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

This profound statement by Elie Wiesel holds great significance. In our society, there are countless individuals who are in desperate need of our help and support.

We often focus on our own lives, our own goals and desires. However, we should also open our eyes and see the suffering and struggles of those around us.

By realizing that our lives have a greater purpose and that we can make a difference in the lives of others, we can find true meaning and fulfillment.

We can reach out to those in need, offer a helping hand, a kind word, or a listening ear. Whether it is through volunteering, donating to charity, or simply being there for someone in their time of need, every act of kindness counts.

Let us remember Elie Wiesel's words and strive to make a positive impact on the lives of those who need us desperately. In doing so, we will not only enrich their lives but also our own.

The first time I read "Night" by Eli Wiesel, I was in an eighth grade religious school class.

At that time, it had recently become a law in my state to teach the Holocaust as part of the general curriculum. As a result, my classmates and I were the torchbearers, tasked with telling people to never forget, and we were inundated with quality Holocaust literature.

Yet, even though middle school students can comprehend "Night" to some extent, the subject matter at times was still way over our heads. The book itself, although a prize winner, blended into the religious school class and receded to the back of my memory bank.

These years later, I have been enjoying a religious lifestyle in my adult life. Upon hearing that Nobel Laureate Eli Wiesel passed away recently, I thought now was as good a time as any to reread his award-winning account of surviving the Holocaust.

Although only 120 pages in length, Wiesel's memoir of life in the concentration camps is one of the most powerful pieces of literature that most people will ever read. Wiesel discusses his relationship with G-D and talks about his conflicting feelings regarding taking care of his father while in the Buna and Birkenau camps. It was not easy to digest.

Wiesel also writes at length about observing Rosh Hashanah while in the concentration camps. Why praise the Almighty for one's deliverance if one's existence is spent as a prisoner living on crusts of bread? It was easy to forget G-D or denounce His existence, even for the most religious Jews. These passages brought me close to tears.

On this eve of Rosh Hashanah, I can thank the Blessed Creator that I enjoy a comfortable lifestyle. Even though the world is far from perfect, my family lives in a land of freedom and is free to worship as we choose.

Eli Wiesel brought Holocaust awareness to many people and earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. His passing is indicative that few survivors are still with us, and we should hear their stories while we still can. "Night" is a painful yet necessary read, and by reading it, I can go into the new year thanking G-D for my right to live in relative peace and prosperity.

“Over there. Do you see the chimney over there? Do you see it? And the flames, do you see them?” (Yes, we saw the flames.) “Over there, that’s where they will take you. Over there will be your grave. You still don’t understand? You sons of bitches. Don’t you understand anything? You will be burned! Burned to a cinder! Turned into ashes!”

I simply cannot bring myself to write a review for this book. How could I? How could I possibly appraise or evaluate the unfathomable sufferings of another human being? I am completely overwhelmed by an all-encompassing sadness, a darkness that seems to swallow everything, and a paralyzing fear.

“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.”

This is a true account of Elie Wiesel, a 15-year-old Romanian Jew. At the beginning of the book, Wiesel's religious leader warns him of the danger, but no one listens. The family is confident that everything will be alright. However, the Germans march in without even a fight. Overnight, regulations go into effect, including the wearing of the yellow star. Eventually, the Jews are forced into a ghetto. Then, they are told to move. Where they were going, no one knew. They were herded into a cattle car, bound for the concentration camps. What will happen to Wiesel and his family?

Night is a case where truth is stranger than fiction. It would be hard to imagine a scenario more gruesome. In the book, you can tell that Wiesel has deep regrets about choices that were made along the way. You can feel the weight, the burden on his shoulders, even though he was only an innocent teenage boy in an impossible situation.

This book was a sucker punch to the solar plexus. Even in the midst of unspeakable atrocities, there was so much hope. When arriving at Auschwitz, there was a discussion about trying to escape, “Let the world learn about the existence of Auschwitz. Let everybody find out about it while they still have a chance to escape.” The sad thing is that there were people who knew and did little to nothing to help.

