- Why does Wiesel begin Night with the story of Moshe the Beadle? What lessons does the narrator seem to learn from Moshe’s experiences in telling his own story?
- What are we to make of the story of Madame Schächter, the woman who screams on the train? Is she a madwoman? A prophet? Or a witness? What is the difference between the three labels? How is Madame Schächter like Moshe the Beadle? Does she, too, know or sense something that others refuse to believe?
- How do the “veteran” prisoners respond when they discover the newcomers have never heard of Auschwitz? How do you account for their reaction?
- What does it mean to know but not acknowledge what you know? When do people do it?
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Explore the relationship between knowing, madness, and belief.
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The story of Moshe the Beadle serves to illustrate the German Jews' knowledge of what the Nazis were doing before it started happening to them. Moshe risks his life to return to Sighet and tell the people there of the atrocities that he witnessed in the forest of Galicia. The saddest thing about this story is the fact that Moshe wants only one thing: "Jews, listen to me. It's all I ask of you" (5). Even after his heart wrenching accounts of what has happened, the Jews of Sighet declare that Moshe is insane rather than recognizing the truth in what he's telling them and heeding his warning. The story foreshadows Elie Wiesel's feelings about his experience during the Holocaust and the reason he wrote Night; he only wanted the world to acknowledge what he and other European Jews had been through. Wiesel makes it clear that, even immediately following their liberation the Jews thought "not of revenge," having little or no desire to hunt down their Nazi captors (109). In this instance, the Jews of Sighet mistook Moshe's knowledge for madness because it was easier for them to understand that he'd gone crazy rather than admit exactly what human beings are capable of.
ReplyDelete-Jocelyn
I think it was very powerful to begin Wiesel's story with a character other than himself. Mosche the Beadle is a knowledgable man of Jewish culture, he is so knowledgable that people "take [him] for a madman,"(5), so immediately he shows the reader a positive side of Judaism during a time when it was common to associate Judaism with evilness. Madame Schächter proves to be like Mosche the Beadle because she too is perceived as crazy. On the third night, she starts screaming "Fire! I can see a fire! I can see a fire!"(22) outside the train window.Other people look out the window but see nothing, women try to calm her down because they think she might be imagining her husband and sons in the distance. It is not too long after that the train arrives at crematorias in Auschwitz. I'm not sure what to make of this, if no one else could see the fire then she couldn't have seen it nor could she have had previous knowledge that it was there. I think that she was going a little mad but it could also have been her womens intuition, which I strongly believe exists. She knew there were horrific, unimaginable dangers waiting for the Jews.
ReplyDelete-Michelle
I agree with Jocelyn on many accounts. I really agree with the "Jews, listen to me. It's all I ask of you" (5) quotation and how Moshe's desire for the truth to be acknowledged mirrors Wiesel's intention to spread the accounts of the Holocaust. It is clear that Wiesel's intentions of Night are to allow Moshe's stories to be heard. "People refused not only to believe his stories, but even to listen to them" (4) which shows the ignorance and denial of the people. Later in the book, his father says “listen carefully to what I am going to say” to help protect his son (67). Of course this is not the same context of Moshe’s hope for people to understand the vast atrocities of this genocide, but Wiesel makes a point that people must listen. Not knowing is a form of madness. The people of Sighet not admitting or understanding the horrors is madness yet they label the man who gives them the information they do not want to hear as mad. The purpose of this story is to help belief in the topic that Moshe is preaching about. Also, I think that he uses the story to “prepare [us] while there is still time” – time before the stories are forgotten and we deny a past which those the Moshe spoke to in Sighet tried to deny (5).
ReplyDelete- CONOR
There have been many terrible crises on earth, where people have failed to acknowledge an atrocity others have committed. Another prime example of this is the Armenian genocide. People tend to avoid the truth if it is too terrible for them to understand, and would rather believe a lie to avoid dealing with it. Someone may know about genocide happening but it takes a big person to acknowledge it while it is happening because once acknowledged action must be taken. That is why I believe people avoid acknowledging terrible events.
ReplyDeleteA smaller scale example of this would be that there is a bully in the lunchroom, and no one recognizes him because they are not the people being affected and if they do recognize his actions as wrong, then they would be obligated to step up and defend the person being subjugated. It is like the famous poem;
"In Germany, they came first for the Communists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . .
And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
It is human nature to avoid a problem they are not involved in because they may either become the people being oppressed or die trying to save lives.
-Sam S
I really think Jocelyn touched on the key role of Moshe the Beadle and Madame Schächter: to show the incomprehensibility, the madness of such terrible crimes as genocide. For as Moshe and Madame Schächter find out information (either firsthand or mystically) about the horrors that await the Jews in concentration camps they are seen as crazy by the rest of the Jews. They serve as contrasts to the naïveté of the Jews of Sighet who, even as the Germans infiltrated their town, "continued to smile" (8). I agree that this not knowing is a form of madness as Conor mentioned. Yet, the way prisoners were forced to live in the camps and give up all the faith and morality they had as free people is a more insidious kind of madness. It is madness when a tired old Jew cautions Wiesel not to give his dying father bread, saying "here there are no fathers, no brothers, no friends" (105). And it is madness when "three 'veteran' prisoners" of Aushwitz tattoo the numbers onto the arms of other Jews (39). The people who are truly mad may be those who have not only acknowledged the terrible truth of the concentration camps but also accepted it.
ReplyDelete-Alex L.
I completely agree with Alex, especially with the idea that their supposed madness shows the madness of genocide. During the Holocaust, the conventional standards or sanity versus insanity were completely destroyed. The Holocaust was madness, and yet it was carried out as if it was a completely sane thing to do. Also, those who are seen as mad are the ones who are the sanest by accepting the future, whereas those who are seen as sane are those who cannot accept madness. I think that Madame Schächter is clearly a prophet. She not only sees a fire, she exclaims, “It is a furnace!” (23). However, the fact that she is a prophet but is shunned says something about human nature. If prophets bring good tidings, then they are revered, whereas if they bring bad tidings they are marked as insane. This demonstrates the inability people have to accept the possibility of bad things happening to them. Madame Schächter could certainly be called either a prophet or a madwoman. They are essentially the same thing, but one has negative connotations and one has positive connotations.
ReplyDelete~Amanda
An insane person is one who has seen more than the sane. A seer is insane. When somebody knows something through personal experience or witness, and that knowledge challenges how those around them live, this person will be labeled as insane for seeing something that a normal person cannot. Many say the only way to endure slavery or internment is to keep one’s head down and say nothing, to be submissive. These people are the sane ones, the ones who try to survive by denying their own knowledge that what is happening is wrong. It is the insane people who take a stand. It is Madame Schächter’s constant screaming, her warnings of “Fire! I can see a fire!”(22) that challenge the sanity of those around her, therefore making her insane. She knows of the fire in their future and nobody is willing to accept that, nobody knows as much as she, so in their perspective, she is insane. Sam is right, that human nature drives us to avoid problems in which we are not yet involved. People deny others’ knowledge of impending danger because it is not immediate danger. People refuse to use their own knowledge out of fear of being ostracized. We keep our head down, hoping another will raise their head, and when one does, we deem them insane.
ReplyDelete