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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSEliezer is a fifteen-year-old Jewish boy living in Sighet, a small town in Transylvania, in 1941. He spends his days studying Talmud and his evenings learning Kabbalah from a local mystic named Moishe the Beadle. When foreign Jews are expelled from Sighet, Moishe is deported and later returns with a warning: the deportees were taken to the forests of Galicia and shot. Nobody believes him. Life in Sighet settles back into routine as the war continues, and Eliezer's family remains in their home, even as German troops arrive in the spring of 1944 and decrees against the Jews begin piling up. When the ghetto is ordered liquidated, Eliezer, his father, and his family board a cattle car whose destination nobody will name.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Night
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about Night. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does an infamous doctor with a monocle wave a baton to send new arrivals left or right?
✓ Answer
Night by Elie Wiesel
At the crossroads after disembarking, Dr. Josef Mengele performs the first selection. The narrator stands before him, claims to be eighteen and a farmer, and watches the baton point to the left, which turns out not to lead directly to the crematorium.
- First half
In what book does a teenage prisoner become A-7713, tattooed on his left arm with a needle?
✓ Answer
Night by Elie Wiesel
Three veteran inmates work at a table in the afternoon sun, marking the new prisoners with their numbers. From that moment Eliezer says he had no other name, and the digits will follow him through every selection that follows.
- First half
In what book does a relative from Antwerp track the narrator down to ask for news of his wife Reizel?
✓ Answer
Night by Elie Wiesel
Stein, married to the narrator's cousin Reizel, finds the family eight days into their stay at Auschwitz. Eliezer lies and says his mother has had recent letters from Reizel, and Stein weeps with joy until a real transport from Antwerp brings him the truth.
- Second half
In what book does the narrator refuse to fast on Yom Kippur and eat his soup in rebellion against God?
✓ Answer
Night by Elie Wiesel
On Yom Kippur, Eliezer eats his ration as a deliberate protest. His father has forbidden him to fast for survival reasons, but Eliezer also chooses to eat because he no longer accepts God's silence. Inside him, a great void opens.
- Second half
In what book does a prisoner wrap a torn blanket around an injured foot before an evacuation march?
✓ Answer
Night by Elie Wiesel
On the morning of the evacuation, prisoners dress in every garment they can find and look like wide, ghostly clowns. Eliezer cannot find a shoe large enough for his wounded foot, so he tears a blanket and wraps it tight. He calls his fellow prisoners poor clowns.
- Near the end
In what book does a boy named Juliek play Beethoven on a violin in a dark barrack of dying men?
✓ Answer
Night by Elie Wiesel
Juliek, the boy from Warsaw in the Buna orchestra, had carried his violin onto the death march. In the darkness of the crushed barrack he plays a fragment of Beethoven before an audience of the dead and dying. By morning he is dead, his violin trampled beside him.
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