Map Of Sighet Transylvania (2024)

FAQs

What is the significance of sighet in night? ›

Sighet is well known as the birthplace of Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) noted Holocaust survivor and author of Night. Wiesel, his family, and the rest of the Jews of Sighet were deported from the town to Auschwitz in May 1944.

Sighet, Elie Wiesel's 1928 birthplace, still survives — a town in northern Romania near the meeting of the Hungarian and Ukrainian borders. But its character was irreversibly changed by the Holocaust. Where once it was a predominantly Jewish community of some 15,000 souls, today only a handful remain.

A city in Northern Transylvania, under Hungarian rule from 1940 to 1944. Sighet served as the capital of the Maramaros region. In 1941, 10,441 Jews lived in Sighet.

Elie Wiesel (born September 30, 1928, Sighet, Romania—died July 2, 2016, New York, New York, U.S.) was a Romanian-born Jewish writer, whose works provide a sober yet passionate testament of the destruction of European Jewry during World War II. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1986.

Extraordinarily, Moishe survived the massacre. Shot in the leg and left for dead, he returned as soon as he could to Sighet to warn the Jewish community of the genocidal threat they now faced. No one believed Moishe the Beadle, not even Wiesel. They thought he had gone mad.

And at home in Sighet, which was close to the Hungarian border, Wiesel's family spoke mostly Yiddish, but also German, Hungarian and Romanian.

Pronounced "See-get" (Romanian: Sighet, Hungarian: Sziget, German: Siget, Yiddish: סיגעט / Siget‎) Jews first settled in Sighet, a small town in the Principality of Transylvania, in the 1600s.

Eventually, Sighet is raided by the Nazis, the Jews are forced to wear yellow stars, their valuables are taken away, and they are forced into ghettos. The chapter ends with Elie and his family being forced into cattle cars and taken to the concentration camp, Auschwitz.

Transylvania became part of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1002, and it belonged to the Lands of the Hungarian Crown until 1920. After the Battle of Mohács in 1526 it belonged to the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom, from which the Principality of Transylvania emerged in 1570 by the Treaty of Speyer.

The Germans arrived in Sighet around 21 March 1944, and shortly after Passover (8–14 April that year) arrested the community leaders. Jews had to hand over their valuables, were not allowed to visit restaurants or leave home after six in the evening, and had to wear the yellow star at all times.

Why was Moshe deported from Sighet? ›

As the Nazi's begin their invasion of Sighet, they expel all foreign Jews. Since Moishe is a foreigner, he is expelled.

Moishe the Beadle is one of the main characters in Elie Wiesel's loss of innocence novel, "Night." While he is only mentioned in the first few pages, Moishe the Beadle serves as a prophet through spiritual guidance to Wiesel and by telling the citizens of Sighet about his experience with the Nazi's.

The Jewish leaders were arrested on the seventh day of Passover in Elie's community. It was the beginning of the end for the Jewish people of Sighet as they would soon be systematically persecuted by the Nazi's.

As the name of the book implies, night plays a very important symbolic role and represents suffering and hopelessness. All of the darkest, most horrific things happen to and around Eliezer at night, and even if something bad happens during the day, Eliezer will frequently bring up night as a comparison.

In the same way that light offers protection from evil, darkness is used as a means of covering up monstrous acts, and provides an element of disassociation. This is most apparent in Lady Macbeth's soliloquy in which she invites “thick night” to cloak her actions, so that “(her) keen knife see not the wound it makes”.