Profound, heartbreaking, and relevant to every generation, no matter how much time has passed. My heart hurts, and I hope these tragedies never occur again.

The honesty and description of this book, was overwhelming!!

Ο Ελιέζερ (Ελί) Βιζέλ ήταν μόλις δεκαέξι χρονών όταν, τον Μάιο του 1944, υποχρέωσαν την οικογένειά του και όλη την εβραϊκή κοινότητα που κατοικούσε στο Σιγκέτ, μια μικρή πόλη στην Τρανσυλβανία, να παραμείνουν αρχικά στο γκέτο και, μερικές ημέρες μετά, να επιβιβαστούν σε μια αμαξοστοιχία που προοριζόταν για τη μεταφορά ζώων, με κατεύθυνση ένα από τα στρατόπεδα εξόντωσης στην Πολωνία.

Ο Ελιέζερ Βιζέλ ήταν μόλις δεκαέξι χρονών όταν, στην είσοδο του Άουσβιτς – Μπιρκενάου αποχωρίστηκε τη μάνα του και τις αδελφές του, αγνοώντας τότε ακόμη ότι σ’ εκείνον τον τόπο θα έχανε για πάντα τόσο τη μάνα του, όσο και τη μικρότερη αδελφή του Ιουδήθ.

Ο Ελιέζερ Βιζέλ ήταν μόλις δεκαέξι χρονών (κι ας τον ορμήνεψαν να λέει ότι είναι δεκαοκτώ, μήπως γλιτώσει το κρεματόριο) όταν, με τον πατέρα του αντάμα, διαβήκανε την πύλη του θανάτου.

“Ποτέ δεν θα ξεχάσω εκείνη τη νύχτα, την πρώτη νύχτα που πέρασα στο στρατόπεδο, που μετέτρεψε όλη μου τη ζωή σε μια μακριά, επτασφράγιστη νύχτα. Ποτέ δεν θα ξεχάσω εκείνο τον καπνό. Ποτέ δεν θα ξεχάσω τα προσωπάκια των παιδιών που ‘χα δει τα κορμάκια τους να μετατρέπονται σε τολύπες καπνού κάτω από το βουβό γαλάζιο τ’ ουρανού, Ποτέ δεν θα ξεχάσω εκείνες τις φλόγες που έκαψαν για πάντα την πίστη μου. Ποτέ δεν θα ξεχάσω εκείνες τις στιγμές που σκότωσαν τον Θεό μου, την ψυχή μου και τα όνειρά μου, τα οποία πήραν την όψη της ερήμου. Ποτέ δεν θα ξεχάσω όλα αυτά, ακόμα κι αν με καταδίκαζαν να ζήσω όσους αιώνες ζει και ο Θεός. Ποτέ.”

Βραβευμένος με το Νόμπελ Ειρήνης το 1986, ο Ελί Βιζέλ αρνιόταν για περισσότερα από δέκα χρόνια μετά τον πόλεμο, να γράψει ή να μιλήσει για τις εμπειρίες του κατά το Ολοκαύτωμα. Η συνάντησή του με τον Γάλλο συγγραφέα Φρανσουά Μωριάκ, όμως, που είδε στο πρόσωπο του νεαρού Ισραηλινού, «το βλέμμα αναστημένου Λαζάρου», ήταν καθοριστική: ο Ελί Βιζέλ ένιωσε ότι έπρεπε να καταθέσει τη μαρτυρία του για τα θύματα της Ιστορίας, όσο κι αν οι λέξεις για να διηγηθεί το τελευταίο ταξίδι με τα σφραγισμένα βαγόνια προς το άγνωστο, το ξεκλήρισμα μιας ολόκληρης οικογένειας και μιας ολόκληρης κοινότητας, και τις καθημερινές φρικαλεότητες στον αγώνα για επιβίωση σ’ έναν κόσμο ψυχρό και παράλογο, «όπου ανθρώπινο ήταν να είσαι απάνθρωπος», είναι φτωχές, αδύναμες και χλωμές.

