Night: wkst 4 + 5

Directions: Answer each question with a complete sentence. It is best to incorporate the question as part of the answer.

1. Eliezer is summoned to have his gold crown removed. He gets out of it by pleading illness, but this proves to be a bad decision. What eventually becomes of Eliezer and his gold crown?

2. Eliezer’s father falls victim to one of Idek’s raging attacks. How does Eliezer’s reaction to this beating reveal how much the concentration camps have changed him?

3. Explain the meaning of this quote:

“Where is God now?”

And I heard a voice within me answer him:

“Where is He? He is – He is hanging here on this gallows…”

4. In Jewish tradition, the High Holidays are the time of divine Judgement. According to the prayer book, Jews pass before God on Rosh Hashanah like sheep before the shepherd, and God determines who will live and who will die in the coming year. How is that like the “selection” in the concentration camps?

5. What is the irony about the fact that Eliezer says his faith is gone, but he later states, “even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself” (that he would never forget the Holocaust.

6. In this section, Eliezer relates with horror a story about a 13 year-old child who beats his father for making his bed improperly. Contrast this father and son’s relationship with Eliezer and his father’s relationship.

7. This story is filled so much with the unbelievable, one of its themes. The author jumps from the past into the present tense and tells of a chance meeting with someone. Tell about that chance meeting.

8. In section four, the author states: “A few days before the Poles left, I had a novel experience.” What was that novel experience?

9. The author says, “a novel experience;” Juliek whispers about the hanging, “This ceremony, will it be over soon? I’m hungry…”

Why do you think the author uses positive words, “novel” and “ceremony,” in describing horribly negative situations?

10. At the end of section five, the prisoners were ordered to mop the floor…”One hour before leaving camp!” Why were the prisoners told to mop before leaving? Can you see any irony in the answer to that question?