A voice of warning
to the Jewish community in Sighet, Transylvania, it was late in year 1942. All foreign Jews were expelled from Sighet by Hungarian Police. Packed into cattle cars, Moishe with them, they were transported into Polish territory and into the hands of the Gestapo. Upon arrival they were ordered onto waiting trucks and were driven to their final destination in the forest. Their last labor was to dig deep trenches. Then one by one they were shot in the back of the neck by the Gestapo. Gestapo is short for Geheime Staats Polizei, Secret State Police. Wounded, Moishe the Beadle escaped the death of his body and returned to the town of Sighet to warn his people. But no one listen to him. Who was he but a poor man who took care of things around the synagogue? Every where he went, every one he spoked to, they would not listen. They could have escaped the terror, perhaps only briefy, but they could not imagine the evil that was coming.
Elie Wiesel's first book is titled "Night". First written in Yiddish with the title "And the World Remained Silent", it was published in 1958. In 2006 a new translation by his wife, Marion Wiesel, was published. In the preface he wrote that as a witness to unimaginable, undescribable evil, he had a moral obligation to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory. We share the same obligation "to not be silent"
Are we not Moishe the Beadle?
Do we not have a Secret State Police?
Is there not a "Night" before the Day of the Lord?
If anyone is suffering terribly you will find something strengthening in the account of his ordeal. You can read the Preface and the Forward and a few pages of the first chapter and at the end his Nobel Peace Prize speach at amozon.com.
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