The German high command moved closer during the celebration of Purim on March 19, 1944, and put the Hungarian police in charge of the "Jewish problem," which included all people with Jewish surnames, even those who had converted to Christianity or who had never practiced the Jewish faith. By Passover, local police, goaded by the fascist Nyilas party, began imposing the Nuremberg Laws: closing Jewish-owned shops and offices; desecrating and looting synagogues; conducting raids and inspections of "sanitary measures"; outlawing marriage between Jews and Gentiles; imposing a three-day curfew; and posting warnings of potential execution for noncompliance.
The purported reason for mass anti-Semitism was to put down a "Jewish conspiracy," a nonexistent plot that Hitler claimed threatened all Europe. In May 1944, when Russian troops were twelve miles from Sighet, Adolf Hitler's master plan called for storm troopers to load convoys to hasten the removal and annihilation of Romania's "undesirables" — trade unionists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, Jews, Gypsies, retardates, homosexuals, the elderly, and the physically handicapped, blind, and deaf. Elie's father joined the council of elders and Gestapo officers in a discussion of the future for Jews of Sighet. As storm troopers began stringing barbed wire around the Jewish ghetto, local doctors learned of a village annihilation plot and several committed suicide before the massive assault left them no choice.
Elie's family had fleeting opportunities to escape deportation. A compassionate police officer tapped at their window to warn them of danger. On May 14, Elie's father refused an offer of safe refuge in a cabin in the mountains from Maria, his Christian housekeeper, who lived on the outskirts of town. Two days later, authorities resituated Elie's family in Uncle Mendel's house in the smaller of two ghettos, then later transported them aboard the last rail convoy. In a sealed cattle car they traveled to Birkenau, the SS sorting center for the infamous Auschwitz complex, where guards tossed babies into flaming ditches. During their banishment, Elie dreamed noble reveries of Jews in antiquity and contemplated the romance of exile. As he neared the burning ditch, however, he feared that his life was about to end in a burst of flame. By the end of the war, his romantic notions of martyrdom crumbled along with the remains of six million Jewish corpses. The Jewish population of his homeland had been reduced by half.
