Night

Every page of this book is a punch in the face. What happened to him was the worst and he didn't try to hide it or sweeten it. He allowed us to see what happens inside the mind of someone in such extreme situation, the noble and the shameful. I keep with me his frustration, his pain, his doubts, his disappointment.

A terrifying window into the heart of the Holocaust, this was undoubtedly one of the best of its kind. From a first person perspective, Elie Wiesel unabashedly outlines every horrific detail about his life in the concentration camps and beyond. It's a heavy book, as of course it must be. You won't want to believe it's true, but at the same time you feel you have to read it, to keep the memory of the depths humankind can sink to alive.

The other factor of this book that interested me was Wiesel's musings on religion, the way he practiced, lost, cursed, regained, and questioned his faith in God. It became an integral part of his story, and I had always wondered how any person in his situation could possibly keep from considering atheism. show more

All in all, this book will make you sick, sad, and furious, but it is also a kind of fierce call to action, not so much to do something now, but to never forget and ensure it never happens again. show less

At the age of 14, Elie Wiesel is taken from his home and transported to the first of a series of concentration camps that he will endure during the final years of World War II. Immediately separated from his mother and sisters, Elie and his father cling to existence even as they watch unthinkable antrocities and endure suffering that cannot easily be described. Ultimately, Elie loses his father and, perhaps most cruelly of all, is stripped of the very faith which has been the underpinning of his life and which was the pretext for persecution. Wiesel's approach to the unthinkable is understatement. "As we were not permitted to bend down, we took out our spoons and ate the snow off our neighbors' backs. A mouthful of bread and a spoonful show more of snow. The SS men . . . were greatly amused by this spectacle."

The pages weep. show less

I've read before of Holocaust atrocities, some fiction and some non-fiction. I've read too of other atrocities over time, people against other people, people against their own people, down through history. Part of what such reading imparts is that it's never done,* the nature of hatred and trauma means we're easily numbed, we easily grow accustomed, if it happens long enough, if the threat is acute enough. (Survivors remind us, it happens even before they survived: victims numbed to the corpse propped up against them in the cattle car; KZ inmates inured to their bunkmates murdered overnight.)

All of that results from the human capacity for surviving, but that's short term survival. Long term survival (the prerequisite for civilization, show more for life beyond mere existence) requires we unlearn our coping mechanisms --once it's safe to do so. No matter how unpleasant, inconvenient, uncomfortable it is. Such a resolution by a trauma survivor marks the start of a healing journey. There must be something analogous for a community, and logically then, for individuals in a community.

R's school assignment suggested to me it was time to look again.

... if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices. We could not prevent their deaths the first time, but if we forget them, they will be killed a second time.
-- Elie Wiesel (1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech)

Wiesel's memoir provides a primer on the sort of policies and behavior used to implement the Nazi "Final Solution", in towns before and after ghettoization, in transport to and between KZ, and in the KZ itself. Wiesel suggests an important consideration is how surviving all this affects a person's understanding of self; and that person's behavior toward others; and psychoemotional & physical reactions to enduring privation, threat, abuse; and that person's faith in people and in a higher being. The pressure from the experience never stops, and the resulting accommodation to such pressure constantly changes over the years and through different events, whether before or after survival.

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This edition appended other speeches by Wiesel (including the Nobel Peace Prize speech), and speeches by others on the importance of Night and its continued relevance to readers.



* Perhaps atrocity is never past; certainly the necessity for reading about atrocity is never past. show less

Elie Wiesel's recent death moved me to read this, finally. It's been on my shelf for a long long time. I can add very little to what's already been said about this remarkable memoir. That anyone could live through the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, survive and continue to live with the losses and memories of that time, and then write so beautifully about it is just staggering. At the age of 15, Eliezer Wiesel and his family were "evacuated" from their home village of Sighet in Transylvania into a long unimaginable nightmare. Having escaped the attention of the Nazis until the spring of 1944, the villagers were convinced that the war would be over soon, that the Russians were coming and would defeat Hitler's forces in a few weeks, show more that they would not be subjected to the fate of the foreign Jews who had been expelled the year before. In fact, when Moishe the Beadle miraculously escaped and returned to warn them, most refused to listen or believe the stories of what had happened to those deportees at the hands of the Gestapo. No, such things were not possible in the middle of the twentieth century! But the reality of ghettos, cattle cars, forced marches, near starvation, "selection" and crematoria awaited them.

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never." show less

This book was the first Holocaust memoir that I read in full, but for all that it’s a slim volume it has always stayed with me as a powerful experience, remembrance, and testimony. Coming back to it years later, this time without the lens of academia insisting on a thought-provoking analysis to get a good grade, I’m still left wanting to write. What I want to write, I’m not sure, though, as the book opens up so many emotions that I’m left with a feeling of emptiness and regret. Not regret for having read the book, of course, but regret that humanity sat idle and did nothing while those around them suffered; regret that those in power turned away refugees who would have elsewise been saved; regret that even with its shining show more moments humanity has at its core a darkness that must be acknowledged. Even with the hindsight of 75 years it often seems that we have yet to learn from the mistakes of the past, as we continue to allow those who warp power for their own gain to lead and to allow cruelty to overrule compassion. And yet, we have persevered throughout, so while the book may not leave readers with a happy feeling in their gut (or much more than a cliffhanger, not knowing what truly happens to the narrator until the subsequent books) we know that there are still next steps to be taken by those who are able and can make them. show less

Each year that passes puts us at another, slight remove from the genocide that overshadows all Jewish life today. Now more than ever, it’s imperative that we learn and remember. Wiesel published this glimpse into the hell of the past more than sixty years ago. To read Night is to obliterate, for a moment, the distance that holds us apart from the Holocaust. Its rage consumes the intervening years and makes itself ours.