This thin, first-person account of one man’s chilling experiences during the Holocaust has been around for nearly 50 years. “Night” is the essential work by Elie Wiesel, whose writings of his Holocaust experiences have earned him the Nobel Prize. Yet, despite the decades this book has been available, the prestige placed upon it and its author, and the profound depth of these pages, “Night” is likely being read by more Americans now than it has in its entire half century of publication. “Night” is the current Oprah Book Club volume, which garners thousands if not millions of readers every time Oprah Winfrey utters a book’s title. Winfrey is to be commended for selecting this title. Though only 120 pages long, including Wiesel’s Nobel acceptance speech, and written in a poetic style that is easy to read, this new translation of “Night” will be a difficult emotional read for many readers. Wiesel was a teen-age Jew in Transylvania in 1944. The war was nearly over, and Wiesel’s family and community believed they would escape the torments which the Nazis brought upon Jews across Europe. They were wrong. In chilling detail, Wiesel chronicles the subsequent dissolution of his community, his family, and his soul. He details the smothering madness on the cattle cars, the surreal hell of the concentration camps, and the desolation of a once religious and devout soul that must cry out, my God, where is God? This book should not be entered lightly, but it should be entered. It is a memoir of a historical nightmare, the travails of one person within the Holocaust, and it is a book that will have readers wondering what they would do and would they, could they, do something to stop such a tragedy from recurring. “Night” screams and moans that we must not let history repeat itself. “Night” will haunt readers much longer than the time it takes to read this short masterwork. It haunts whether read on the brightest day or the darkest night.
Books
February 6, 2006
NIGHT/Elie Wiesel
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