Which of the following is not a reason why the townspeople of sighet refused to believe moishe?

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Chapter 1

• Meet Moishe the Beadle. He’s a poor Jew in the town of Sighet (now in modern-day Romania), where our author and narrator, Eliezer Wiesel, lives. Moishe the Beadle is awkward and shy, but 12-year-old Eliezer likes him anyway.
• Eliezer, who’s also Jewish, is very religious. He studies the Talmud and goes to the temple every night, but he also wants to study Kabbalah.
• Eliezer’s father thinks his son is too young to learn Kabbalah, and that Kabbalah isn’t something that Eliezer should spend his time on. He keeps saying to his son, "There are no Kabbalists in Sighet."
• Moishe the Beadle sees Eliezer crying while praying at the synagogue, and they have a kind of connection. They end up talking most evenings at the synagogue.
• Eliezer confides in Moishe his desire to learn Kabbalah, and to Eliezer’s surprise, Moishe knows all about Kabbalah and starts to teach him.
• Then one day, the Hungarian police expel all the foreign Jews from Sighet. Moishe the Beadle is actually a foreigner, so he and the others like him are packed into train cars like cattle.
• The Jews of Sighet think it’s a shame that the foreigners are carted away, but quickly forget, clearly not seeing this as a warning for their own futures.
• Life goes back to normal.
• Many months pass and Moishe the Beadle returns. He tells Eliezer his story: he and the other foreign Jews were carted off into Poland, where the Gestapo took over and forced them to dig their own graves. Moishe escaped because he was shot in the leg and left for dead.
• Moishe warns the people of Sighet to leave because death is coming their way.
• Nobody listens. This is at the end of 1942.
• Now it’s spring of 1944 and the people of Sighet listen with incredulity to radio reports. How could one man (Adolf Hitler) possibly wipe out an entire people? Impossible!
• News comes from Budapest that the Jews there are subjected to attacks by the Nazis. But the Jews of Sighet are optimistic that the Nazis won’t come all the way to their little town.
• Then the Germans arrive.
• At first the Germans don’t seem so bad. They are billeted in people’s homes and while they’re not exactly friendly, they’re not rude or violent. Some of them even buy chocolate for their host families.
• The Jews in Sighet just don’t want to see what’s coming. Wiesel sums it up pretty well: "The Germans were already in town, the Fascists were already in power, the verdict was already out—and the Jews of Sighet were still smiling."
• People celebrate Passover and as the celebration ends, the restrictions begin. First, Jews cannot leave their houses for three days or they’ll die. Then, Jews are no longer allowed to keep valuable items, or they’ll die. Next, Jews must wear the yellow star.
• Important community members come to talk with Eliezer’s father (who has connections with the Hungarian police) about what should be done about the situation. Eliezer’s dad is still optimistic.
• Next, the police set up two ghettos and move all the Jews there.
• The Sighet Jews become optimistic again. The scary barbed wire isn’t all that bad, and they have their own Jewish Republic within each ghetto. They don’t even have to deal with outsiders.
• If this is as bad as it gets, the Jews think, this isn’t too bad.
• Eliezer’s dad is summoned to a special Council meeting (he’s a member of the Jewish Council in his ghetto). Everyone’s anxiously waiting to find out what new information Eliezer’s dad will bring.
• Eliezer’s dad comes back from his meeting after midnight. He’s accosted by people begging to find out what he learned in the meeting. And it can’t be good news because he looks awful.
• The news is terrible: deportation, starting tomorrow.
• The Jews in the ghetto get more information out of Eliezer’s father: everyone can take only one bag of belongings. They’ll board trains and driven to an unknown destination.
• Eliezer’s dad tells the people to go wake up their neighbors because everyone should pack and be ready for tomorrow.
• The ghetto is a bustle of activity: women cooking food for the trip, people packing, Eliezer’s father consoling friends left and right.
• The police show up to the ghetto at 8am and call all of the Jews out.
• The police empty the houses, club people with their guns, and do a roll call.
• The Jews are marched to the synagogue and searched for valuables.
• The Wiesels are not in the first groups to leave; they won’t leave until Tuesday (in two days).
• Tuesday comes and the Wiesels’ deportation has been delayed; they will first be moved to a smaller ghetto to await transport, but they still have to go through the roll call and leave their home.
• Eliezer feels empty. His father cries.
• The police start clubbing Jews and force the whole group to run. Eliezer realizes that he hates the Hungarian police.
• The Wiesels and the other Jews arrive at the smaller ghetto, which had been evacuated three days before. The small ghetto shows signs of the Jews being forced to leave in a hurry—there’s even a half eaten bowl of soup on the table where the Wiesels are staying.
• The Wiesels’ former maid, Maria, comes to see them. She says she’s prepared a hiding place for them in her town. Eliezer’s dad won’t go into hiding but gives Eliezer and his older sisters the choice of leaving. The family refuses to be separated.
• Optimism returns, again. Some think that the Germans are only out to steal the Jews’ valuables, so they’re sending the Jews on "vacation" while they snag their stuff. Others think they’re being deported "for our own good."
• Saturday morning all of the Jews are out on the street and ready to leave.
• They all go to the synagogue, which has been converted into a sort of over-crowded train station, to await transport. It’s the Sabbath, so it’s rather ironic that they’re at the synagogue, considering its current use. They wait there for a full 24 hours.
• The next morning, the Hungarian police load the Jews into cattle cars, seal the cars, and check to make sure the bars on the windows are secure.
• The train begins to move.

