Early in Night, he says it’s 1941, which would mean the war has been going on for a few years or so.
Some of the “foreign Jews” get deported, but Wiesel and his townspeople all just resume life as normal until it’s too late, and then they get rounded up too.
Before the “too late,” how did the Jews NOT know about concentration camps? And Germans rounding up Jews? Was news THAT slow to travel? Or did they just think it wouldn’t happen to them?
Edit: I guess I’m mostly referring to the period after Moishe’s (and the other foreign Jews’) deportation and account of the executions.
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Information control/suppression. Some people had no idea about the scope or nature of the death and concentration camps until they were literally there; there was a deliberate propaganda effort to not raise alarm about it by pretending it was an inoffensive “relocation.” “One booklet printed in 1941 glowingly reported that, in occupied Poland, German authorities had put Jews to work, built clean hospitals, set up soup kitchens for Jews, and provided them with newspapers and vocational training.” (Holocaust Encyclopedia)
Later in the war, it was much harder to hide reality. But as you know, some ignorant people deny it even today.
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