The
first point we must consider in answering this is the respective ages of Wiesel and Levi at the
time of the events they narrated. Wiesel was 14; Levi was 24.had the double misfortune of being
too young to grasp a situation which even for an adult is incomprehensible. Primo Levi, as an
adult, already was aware at the time he was arrested in Italy and placed on the convoy bound for
the concentration camp that he and the others were en route to their deaths.
Another factor is that Wiesel was growing up in a religious environment in his home town of
Sighet in Hungary. The first chapter of his book deals with his religious feelings, his studying
the Torah, and his friendship with Moishe the Beadle, who in some sense represents the essence
of the spiritual world to him. Yet Moishe is the one who is deported first, then escapes and
returns to Sighet, where no one believes his account of the murders of the Jews he witnessed.
The entire community has been sheltered from this...
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