Name:______Date:______Period:____
Night
By Elie Wiesel
Your Responsibilities
As you can see, we will be working on this unit for several weeks. This unit packet will be a major component of your grade this quarter. Do not lose it. If your packet is lost, you will be responsible for copying the questions down, by hand, from a classmate’s packet. We will not have extra packets available for you. You will answer the chapter questions on your own and they will be checked on the dates indicated on the calendar. Your answers will be checked for accuracy and thoroughness. Students who are caught copying answers or offering their answers to be copied will receive a 0%. The completed packet will be turned in at the end of the unit for a BIG grade.
Reading Schedule
The reading calendar outlines what you are responsible to read each day and when some of your assignments are due. Everyone is responsible for the reading when it is listed and the assignments when they are due.
If You Are Absent
If you miss class (even for an excused absence), you are responsible for making up the reading and any assignments you miss. If you are confused about what you need to make-up or you need to pick up a handout you missed, you can come by room 411N before school, after school, or during A lunch. We will stick to the schedule very closely, so DO NOT GET BEHIND!
Contents of this packet:
· Calendar
· Background Readings and Questions
· Chapter Reading Questions
· Timeline and Map
· Glossary
· Supplemental Readings
Night Unit Calendar
January 21
MLK Day-
NO SCHOOL
L / 22
Project Presentations
Holocaust Background
Night Packet Distribution / 23
Get Books
Read pgs: 1-6 / 24
Read pgs: 7-14
HW: Probing Questions for Seminar / 25
Quiz
College-Seminar Discussion
Due: Chapter 1 Reading Questions (RQs)
HW: Read pgs 15-18
28
Lesson: Memoir & Point of View
Read pgs: 19-22
Due: Chapter 2 RQs / 29
Read pgs: 22-30 / 30
Lesson: Diction
Read pgs: 31-37
Due: Chapter 3 RQs / 31
Lesson on Symbolism
HW: Read Pgs: 37-43 / February 1
(SNOW DAY-MOVE TO MONDAY)
Quiz
Extension Activity
HW: Read Pgs: 44-48
Due: Chapter 4 Reading Questions
4
Snow Day-Make up
Make-up Quiz
Extension Activity (clip of Schindler’s List)
College Seminar over symbolism and clip reaction
Read Pgs: 48-53 / 5
Lesson:
Analyzing Written and Visual
Propaganda
Read Pgs: 53-56 / 6
Lesson: Theme (Dehumanization and Faith)
Read Pgs: 57-60
Due: Chapter 5 RQs / 7
Lesson: Theme (Perseverance, Familiar Relationships)
Read Pgs: 60-65
HW: Probing Questions for Seminar
PM: Movie Showing, Life is Beautiful (Extra Credit) / 8
Quiz
College-Seminar Discussion
HW: Read Pgs 66-69
Due: Chapter 7 RQs
11
Read Pgs 70-75
Due: Chapter 7 Questions Due / 12
Read pgs: 76-77
Lesson: Making Connections (Text to Self, Text to World)
Due: Chapter 8 Questions / 13
Lesson: Tone and Author’s Purpose
Due: Chapter 9 Questions / 14
Synthesis and Review / 15
Professional Development-No Students
18
President’s Day-
NO SCHOOL
L / 19
NIGHT UNIT EXAM
Due: Completed Night Packet / 20 / 21 / 22
The Holocaust
The Holocaust was the systematic mass slaughter of millions of innocent people by the Nazis during WWII.
The Jewish people of Europe were the most numerous of the victims of the Holocaust. Most data indicates that approximately six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Jewish people are a religious group that dates back to the ancient Israelites in approximately 2000 BCE. Judaism is a monotheistic faith and is one of the oldest religions still practiced today. The Star of David is a widely used and recognized symbol of the Jewish faith. This symbol took on a special significance during World War II, when Jews being persecuted by the German government were forced to wear a yellow Star of David with the word “Jude” (Jew) written in the middle. This star was required to be attached to the clothing of all Jews, and led to widespread discrimination against the Jewish population.
Millions of other minority members also perished in the Holocaust. About 220,000 Sinti and Roma [gypsies from Central and Eastern Europe] were murdered — between a quarter to a half of their European population. Other groups deemed by the Nazis to be "racially inferior" included Poles (6 million killed, of whom 3 million were Christian, and the rest Jewish), Serbs (estimates vary between 500,000 and 1.2 million killed), around 500,000 Bosnians, Soviet military prisoners of war and civilians in occupied territories including Russians and other East Slavs, the mentally or physically disabled, homosexuals, Africans, and other ethnic and religious groups were also persecuted and killed.
In December 1941, the Nazis opened Chelmno, the first of what would soon be seven extermination camps, dedicated entirely to the mass killing of human beings on a wide spread scale, as opposed to the labor or concentration camps. Over three million Jews would die in these extermination camps. The method of killing at these camps was by poison gas, usually in "gas chambers", although many prisoners were killed in mass shootings and by other means. The bodies of those killed were burned in furnaces, and the ashes buried or scattered. The concentration and death camps were run by SS Officers who were like the Nazis police force. The largest death camp built was Auschwitz-Birkenau, which had both a labor camp (Auschwitz) and an extermination camp (Birkenau). At the peak of operations, Birkenau's gas chambers killed approximately 8,000 people a day.
Upon arrival in these camps, all valuables were taken from the prisoners, and the women had to have their hair cut off. According to a Nazi document, the hair was to be used for the manufacture of stockings. Prisoners were then divided into two groups during a process called ‘selection’: those too weak for work were immediately executed in gas chambers (which were sometimes disguised as showers) and their bodies burned, while others were used for slave labor in factories or industrial enterprises located in the camp or nearby. Shoes, stockings, and anything else of value was recycled for use in products to support the war effort, regardless of whether or not a prisoner was sent to death. Some prisoners were forced to work in the collection and disposal of corpses, and to extract gold teeth from the dead.
