Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

This book, "Night," offers a truly shocking and deeply personal account of the author's harrowing experiences in the German concentration camps. It stands out among all the Holocaust memoirs I've read previously, as it feels more real and visceral. The reason for this, I believe, is that Elie Wiesel doesn't merely describe what he saw but also reveals how he felt during those dark times.


Before delving into this book, I had never truly contemplated what it must have been like to be a devoutly religious person and then have a series of atrocious events occur for no apparent reason. Moreover, I didn't understand the dehumanizing effect of living in such conditions year after year. The book vividly portrays how the struggle for survival can drive a father and son to kill each other over a simple piece of crust.


"Night" is undoubtedly one of the most touching and insightful memoirs I have come across in a long while. It forces the reader to confront the horrors of the Holocaust and reflects on the resilience and vulnerability of the human spirit in the face of extreme adversity.

Another book against forgetting.

Elie Wiesel, a renowned author and Holocaust survivor, has once again taken up the pen to ensure that the horrors of the Holocaust are not forgotten. In this particular work, he deliberately restricts himself to presenting only the most crucial facts.

By doing so, he aims to avoid any distractions that might divert the reader's attention from the true horror and magnitude of what occurred during that dark period in history. Wiesel's intention is clear: to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to make sure that future generations understand the gravity of this event. His words serve as a powerful reminder that we must never forget the atrocities committed and that we have a responsibility to ensure that such horrors never happen again.

The 139th book of 2020 is a powerful and haunting work.

It stings like the cold, and the cover of my edition truly reflects that feeling. After reading some of the descriptions within, I can feel that ice in the pit of my stomach. Wiesel writes these descriptions almost flippantly, but they are anything but pleasant. I will be quoting some, so be warned.

Wiesel was just a boy when he was sent to Auschwitz. It's难以置信 that his entire experience is captured in just 115 pages. His first manuscript was actually 900 pages long, but it has been distilled to this. The writing is hard to describe - is it sparse, deft, or minimalist? Wiesel put it well when Orson Welles expressed interest in turning it into a movie. Wiesel believed that a movie would fail because it would lack the silences between his words.

Most of the book follows Wiesel and his father. When the camp is liberated in 1945, Wiesel is 16 years old. He said about his book, "In Night, I wanted to show the end, the finality of the event. Everything came to an end—man, history, literature, religion, God. There was nothing left. And yet we begin again with night." In just 115 pages, he manages to cover his life before, the creation of the ghettos, arriving at Auschwitz, his time there, his own feelings, and there is a significant discussion about the "death of God" through his eyes.

The language is deceptively simple, with a certain silence to it. Wiesel uses many ellipses throughout the book, which I don't usually like, but they work here. The emptiness of the language at times makes it echo hauntingly.

Elie Wiesel received a Nobel Peace Prize in his life and passed away in 2016. Utah senator Orrin Hatch said, "With Elie's passing, we have lost a beacon of humanity and hope. We have lost a hero of human rights and a luminary of Holocaust literature." A luminary is indeed a beautiful choice of words. We can hope that with literature like Wiesel's and Primo Levi's, we can continue to learn about the Holocaust and ensure that it never happens again. However, in 2018, two years after Wiesel's death, antisemitic graffiti was found on the house he was born in. So, we must ask ourselves, what have we truly learned since 1945?

Even though I have delved into numerous other books regarding the Holocaust, none have managed to leave me with such a profound sense of haunting as "Night". It is a literary work that every individual should have the opportunity to read.

Based on the personal experiences of author Elie Wiesel, the narrator is a devoutly observant fifteen-year-old Jewish boy residing in the Hungarian village of Sighet. His family, along with other Jews, were forcibly herded into the ghetto by the Nazis. Subsequently, they were crammed into cattle cars and endured a grueling journey of several days without sustenance, ultimately arriving at Birkenau. Eliezer and his father were dispatched to Auschwitz, while his mother and sister were directed into another line, most likely bound for the crematorium.

Eliezer vividly recalls the horrors of Nazi brutality - the arduous labor, the merciless beatings, and the scarcity of food and warm clothing. He also reveals how the struggle for survival could drive Jews to turn against one another, as they fought tooth and nail for a meager scrap of bread. His father provides emotional support, yet also becomes a burden as his strength wanes. Eliezer grapples with his faith in God, questioning how such evil and suffering could be permitted in the world. He is irrevocably transformed both physically, emotionally, and spiritually by his harrowing experiences.

This spine-chilling quotation encapsulates Eliezer's reaction to the horror with remarkable precision:

"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."