Night (1958)

# 4 of 100 Classics Challenge

Night 🍒🍒🍒🍒🍒
By Elie Wiesel
1960

Powerful, emotional and gut wrenching. . . The atrocious, and cowardly deeds in this book should never be a reality....yet it was....it's hard to imagine. Men and women, forced to strip naked and dig trenches, wide and deep enough to lay in.....then have machine guns maniacs shot at random into the trenches; infants and children were launched into the air and shot to pieces......and it got worse from there. It's hard to imagine these things happened, but what's worse is being forced to watch friends and family go thru thisand not react, not respond at all for fear you would be shot too... and have to carry on......there are no words....

This is a short novel, but it took me awhile to finish this, I had to stop several times....it you have not read this, you should. It's fantastic! ( )

"Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately."

I read this book in school as a mandatory book in English, I wanted to re-read it because I feel it is important we never forget things in our history like this. This story is about Elie who was born in Hungary and was sent to one of the worst concentration camps, auschwitz. He survived but not without a lot of pain and suffering described in this book. He was torn from his home, lost his mother and little sister. It is truly heartbreaking but feel it is important for everyone to be aware of.
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This is not a review of the book. There’s no point reviewing such a book. It’s powerful, it’s affecting, it’s a reminder of human tragedies and fallacies – all written bluntly and honestly.

For one year, Spring of 1944 to Spring of 1945, the fourteen-year-old Eliezer Wiesel experienced the kind of nightmare that no person should – living in the enforced ghettoes in Hungary, traveling in cattle trains with little food, water, sanitation, and moving through multiple concentration camps. While many of us know about these atrocities through other readings, what makes “Night” different is the unveiling of the human fallacies associated with such tragedies. The shame – Elie ignoring his father’s calls to him during his final delusional moments dying from dysentery, Elie feeling that certain amount of freedom knowing he doesn’t need to care for his father anymore, the pastor’s son who left him in the mix of the crowds during transport, the son who killed his father over a mouth of bread and was in term killed himself. The struggle with faith – Elie and others, including a rabbi, questioning their God, their faith, “…why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled.” The ignorance and false optimism – the ghettoes are for their protection; the transport would take them somewhere safe. The harsh reality so raw – “Our eyes opened. Too late.” “You should have hanged yourself rather than come here.” “True. We didn’t know. Nobody told us.”

I was extremely touched by the love of his father. “But seeing that his advice had come too late, and that there was nothing left of my ration, he didn’t even start his own. ‘Me, I’m not hungry,’ he said.” Forbid him from fasting for Yom Kippur, survival first, faith can wait. Kept him awake from sleeping in the snow – a certain death; “Don’t let yourself be overcome by sleep, Eliezer. It’s dangerous to fall asleep in snow. One falls asleep forever.” Fearing he had been selected, he forced on Eliezer his last two personal items – a spoon and a knife – “My inheritance…” I felt brief anger at the fifteen-year-old Elie who felt ‘freed’, even if momentarily, from his father, the father who had protected him every way he can throughout these sufferings. The father, whose one real mistake, was not fleeing, that he’s too old to start over, his generation who just didn’t know and didn’t flee.

This is an excerpt from Mr. Wiesel’s 1986 speech in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize:
“…I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at the moment – become the center of the universe.”
With democracy declining in the U.S. and around the world, this passage is more important than ever. The aggressors’ boldness grows, with anti-semantic graffiti found on Mr. Wiesel’s Romania home a day ago. Never forget!

A note about the edition: If you’re buying used books, buy one that is translated by Marion Wiesel, his wife. It corrects mistakes from previous translations and expresses Mr. Wiesel’s thoughts more accurately. ( )

Intense, heart-wrenching, traumatic. I feel inadequate to review this book. I do not have the words needed to convey the power of this book. Please read it and experience it for yourself. ( )

This narrative of personal events of the Holocaust and survival at Auschwitz is irreplaceable. Wiesel paints a picture of the harsh realities that were faced by those who were victims of the Nazi machine. Heart-wrenching and a stark reminder to never allow this history to repeat itself. ( )