Elie Wiesel English 9 - Mrs. Young's English Class

Name

Night

Elie Wiesel

English 9

Credit 3

Before

Read "A Brief History of Antisemitism" and answer questions Read "Night: The Setting" and "Night: The Author" and answer questions

Reading

During Reading

After Reading

Test

Preview each chapter's purpose before you begin reading. Complete the vocabulary development with original sentences Complete the questions and activities section for each chapter. Complete the characterization chart

Read Elie Wiesel's Nobel Prize speech at the end of the book. Respond to purpose and method in the Going Further section.

Outline your essay. Complete extra credit. You will write an essay response to literature when you come to school. You will discuss your outline with your English teacher before you write the final draft. You will need to have a strong thesis statement and evidence from the text that supports your ideas.

Teacher Check List

Check background questions Check Questions and Activities for

completion, understanding, and detail Check Characterization Chart Read Going Further Response Check essay outline. Make sure the thesis is appropriate and all support is thorough.

Do not write here! For teacher use only! Date

Grade

Supervising Teacher NCLB Teacher Comment

Before Reading: ___/10 During Reading: ____/45 After Reading: ___/15 Essay: ____/30 1

Standards

Reading - Literature

RL.9-10.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

RL.9-10.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

RL.9-10.3 Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.

RL.9-10.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).

RL.9-10.5 Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise.

RL.9-10.10 By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in

Reading ? Informational Text

RI.9-10.2 Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

Writing

W.9-10.1 Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid

reasoning and relevant or sufficient evidence. W.9-10.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are

appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. W.9-10.9 Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and

research. Language

L.9-10.1 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

L.9-10.2 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

L.9-10.5 Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings. A) Interpret figures of speech (e.g., euphemism, oxymoron) in context and analyze their role in the text.

The information, questions, and activities in this packet were drawn from many sources, including Glencoe/McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., , and The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum page.

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Before Reading

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANTISEMITISM

Adapted from an article on Jews have been persecuted1 for thousands of years all over the world. In the year 70 B.C.E.

Pompey the Great, a powerful Roman military leader, conquered Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine. Pompey defiled the Jewish temple, killed the priests, and ordered the Jews to begin worshipping the Roman gods. Most Jews resisted, but pressure to worship the Roman gods only mounted, and as the pressure increased, so did conflict within the Jewish community. Many Jews called for open rebellion against Rome, while others argued that Jews must be willing to adapt.

A hundred years later ... Jesus, a Jew from Nazareth, began his ministry and travels in Palestine2. Eventually, non-Jewish Romans called for the death of Jesus, after which his followers renounced3 Judaism and started Christianity...

By the fourth century, Jews were generally despised by Christians everywhere. St. Augustine, one of Christianity's most influential leaders, likened the Jewish people to Cain, who murdered his own brother and thus became the first criminal in biblical history. St. Augustine wrote that Jews were a "wicked sect" and should be subjected to permanent exile because of their evil ways. John the author of the book of Revelations even called Jews the children of the devil. (John 8:44)

Laws were passed throughout the Christian world to "protect" the "faithful" from Jewish "contamination" by forbidding them to eat with, do business with, or have sex with Jews, and by the sixth century, Jews were not allowed to hold public office, employ Christian servants, or even show themselves in the streets during Holy Week (the week commemorating the time between Jesus' "Last Supper" and his crucifixion).

Beginning in 1096, Christian leaders launched a series of crusades against the Muslims to win control of Palestine, the birthplace of Jesus. On their way to the Middle East, the crusader armies attacked Jewish communities along the route. The First Crusade was especially bloody. Entire communities of Jews were forced to choose between baptism or death, and since few Jews would renounce their faith, the First Crusade resulted in nearly 10,000 Jews being slaughtered during the first six months alone...

Godfrey Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade, vowed "to leave no single member of the Jewish race alive," and ordered the synagogue in Jerusalem burned to the ground with its entire Jewish congregation trapped inside.

Thousands of Jews fled to Eastern Europe, but they were unable to escape the relentless oppression, and by the thirteenth century, church leaders in what is now Germany required all Jews to wear cone-shaped hats so that no one would mistake them from ordinary Germans. In Latin countries, Jews were forced to sew yellow badges on their clothing as a means of instant identification. The persecutions, large and small, went on and on.

Peter Abler, a twelfth century philosopher and priest wrote of the Jews: "Heaven is their only place of refuge. If they want to travel to the nearest town, they have to buy protection with huge sums of money from the Christian rulers who actually wish for the Jews' deaths so that the rulers can confiscate the possessions of the Jews. The Jews cannot own land or vineyards. Thus, all that is left to them as a means of livelihood is the business of money lending, and this in turn brings the hatred of Christians upon them even more."

