Buchenwald in 1945 by advancing Allied troops, he was taken to Paris where he studied at the Sorbonne and worked as a journalist.
Wiesel has made his home in New York City, and is now a United States citizen. He has been a visiting scholar at Yale University, a Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the City College of New York, and since 1976 has been Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University where he teaches "Literature of Memory." Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council from 1980 - 1986, Wiesel serves on numerous boards of trustees and advisors.
He is the autor of more than 40 internationally acclaimed Works of fiction and nonfiction. He has been awarded the presidencial Medal of Freedom, The french legion of Honor and in 1986 and The nobel Peace prize.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-bio.html
Summary
This is the story of a 13 year old boy who lives in Sighet a little town in Transylvania , he admire a man called Moishe the Beadle and he had mastered the art of rendering himself insignificant , invisible.
Elie wanted someone to guide him in the studies of Kabbalah but he couldn’t because of his age.
Elie had 3 brothers, Hilda his eldest sister, Bea and Tzipora the youngest. His parents ran a store and Hilda and Bea helped with the work meanwhile he was in the house of study.
One day he passed hours talking yo Moishe the Beadle about the Kabbalah’s revelations and its mysteries.
One day all foreign Jews were expelled from Sighet, Moishe was one of tose Foreigners, and the days passed and it was a rumor that they were sent to Galicia to work, and after many days went by when Elie went to the synagogue he saw Moise the beadle and he told the boy that he has escape because of a miracle, but alter that he wasn’t the same, he was not anymore happy and the joy of his eyes was gone.
In the spring of 1944 there were great news from the Russian Fron, they said that Germany World be defeated and everyone continue their life as normal.
When people heard the news that the German Troops had penetrated Hungarian territory with the government’s approval was when people started to worry.
Fascists attacked Jewish stores and synagogues in Budapest and the situation was becoming very serious.
In a few days Geraman army appeared in the streets of Sighet, ando n the secen day of Passover, the Germans arrested the leaders of the Jewish community.
They started to put some rules, the first one was that the Jews were forbidden to own gold, and the secon one was that all Jews had to use the yellow star, they were not able to attend to synagogue or be in the streets alter six o’clock in the evening.
There were two ghettos created in Sighet, one was bigger that the other one .
One night while his father was telling some anecdotes, a policeman took his father to a special meeting of the council.
When his father arrive, there were horrible news , they will be sent to another place to work. People start preparing for the journey.
The next day the hungarian arrived and ordered the Jews to go outsider their houses and they leave manwhile Elie watch everyone passing by his side.
Elie and his family had to move to the small ghetto, everyone was very sad of leaving their homes, and alter spending a few days in the ghetto, the day had come, they will have to leave of their town, there were cars waiting outsider, they get in and finally they left.
