Night by Elie Wiesel - Book Test Study Guide

Eliezer

A young Jewish boy from Sighet, Transylvania.

The protagonist and narrator of the book.

3rd oldest and only son of the 4 Wiesel children

Schlomo (Eliezer's father)

Elie's companion throughout the camps.

Dies of dysentery at Buchenwald.

Moishe the Beadle

A childhood friend of Elie's who loses his faith after seeing Germans exterminate a truckload of Jewish people.

Ignored by the townspeople of Sighet, who think he is insane.

Hilda

Eliezer's oldest sister.

The oldest of the 4 Wiesel children.

Bea

Eliezer's older sister.

The second oldest of the 4 Wiesel children.

Tzipora

Eliezer's youngest sister.

Separated from Eliezer with their mother at Birkenau.

The youngest of the 4 Wiesel children.

Eliezer's mother

Separated from Eliezer with his sister Tzipora at Birkenau.

Madame Schacter

A woman on the cattle car who was beaten for continually screaming "Fire!"

Dr. Josef Mengele

An infamous Nazi officer who oversaw the selections at the camp.

Akiba Drumer

A Jewish prisoner at the camps who gradually loses his faith in God.

Elie and his fellow prisoners forget to recite Kaddish for him.

Juliek

A Polish musician that Elie meets at Buna who plays the violin.

Idek

Elie's Kapo (a prisoner assigned to police other prisoners) at the electrical warehouse in Buna.

He beats Elie several times when he gets angry.

Franek

Elie's foreman in Buna. Pleasant until he demands Elie's gold filling in his tooth.

Rabbi Eliahu

A prisoner whose son abandons him on the death march because he was lagging behind.

Zalman

A fellow prisoner who gets sick on the death march. He gets trampled to death.

genocide

The deliberate killing of a large group of people, particularly of a certain race or ethnicity.

ghetto

sections of a city where Jewish people were moved to before deportation; a start of their loss of rights during WWII

Final Solution

Hitler's secret plan to annihilate the Jewish people.

Birkenau

One of the three camps in the Auschwitz camp complex in Poland.

Elie's first camp.

Major killing center for the Nazis (about 1 million people killed there)

Auschwitz

One of the three camps in the Auschwitz camp complex in Poland.

Elie's second camp.

Buna

One of the three camps in the Auschwitz camp complex in Poland.

Elie and his father worked in an electrical warehouse here under Franek and Idek.

Gleiwitz

A concentration camp in Poland.

Elie walked there from Auschwitz on the death march.

Buchenwald

Concentration camp in central Germany that ends Elie's journey.

Place where his father dies.

Liberated by American troops in April 1945.

Kabbala

A commentary on the Torah studied by Jewish scholars.

synagogue

A Jewish house of worship.

SS

A major Nazi organization that polices the concentration camps.

Red Army

The Russian Army fighting the Nazis.

Liberates the prisoners at Buna two days after Elie and his father decide to march to Gleiwitz.

foreshadowing

An event that predicts future events in the story.

Gypsy

An ethnic minority also targeted by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps.

Kapo

Prisoners in the camps who are in charge of policing the other prisoners.

Pipel

Young boys who served the officers of the camps.

Elie watches one get hanged and is deeply disturbed.

Rosh Hashanah

Jewish New Year.

Yom Kippur

Holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

Involves a fast that Elie and his father discuss not doing.

selection

The process by which the SS decided who would live and die in the camps.

Usually dependent on health and fitness.

symbolism

A literary device that stands for something else without directly referencing it.

Nobel Peace Prize

A distinguished global award won by Elie Wiesel in 1986.