Jews were allowed to become moneylenders largely because the Catholic Church considered it a sin for Christians to charge interest for lending money. And because Jews had few other ways of earning a living, large numbers of them eventually became bankers and financiers, which resulted in a stereotyping of Jews as money-hungry exploiters and usurers4. It was a stereotype that was to

1 persecuted: oppressed, mistreated, victimized 2 Palestine: area of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River that is often referred to as the Holy Land for Jews, Muslims, and even Christians 3 renounce: reject, abandon, disown 4 usurers: people who make loans with very high interest rates

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linger even after Jews were driven from the banking industry years later, and still continues in many places up until the present day.

By the end of the fifteenth century, except for a few business encounters, Jews were totally isolated from their Christian neighbors. In some countries, Jews were forcibly confined in ghettos, sections of cities that were enclosed by high, prison-like walls. With forced segregation came new myths and stereotypes. Increasingly Jews were portrayed as agents of the devil, responsible for every catastrophe from random crime to plague and drought. Artists portrayed Jews as having horns, tails, and evil satanic faces. Christian priests and scholars often elaborated on the idea that Jews were evil creatures who were somehow less than human.

In 1517, Martin Luther, a Catholic priest in Germany, complained of corruption in the Church of Rome and called on Church leaders to reform. Instead, the Church branded him a heretic and excommunicated him. The result was the Protestant Reformation, which ultimately led to the founding of New Christian churches in Western Europe and a series of devastating wars.

Luther had hoped to convert Jews to Christianity. In 1523, he told his followers, "...we in our turn ought to treat the Jews in a brotherly fashion in order that we convert some of them ... we are but Gentiles, while Jews are of the lineage of Christ."

But when Jews refused to convert, an angry Luther wrote, in part: "First their synagogues... should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it. And this ought to be done for the honor of God and of Christianity in order that God may see that we are Christians... Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed... For, as has been said, God's rage is so great against them that they only become worse and worse through mild mercy, and not much better through severe mercy. Therefore away with them... To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may be free of this insufferable devilish burden -- the Jews."

Other Protestant leaders were more tolerant of Jews, but even among the most tolerant, the old stereotypes of Jews lingered on. As Malcolm Hay, a Catholic historian, explains:

"Men are not born with hatred in their blood. The infection is usually acquired by contact; it may be injected deliberately or even unconsciously by the parents, or by the teachers... The disease may be spread throughout the land like the plague, so that a class, a religion, or a nation will become the victim of popular hatred without anyone knowing exactly how it all began; and people will disagree, and even quarrel among themselves, about the real reason for its existence; and no one foresees the inevitable consequences." Over time, most Jews were driven from central Europe. Many of them settled in Poland and Russia. But there the persecution continued. In 1648 and 1649, thousands of Polish Jews were slaughtered5. During the late 1800's, in both Poland and Russia, Jews were murdered in organized mass killings called pogroms. Meanwhile, in France, many Christians were calling for the emancipation6 of Jews. This push for Jewish civil rights was an outgrowth of the French Revolution (1789-1799) with its emphasis on liberty and equality. The movement grew, and by the mid 1800's, most Western and Central European Jews were fully emancipated. Yet, during the late 1800's, "Jew-hatred" resurfaced as a formidable force throughout Europe, and in 1879 the word "Anti-Semitism" was coined by the German journalist and pre-Fascist Wilhelm Mahr who felt he needed a more scientific ... term than "Juden-hass" (German for "hatred of Jews") to define a political movement centered upon hatred of Jews. About this same time a new Jewish movement called Zionism emerged, and many Jews began working toward an independent Jewish state in Palestine, viewing this as the only sure way to avoid the resurgent persecution. Zionists in large numbers bought land and settled in Palestine.

5 slaughter: kill, massacre, murder 6 emancipation: freedom from legal persecution, the lifting of laws that victimize a group of people

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In 1918, during the course of World War I, Britain captured Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. Fearing the hostility of the local Palestinians and neighboring Arab nations, Britain soon limited Jewish immigration to Palestine, even though many Jews had aided in the British takeover.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and set out on a concentrated program to intensify his nation's hatred of the Jews. Hitler once said that if the Jews hadn't existed he would have had to invent them. In many respects that is exactly what he did. Hitler mounted a powerful propaganda campaign ... which blamed the Jews for Germany's many economic problems..

Germany's nationalistic hatred of the Jews ultimately lead to what was known as the "Final Solution:" the physical annihilation7 of almost six million Jews -- in addition to almost five million other non-Jewish "racial enemies" of the German people during World War II. Questions 1. Why is St. Augustine's comparison of the Jews to Cain in the story of Cain and Abel so

disturbing? What does it imply about Jewish people?

2. Even though the Jews were persecuted over and over throughout history, many refused to renounced their faith or convert to other religions. Do you think this is a positive or negative trait? Why?

3. Why is it important that Jews were not allowed to own land or vineyards?

4. How did Martin Luther change his position on the Jews?

5. What did Hitler mean when he said that if the Jews hadn't existed he would have had to invent them?

7 annihilation: extermination, total destruction

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