However, I don't want to diminish the many brave people who risked their lives for the greater good. Before the pandemic, I was visiting the Canadian Aviation Museum, and they had a display about Operation Bad Penny/Operation Manna/Operation Chowhound. Operation Bad Penny consisted of a crew of seven men, five from Ontario, Canada, who dropped food into the Netherlands to prevent the people from starving. The Germans had not yet agreed to the cease fire for the humanitarian mission, so this test flight was to see if they would be shot down. They were not. This began 3,301 food drops. The Dutch people spelled out, “Many Thanks” in tulips. One of the people interrupted the tour. In a small, quavering voice, she said, “That was my grandparents. I'm from The Netherlands. They were dying, and the British, Americans, and Canadians saved them. I wouldn't be alive except for this flight. That is why anytime, we have visitors from these areas, we were always told to say, ‘Welcome back.’”

2025 Reading Schedule
Jan\\tA Town Like Alice
Feb\\tBirdsong
Mar\\tCaptain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
Apr\\tWar and Peace
May\\tThe Woman in White
Jun\\tAtonement
Jul\\tThe Shadow of the Wind
Aug\\tJude the Obscure
Sep\\tUlysses
Oct\\tVanity Fair
Nov\\tA Fine Balance
Dec\\tGerminal

Connect With Me!
Blog Twitter BookTube Facebook Insta My Bookstore at Pango

There are simply no words which I could write that would do this book the justice it deserves. It is truly a remarkable piece of work that has left me completely speechless.

From the very first page, I was captivated by the author's unique writing style and the engaging storyline. The characters were so well-developed that I felt as if I knew them personally.

The plot was full of twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat, and I found myself unable to put the book down until I had finished it.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is a must-read for anyone who loves a good story, and I have no hesitation in giving it a full 5 stars.

Overall, this book is a literary masterpiece that will stay with me for a long time to come. I can only hope that the author continues to write such amazing books in the future.

'Night' by Elie Wiesel is a well-known work that has had a significant impact. However, upon closer examination, it has its strengths and weaknesses. The book's success and popularity, especially compared to more factual Holocaust memoirs, led to further research. Wiesel's journey in writing 'Night' was complex. After the war, he moved to Paris and completed an 862-page manuscript in Yiddish in 1954. This was later published in Argentina in 1956 as a 245-page book titled 'Un di velt hot geshvign'. The editing process was unclear, and Wiesel himself had different accounts. The translation into French and English also faced difficulties in finding publishers.

Literary critics have different views on 'Night'. Ruth Franklin argues that its impact comes from its minimalist construction, but at the cost of literal truth. Lawrence Langer also believes that Wiesel evokes rather than describes. Naomi Seidman concludes that there are two survivors in Wiesel's writing, a Yiddish and a French one. The Yiddish version was more about revenge for Jewish readers, while the French translation removed that anger for a largely Christian readership.

In the original review, the reader gave 'Night' only 3 stars, comparing it unfavorably to other Holocaust memoirs like those by Primo Levi, Olga Lengyel, and Imre Kertész. The reader felt that these other memoirs gave more detailed day-to-day descriptions of life in the camps and provided a fuller understanding of the experience. While the last part of 'Night' about the death marches and Elie's father touched the reader deeply, there were also questions about why Wiesel didn't write more about the rest of his family. Additionally, the religious conflict that Wiesel wrote about didn't resonate with everyone.

Update

The success of 'Night' is undeniable, with sales reaching millions of copies in the United States and being available in 30 languages. However, the questions and discussions about its authenticity and literary value continue. As readers, we should approach such works with an open mind and a critical eye, trying to understand the context and the author's intentions while also being aware of the potential biases and limitations.

Difficult to review.

Night is a brutally honest and harrowing first-hand account of life in Auschwitz.

We are all too familiar with the common visuals: the journey in the cattle truck, the terrifying arrival in Auschwitz, the squalor and deprivations of life in the barracks, and the dreaded selections.

Wiesel, with his simple yet supremely eloquent prose, vividly describes the profound effect these daily horrors had on the human soul.

He shows us, in essence, the depths to which we can sink. How, under the most inhumane treatment for an extended period, even a son can be driven to kill his own father for a mere morsel of bread.

This short book is a powerful and essential read.

It forces us to confront the darkest aspects of human nature and the atrocities that can occur during times of war and persecution.

Probably everyone should take the time to read this book and be reminded of the importance of compassion, empathy, and the fight against injustice.

