(Note: Wiesel's book is divided into nine unnumbered segments. It will be easier for you to follow the discussion in these Notes if you number the segments in pencil before you begin reading.)
Near the close of 1941, twelve-year-old Elie Wiesel — son of a devout Romanian shopkeeper and brother to three girls, two older and one younger — recounts his avid pursuit of Hasidic Judaism through study of the Talmud and the cabbala. Lacking a mentor to guide his contemplation of religious mysticism, he turns to Moshe the Beadle, a very poor and pious loner who works as a handyman at the synagogue in Sighet. After other worshippers depart the synagogue following the evening service, Moshe shares private time with Elie. He wisely encourages the impressionable boy to pursue God through questions, but to expect no understanding of God's answers, which remain unsatisfied in the soul until death. Moshe insists that each seeker must rely on inborn traits that will open the way to comprehensible answers suited to the individual.
One day, without warning, Hungarian police arrest Moshe along with other foreigners and take them away aboard cattle cars. Elie weeps for the loss of his tutor. The citizens of Sighet accept exile as a natural burden of war and contend that the deportees are working in Galicia. Months later, Moshe returns to report the fate of the exiles — after they arrived in Poland, they boarded trucks bound for a forest, where they dug huge graves and were systematically machine-gunned. Their killers made sport of tossing babies into the air and using them for targets. After being shot in the leg, Moshe was assumed dead. Traumatized by the slaughter, he weeps as he retells the story. Elie and other villagers conclude that Moshe has lost his mind.
