One quote that describes the ways in which the Jews in Sighet were blind to the atrocities that the Nazis had in store for them was their response to what Moishe the Beadle tells them. When he is expelled from the town as a foreigner, he is sent on a train to Poland. There, he witnesses how the Gestapo kill Jews, including infants, though he is able to escape. When he returns to Sighet, the Jews in the town refuse to believe him. Wiesel writes:
"But people not only refused to believe his tales, they refused to listen. Some even insinuated that he wanted their pity, that he was imagining things. Others flatly said that he had gone mad" (page 7).
The Jews of Sighet refuse to believe Moishe's tales of horror. Instead, they cling to the idea that better days are right around the corner. After they are placed in a ghetto, they believe that they will stay in the ghetto and then be rescued by the Soviet army. As Wiesel writes, "The ghetto was by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion" (page 12). The Jews exist by deluding themselves into thinking that the Nazis will never choose to harm them, but the Nazis soon decide to liquidate the ghetto and send the residents to concentration camps.
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