In some concentration camps and death camps doctors forcibly performed experiments on the prisoners. Josef Mengele was an SS Officer and doctor at Auschwitz-Birkenau who performed many questionably human medical experiments, for example he tried to change children’s’ eye color by injecting chemicals in to their eyes, he transferred blood from one twin to another twin with out anesthesia, and he also amputated prisoners limbs and sometimes killed patients just to dissect them.
The prisoners who survived were freed from the camps by the Allied Soldiers at the end of World War II.
World War II
World War II (abbreviated WWII) was a worldwide conflict fought between the Allied Powers and the Axis Powers, from 1939 until 1945. Armed forces from over seventy nations engaged in aerial, naval, and ground-based combat. Spanning much of the globe, World War II resulted in the deaths of over sixty million people, making it the deadliest conflict in human history. The war ended with an Allied victory.
On September 1, 1939, Germany, led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, invaded Poland according to a secret agreement with the Soviet Union, which joined the invasion on September 17. On September 3, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, followed six hours later by France, responded by declaring war on Germany, initiating a widespread naval war. Germany rapidly overwhelmed Poland, then Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France in 1940, and Yugoslavia and Greece in 1941. Italian, and later German, troops attacked British forces in North Africa. By summer of 1941, Germany had conquered France and most of Western Europe, but it failed to subdue the United Kingdom due to the resistance of the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy.
The Russian Front - Adolf Hitler then turned on the Soviet Union, launching a surprise attack on June 22, 1941. Despite enormous gains, the invasion bogged down outside of Moscow in late 1941 as winter set in and made further advances difficult. The Soviets later launched a massive counterattack encircling and then forcing the surrender of the German Sixth Army at the Battle of Stalingrad (1942-43), decisively defeated the Axis during the Battle of Kursk, and broke the Siege of Leningrad. The Red Army then pursued the retreating Wehrmacht all the way to Berlin, and won the street-by-street Battle of Berlin, as Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker on April 30, 1945.
Linkup of the Allied Armies in Germany - Meanwhile, the Western Allies (United States and United Kingdom) invaded Italy in 1943 and then liberated France in 1944, following amphibious (water) landings in the Battle of Normandy. Repulsing a German counterattack at the Battle of the Bulge in December, the Western Allies crossed the Rhine River and linked up with their Soviet counterparts at the Elbe River in central Germany.
The Holocaust - During the war, six million Jews, as well as Roma (Gypsies), Slavs, Communists, homosexuals, the disabled and several other groups, were murdered by Germany in a state-sponsored genocide that has come to be known as The Holocaust.
Aftermath - About 62 million people, or 2.5% of the world population, died in the war, though estimates vary greatly (see World War II casualties). Large swathes of Europe and Asia were devastated and took years to recover. The war had political, sociological, economic and technological consequences that last to this day.
Questions:
1. How many European Jews were killed by the Nazis? ______
2. Besides the Jews, what are three other groups that were targeted and killed by the Nazis? ______
______
3. What did the Nazis open in December 1941? ______
______
4. What happened to the prisoners when they arrived at a death camp? ______
______
5. Who was Josef Mengele? ______
______
6. When was WWII? ______
7. Who lead Germany and the Nazi party? ______
8. Where did Germany invade to start the war? ______
9. Which countries declared war on Germany in September 1939? ______
______
10. How many people died in WWII? ______
11. Which side of the war was the United States and England on? (Allied or Axis) ______
Timeline of Important Events
1928 / September 30th – Elie was born in Sighet, Transylvania
The Nazi Party takes control of Germany’s government / 1933
Nuremberg Race Laws against Jews are decreed, depriving Jews of German citizenship / 1935
The SS renames its units deployed at concentration camps the “Death’s Head Units” / 1936
Japan invades China proper, initiating the Pacific War that would become a part of World War II / 1937
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) results in widespread destruction of synagogue, businesses, and homes / 1938
Germany invades Poland starting World War II in Europe / 1939
In May – the Auschwitz concentration camp is established near the Polish city of Oswiecim
In August – Transylvania becomes part of Hungary / 1940
December - The U.S. enters World War II after Pearl Harbor / 1941 / 12 year old Elie Wiesel begins studying the Kabbalah
“The Final Solution” – a plan to murder the European Jews – is coordinated at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin
Anne Frank and her family go into hiding / 1942
Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rise up against their Nazi oppressors. / 1943
1944 / May - Elie Wiesel is 15 years old when his family are deported from Sighet to Auschwitz
1945 / April - US troops liberate Elie Wiesel at the Buchenwald concentration camp
Eighteen of 21 defendants are convicted by the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trial; 12 are sentenced to death / 1946
1948 / Elie Wiesel studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. He becomes interested in journalism.
Important Locations in Night
Map Elie’s journey throughout the novel.
(put map here before copying)
Chapter One (Pages 1-14)
1. What news does Moché the Beadle bring to Sighet?
How is he treated by the villagers after his return from Poland?
2. Describe the town of Sighet at the beginning of the story.
Describe Sighet after the German officers enter.
3. What are some incidents that suggest bad things are going to happen to the residents of Sighet?
Why doesn’t the community believe it is in danger?
Chapter Two (Pages 15-18)
1. Describe the train journey. Use imagery – language that appeals to the five senses - to talk about what it smelled, sounded, and felt like in the train car.
How would you feel if you were in this train car?
2. What does Madam Schäcter do on the train?
How do the Jews react to Madame Schäcter’s behavior?
3. Make a prediction about what you think will happen in the camp based on the author’s description of their arrival. (What conditions will they be faced with? Will everyone remain safe? Etc.)