The Beginnng!

Elie grew up in a small town called Transylvania, where there was a community of Jews, the Sighet. His family owned a shop and he had three siblings all girls, Hilda (the oldest), Bea, then Elie, and Tzipora was the youngest. Hilda and Bea both helped in the store, Elies job was to study. When he was just about 13, Elie met Moishe. Moishe was a poor man, the townspeople typically did not like the poor, they helped them if they needed, but did not like them, but Moishe was different. He would stay out of peoples way and made himself invisible. He sang or chanted more than he talked and was mostly while praying. Elie asked his father to find him a master to guide him in his teachings of the Kabbalah, his father said that he was too young and did not need a master, as he should not even be studying the Kabbalah yet. One day while praying, Moishe observed him and asked him why he cried when he prayed. Elie said that he did not know, it just felt as if he needed to. After that, they talked often and would ask each other questions. 

One day, out of the blue, all foreign Jews were taken away from Sighet, including Moishe. They were crammed into cattle cars and taken away. Everyone at the train station was crying and all sad. After a couple months of them being gone, Elie says that life had gone back to normal, and calm. One day as Elie was entering the Synagogue, he say Moishe sitting on a bench near the entrance. Moishe told Elie what had happened to them, that they were taken into Poland by the Gestapo. They were transferred into trucks and brought into a forest. Once in the forest, they had to dig trenches and were then ordered to approach the trenches and offer their necks, and were then shot and killed. The infants were thrown up and shot at like targets. Moishe had been shot in the leg and left to die, form there he traveled from house to house, telling stories of what he had seen and what had happened. No one had listened to what he said and they though that he had gone crazy. In 1943, Germany prepared for the Second Front. In 1944, The Jews continued to think that they would be safe, that Hitler would not actually kill millions just because of their religion. The Germans took over their town, the officers stayed at their houses, and they were still acting as of they would be fine and were smiling.