Note: This SparkNote is divided into nine sections, following the organization of Night. Though Wiesel did not number his sections, this SparkNote has added numbers for ease of reference.

In 1941, Eliezer, the narrator, is a twelve-year-old boy living in the Transylvanian town of Sighet (then recently annexed to Hungary, now part of Romania). He is the only son in an Orthodox Jewish family that strictly adheres to Jewish tradition and law. His parents are shopkeepers, and his father is highly respected within Sighet’s Jewish community. Eliezer has two older sisters, Hilda and Béa, and a younger sister named Tzipora.

Eliezer studies the Talmud, the Jewish oral law. He also studies the Jewish mystical texts of the Cabbala (often spelled Kabbalah), a somewhat unusual occupation for a teenager, and one that goes against his father’s wishes. Eliezer finds a sensitive and challenging teacher in Moishe the Beadle, a local pauper. Soon, however, the Hungarians expel all foreign Jews, including Moishe. Despite their momentary anger, the Jews of Sighet soon forget about this anti-Semitic act. After several months, having escaped his captors, Moishe returns and tells how the deportation trains were handed over to the Gestapo (German secret police) at the Polish border. There, he explains, the Jews were forced to dig mass graves for themselves and were killed by the Gestapo. 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. Despite the Jews’ belief that Nazi anti-Semitism would be limited to the capital city, Budapest, the Germans soon move into Sighet. A series of increasingly oppressive measures are forced on the Jews—the community leaders are arrested, Jewish valuables are confiscated, and all Jews are forced to wear yellow stars. Eventually, 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, a gentile named Martha, visits them and offers to hide them in her village. Tragically, they decline the offer. A few days later, the Nazis and their henchmen, the Hungarian police, herd the last Jews remaining in Sighet onto cattle cars bound for Auschwitz.

Analysis

One of the enduring questions that has tormented the Jews of Europe who survived the Holocaust is whether or not they might have been able to escape the Holocaust had they acted more quickly. A shrouded doom hangs behind every word in this first section of Night, in which Wiesel laments the typical human inability to acknowledge the depth of the cruelty of which humans are capable. The Jews of Sighet are unable or unwilling to believe in the horrors of Hitler’s death camps, even though there are many instances in which they have glimpses of what awaits them. Eliezer relates that many Jews do not believe that Hitler really intends to annihilate them, even though he can trace the steps by which the Nazis made life in Hungary increasingly unbearable for the Jews. Furthermore, he painfully details the cruelty with which the Jews are treated during their deportation. He even asks his father to move the family to Palestine and escape whatever is to come, but his father is unwilling to leave Sighet behind. As readers familiar with the events of the Holocaust, we’re aware of the danger that draws inexorably closer to the Jews of Sighet, and we watch with building horror as Eliezer’s story progresses.

Read more about inhumanity as a theme.

The story of Moishe the Beadle, with which Night opens, is perhaps the most painful example of the Jews’ refusal to believe the depth of Nazi evil. It is also a cautionary tale about the danger of refusing to heed firsthand testimony, a tale that explains the urgency behind Wiesel’s own account. Moishe, who escapes from a Nazi massacre and returns to Sighet to warn the villagers of the truth about the deportations, is treated as a madman. What is crucial for Wiesel is that his own testimony, as a survivor of the Holocaust, not be ignored. Moishe’s example in this section is a reminder that the cost of ignoring witnesses to evil is a recurrence of that evil.

Read an in-depth analysis of Moishe the Beadle.

If one of Wiesel’s goals is to prevent the Holocaust from recurring by bearing witness to it, another is the preservation of the memory of the victims. Eliezer’s relationship with his father is a continuous theme in Wiesel’s memoir. He documents their mutually supportive relationship, Eliezer’s growing feeling that his father is a burden to him, and his guilt about that feeling.

Read more about the importance of father-son bonds as a theme.

On a larger scale, Wiesel also hopes to preserve the memory of the Jewish tradition through his portrayal of his father. When news of the deportations comes to Sighet, Eliezer’s father, a respected community leader, is among the first notified. He is in the middle of telling a story when he is forced to leave. Wiesel notes, “The good story he had been in the middle of telling us was to remain unfinished.” In a metaphorical sense, this “good story” symbolizes the entirety of European Jewish tradition, transmitted to Eliezer—and to Wiesel himself—through the father figure. Night laments the loss of this tradition, of the story that remains unfinished. In writing this memoir and his other works, Wiesel is attempting to complete his father’s story, honor the memory of the Holocaust victims, and commemorate the traditions they left behind.

Read more about tradition as a motif.

The first section of Night also establishes the groundwork for Eliezer’s later struggle with his faith. At the start of the story, he is a devout Jew from a devout community. He studies Jewish tradition faithfully and believes faithfully in God. As the Jews are deported, they continue to express their trust that God will save them from the Nazis: “Oh God, Lord of the Universe, take pity upon us….” Eliezer’s experience in the concentration camps, however, eventually leads to his loss of faith, because he decides that he cannot believe in a God who would allow such suffering.

Read an in-depth analysis of Eliezer.

Later in the memoir, Eliezer suggests that, for him, one of the most horrible of the Nazis’ deeds was their metaphorical murder of God. Since the Holocaust, Judaism has been forced to confront the long-existent problem of theodicy—how God can exist and permit such evil. Night chronicles Eliezer’s loss of innocence, his confrontation with evil, and his questioning of God’s existence.

Read more about Eliezer’s struggle with faith throughout Night.