Chapter 1

The name of the narrator is Eliezer, who is a twelve-year-old boy living in the Transylvanian town of Sighet. He is the only son in an Orthodox Jewish family. He has two older sisters, Hilda and Bea, and a younger sister named Tzipora. Eliezer studies the Talmud, which is the Jewish oral law. He also studies the Jewish texts of the Cabbala. Eliezer finds a challenging teacher of Jewish mysticism in Moshe the Beadle. Soon, the Hungarians expel all foreign Jews, even Moshe. Despite their anger, the Jews of Sighet soon forget about this anti-Semitic act.

After many months, Moshe escapes and later returns and tells how the deportation trains were handed over to the Gestapo, which is the German secret police, at the Polish border. He says this is where the Jews were forced to dig graves for themselves and were also killed by the Gestapo. The town sees him crazy and refuses to believe his story.

Later in 1944, the Hungarian government falls into the hands of the Fascists, and the next day the German armies occupy Hungary. As the community leaders are arrested, Jewish valuables are confiscated, and all Jews are forced to wear yellow stars. Eventually, the Jews are confined to small ghettos, and crowded together behind barbed-wire fences. Eliezer’s family is among the last forced to leave Sighet.

This first chapter expresses Eliezer’s problem with his faith. At the start of the story, he is a devoted Jew from a devoted community. He studies Jewish tradition loyally and believes faithfully in God. As the Jews are deported, they express their belief that God will save them from the Nazis. “Oh God, Lord of the Universe, take pity upon us….” However, his experience in the concentration camps eventually leads to his loss of faith, because he decides that he cannot believe in a God who would allow this kind of suffering.