It is a stark reminder of the horrors that can unfold when we lose sight of our humanity.

**“Night” by Elie Wiesel: A Harrowing Account of Survival and Indifference**

My first encounter with Elie Wiesel's "Night" took place on this year's Holocaust Memorial Day. This powerful memoir is a brutally honest and deeply moving account of Wiesel's experiences as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. Marion Wiesel's new translation, true to the author's original intent, brings this seminal work to life in a profound way.

The book reveals the unfathomable suffering and cruelty endured by the Jews during the Holocaust. It had me on the verge of tears, page after page. The passages shared, such as "my hatred remains our only link today," and the descriptions of the numerous acts of silence by German citizens, are truly heart-wrenching. The indifference shown by the world is appalling and serves as a stark reminder of the importance of never forgetting such atrocities.

The relationship between father and son, which is portrayed throughout the book, is both beautiful and tragic. It shows how love and亲情 can sustain us even in the face of inhumanity. Elie Wiesel's raw and honest writing voice commemorates all that must never be forgotten. His quote, "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference," sums up the central theme of the book perfectly.

“Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.”

The author, whose picture is shown above, put it perfectly in the forward: “Only those who experienced Auschwitz know what it was.” I firmly believe we can all concur with this statement. But as readers, can we truly fathom what took place there? Can modern men and women truly understand that accursed universe?

I’m not entirely certain.

I first encountered this in my eighth-grade History class when I was just 13. It transformed my life. Before reading this book, my world was filled with sunshine and rainbows. My greatest concern was whether a boy named Jason liked me back. I would get angry at my mom for making me go to bed on time, complain if I didn’t like the dinner, and argue about what I could and couldn’t watch on TV.

I thought I knew about WWII. Both of my grandfathers served in it, and my parents wanted to ensure we understood their sacrifices and the things they witnessed. I watched documentaries about it with my father, the history enthusiast, and listened to the few stories my grandfathers would share. But until that moment, I had been deliberately shielded from the horrors of the Holocaust. I had only been told in the vaguest terms what had happened, that millions of people had been killed, and that Hitler and his men had sought to exterminate the Jewish people. My parents wanted to spare me from the true meaning of it until they thought I was mature enough to handle it.

But then I read this book.

And for the first time in my life, I became completely self-aware. I felt like a child, a complete and utter fool. What were my “problems” compared to those of the narrator? How “hard” was my life compared to what he endured and what millions of others similarly endured? I now understood my own insignificance in the grand scheme of things, and suddenly the reality of the world felt like a crushing weight. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It was dark, ugly, and unforgivable.

I remember being extremely angry when I finished this book. Mostly, I was angry at the world and humanity as a whole, but I unfairly directed some of that anger at my father. After all, he hadn’t prepared me for what I discovered in this book. At one point, I even demanded that he explain this “thing” to me.

He couldn’t.

Fifteen years later, my second reading of this book had just as profound an impact on me as the first. There’s a question I kept asking myself while reading: “How?” I’m sure “Why?” might seem like the more obvious choice, but I couldn’t let myself get lost in that never-ending rabbit hole. Madness lies at the end of that question. So I’m left with “How?” How did this happen? How did so many ordinary human beings contribute to this?

How did the SS working in the camps reach the point where they were physically and mentally capable of tossing live infants into flames? How were the German girls who lived within smelling distance of Auschwitz able to pass love notes to the soldiers who marched their emaciated prisoners past? How did these same starving prisoners manage to run 20 kilometers in the freezing snow? How could the SS officers who shot them if they stopped on the first day of their death march then shout encouragements to them the next? How could the German citizens near the train tracks throw bread into the prisoners’ cattle cars just to watch them kill each other for it?

How could human beings do such things to each other?

How?

HOW?

\\n  HOW???\\n

Like my father, I have no answers.

And that, I believe, is why many modern humans will never truly be able to understand the things that occur in this book. We can absorb it, bear witness to it, but understand it? Hopefully never.

I finished this book at lunch today. And now I’m sitting in my cubicle, looking at my neighbors and wondering if they’re capable of such depravity. Am I? What would I do to survive? Would I beat my own father to death for the bread in his hand? I hope to God that none of us will ever have to find out the answers to these questions.

If you read only one book in your life, this should be it.

Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

July 2, 2016: On hearing of the passing of Elie Wiesel, President Obama, who visited the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp with Wiesel in 2009, said, "He raised his voice, not just against anti-Semitism, but against hatred, bigotry and intolerance in all its forms. He implored each of us, as nations and as human beings, to do the same, to see ourselves in each other and to make real that pledge of 'never again.'"

I first read this book about 40 years ago and it has stayed with me ever since. When I heard the sad news, I decided it was time to put aside what I was reading and refresh my memory of Wiesel's seminal holocaust memoir. As he says in his preface to the new edition, we all have a "moral obligation to try and prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory." Just as some people drink to forget, I read to remember.

Eliezer Wiesel's memoir stands alongside Anne Frank's diary at the top of the list of must-read books about the holocaust. While Frank humanizes those who died, Wiesel, as a witness and survivor of the horrors of the holocaust, takes the stand and testifies with heartbreaking eloquence about all that he saw and endured.

Much of Wiesel’s eloquence lies in its brevity. In just over 100 pages, he presents one of the most powerful indictments of Hitler’s Final Solution ever written. "Men to the left! Women to the right!" These eight words, spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion, yet in that moment, Wiesel was separated from his mother. With just 28 words, he consigns over half his family to the crematorium. There is no emotion, no blubbering, yet nothing could have made the reader feel the horror of the event more keenly.

The part of his story that chills me the most is not the constant death but how easily the inmates’ tormenters were able to dehumanize them. What is worse: to kill a man or to turn him into someone who would kill his own father for a crust of bread? Yet Wiesel manages to remind us that even in the depths of Hell, there is room for a touch of the sublime. In the dark barrack where the dead were piled on top of the living, he heard the sound of a violin. It was Juliek, playing a fragment of a Beethoven concerto. The beauty of that sound in such silence will stay with him forever.

The 2006 revision of the book includes a new preface by Wiesel and, at the end, the acceptance speech when he won the Nobel Peace Prize. In it, he said, "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."

Although Elie Wiesel is no longer with us, his words, his testimony, will live on. Jewish tradition teaches us that we are never really dead until there is no one who remembers us. Let us hope that Eliezer Wiesel stays with us for a long, long time.

A poignant and unforgettable 5 star read.

“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.” ― Elie Wiesel, Night

It has been a number of years since I last delved into this book. However, when my son had to read it for school, I made the decision to accompany him on this literary journey. And I am truly glad that I did.

Night is an account of one man's tragic yet remarkable survival during the Holocaust. It is an extremely powerful, shocking, and heartbreaking biography that also manages to be poignant and a triumph of the human spirit. This book serves as a powerful reminder to humanity about the heinous atrocities that man is capable of perpetrating. At the same time, it vividly demonstrates the incredible resilience of the human spirit and its capacity to rise above evil and make a positive difference.

If you have not yet had the opportunity to read Night, I cannot recommend it highly enough. This is one of those rare life-changing books that every individual should experience. It will make you think, it will make you feel, and it will stay with you long after you have turned the final page.

This was a short and excruciating book to peruse. Witnessing the transformation of the bright and optimistic boy, who was the heart of his family in Hungary, into a lone skeleton in Buchenwald was deeply traumatizing.

Although I valued this account, it was rather abbreviated. I favored Primo Levi's account for its poetic nature. Nevertheless, Wiesel's account is equally terrifying and profoundly moving.

In terms of the historical context, the Nazis began deporting Hungarian Jews late in the war, when it was evident that they were losing. Despite this, they still stubbornly aimed to eliminate the maximum number of Jews. Hungary had the second-largest Jewish population in Europe after Poland. Elie Wiesel and his family were deported and sent directly to Auschwitz. He remained with his father until the Liberation at the Buna plant, the same place where Primo Levy was held. He was among the prisoners on the Death March in January 1945 to Buchenwald in Germany. Tragically, his father did not survive the march.

Fino's Reviews of Books about the Holocaust
Nonfiction:
If This Is A Man/The Truce by Primo Levy
The Periodic Table by Primo Levy
The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levy
The Night by Elie Wiesel
Auschwitz by Laurence Rees
Fiction:
The Tatooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris
Travel to Krakow to visit Auschwitz:
Krakow:City Guide [Blue Guides]