In the open­ing chap­ter of “Moth­er Night,” the nar­ra­tor reflects on his encounter with Rudolf Hoess, the Com­man­dant of Auschwitz, at a New Year’s Eve par­ty in War­saw in ear­ly 1944. Hoess, express­ing envy for the narrator’s writ­ing tal­ent, con­fides that he has incred­i­ble sto­ries to share but can only do so once the war is over. He admits a cre­ative block when attempt­ing to write, illus­trat­ing a chill­ing con­trast between his life and the moral impli­ca­tions of his role in the Nazi regime.

The nar­ra­tor reveals he is in War­saw at the behest of Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, the head of the Ger­man pro­pa­gan­da min­istry. Goebbels desires a pageant that hon­ors Ger­man sol­diers who died dur­ing the sup­pres­sion of the War­saw Ghet­to upris­ing. He envi­sions this pageant as an annu­al trib­ute, allow­ing the ruins to serve as a dra­mat­ic back­drop. When the nar­ra­tor ques­tions the pres­ence of Jews in the pageant post-war, Goebbels humor­ous­ly sug­gests they will “ask Hoess” to “save some” as he runs a health resort for Jews.

Despite the mor­bid con­cept of the pageant, which is ten­ta­tive­ly titled “Last Full Mea­sure,” the nar­ra­tor con­tem­plates the idea’s ram­i­fi­ca­tions on his moral stand­ing. He admits he might have writ­ten it under pres­sure, and he reflects on how this task unex­pect­ed­ly draws atten­tion to Abra­ham Lincoln’s Get­tys­burg Address. He trans­lates it for Goebbels, who finds its sen­ti­ments valu­able for Nazi funer­al ora­to­ry, even express­ing that Lincoln’s words could res­onate deeply with­in Ger­man mil­i­tary ded­i­ca­tions.

The con­ver­sa­tion leads to fur­ther dis­cus­sion about Lincoln’s back­ground, where Goebbels shows con­cern over the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Lin­coln being Jew­ish, a reflec­tion of the regime’s deeply entrenched anti-Semi­tism. Two weeks after their dis­cus­sion, the Get­tys­burg Address returns from Hitler, with praise for its emo­tion­al weight, empha­siz­ing a shared bond among north­ern peo­ples.

The chap­ter clos­es with a glimpse into the nar­ra­tor’s psy­che, reveal­ing his dreams are filled with mem­o­ries of women rather than the tyran­ni­cal fig­ures of his past. He rem­i­nisces about his wife Hel­ga and her sis­ter Resi, rec­og­niz­ing the final­i­ty of their absence. This reflec­tion illus­trates a poignant jux­ta­po­si­tion between his present life in Israel and the haunt­ing mem­o­ries of his pre­vi­ous life in New York, which he describes as pur­ga­to­ry, a fate worse than Hell.