Although Moshe the Beadle seemed to
disappear after the first few pages of Night, he was a very important person in Elie’s life. All of this information
was given in the first chapter of Night. This is a summary of how Elie Wiesel described Moshe the Beadle.
Moshe the
Beadle was the only name he went by. No one knew what his real last name was, but he had to have had one at some point in
his life. He was a homeless man in Sighet, Transylvania. The people of Sighet were not particularly fond of homeless people;
however, they seemed to like Moshe.
He spent the majority of his time
the Hasidic synagogue. He also helped Elie in his studies of the Cabbala. Moshe was not originally from Sighet, he was a foreigner.
At the beginning of the Holocaust, all of the foreigners in Sighet were expelled, and later we find out they were taken to
Poland.
In Poland Moshe witnessed a mass extinction
of Jews. He then found a way to escape and return to Sighet to warn the other of what he had witnessed and to tell them that
the Nazis were planning on doing the same thing to them. No one believed Moshe because they though he was crazy.