Γραμμένη στα γίντις, τη μητρική γλώσσα του συγγραφέα, σ’ ένα κείμενο που στην πρωτότυπη μορφή του (υπό τον τίτλο «Και ο κόσμος παρέμεινε σιωπηλός») αριθμεί περί τις 900 σελίδες, η Νύχτα δεν ορίζει απλά τον πυρήνα του συγγραφικού έργου του Βιζέλ, αλλά κάτι πολύ μεγαλύτερο: μια κραυγή απέναντι στη σιωπή του Θεού, ένα ‘κατηγορώ’ με αποδέκτη τον Άνθρωπο, κι ένα σπουδαίο μάθημα ιστορικής μνήμης.

[Επ’ αφορμή της 27ης Ιανουαρίου, ημέρας μνήμης των Ελλήνων Εβραίων μαρτύρων και ηρώων του Ολοκαυτώματος]

Just about every day at lunch I take a walk through the Society Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, during which I always pass a particular synagogue/community center. A couple of days following the electoral college victory of Donald Trump, as I walked by the synagogue, the door opened and an elderly man stepped out. He smiled at me. I smiled back. As I passed him I felt a wave of shame wash over me. Only a day or two before, Philadelphia had made national news for an incident involving graffiti spray-painted on store windows and cars: swastikas, racial slurs, and of course the word Trump. This man I saw in Society Hill was quite advanced in years; it was entirely possible he knew people who had been victims of the Holocaust. It was even possible he’d been in the camps himself. Someone like him should not have to see something like that, all these decades later when we really should have learned from our mistakes by now.

Suddenly everything I’d been reading felt completely irrelevant. I picked up Night because I needed to read something with moral urgency, and it certainly fit the bill. But even more than the brutality of the concentration-camp experience, what struck me about this story was all the ways our human nature prevents us from expecting the worst until it actually happens. No one wants to believe that other human beings are capable of such astonishing acts of dehumanization, violence, and cruelty. But we’ve had more than enough examples throughout history that we no longer have any excuse for not being vigilant. From the particularly dark historical episode recounted in Night, that’s the lesson I’m going to take with me into the particularly dark days I fear may be ahead.

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

This book is a shocking and very personal account of the authors time spend in german concentracion camps. Night felt more real than any of the other holocaust memoirs I've read before, and I think this is because Elie tells you how he felt and not just what he saw.

I've never really thought about what it must have felt like to be very religious and then have all of these horrible events happen to you for no reason. Before reading this book I also did not understand how living like this year in and year out dehumanizes you. How a father and son can kill each other for a piece of crust.

This is definitely one of the most touching and insightful memoirs I have read in a long time.

Night is perhaps one of the most remarkable, harrowing and haunting accounts of the events in the Nazi Germany concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald. I read this powerful work only a few days before news of the author's, Elie Wiesel's, death were announced, and both shocked me. The first, because unless you have experienced it for yourself, you will never be able to realize the full extent of what happened in the Second World War with all its different facets and emotions, and the latter, because with Elie Wiesel, a remarkable man has left this planet who fought for memorizing the Holocaust, who fought against violence, suppression and racism.

Perhaps you will not find the most eloquent, the most artful language in this work of literature, but that's nothing you should expect to find in a book dealing with something as frightening, as horrifying, as real as the Holocaust. In his nonfictional book, Elie Wiesel writes about his own survival in the concentration camps, about reflections of the father-son relationship with his father, about humanity and inhumanity. It's a book everyone should read, because ultimately, the Second World War is something everyone should remember. Forgetting would be the worst way to deal with it.

A lot of people, more people than would be good, claim that it has all been "so long ago", is so completely irrelevant nowadays, just belongs to this boring stuff people are tortured with in school because it belongs to this dry nonsense called "history". I usually don't tell people they're wrong ... usually. Because in this case, they can't be more wrong. The Holocaust needs to be remembered, because if humans forget the mistakes they did, they will tend to repeat them. And I think everyone can agree that the Holocaust should never, never be repeated.

This is a book which is incredibly difficult to review, just like it is difficult to read - not for its language or its style; I read it in one sitting in the course of three or four hours - but rather for the horrifying events Elie Wiesel talks about. I can only recommend to read this book to everyone, independent from how much you already know about the topic.

And on a final note: Rest in Peace, Elie Wiesel.

“I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it.”

I first read Night in 8th grade, and its raw honesty fractured something inside me that has never quite healed. In college, when my backpack and I traveled through Europe, I tried to ignore the dysentery I'd acquired in Egypt and resolutely hopped a bus from Munich to Dachau. I had to see the WW2 concentration camps of my (and everyone's) nightmares firsthand. Dachau was just as awful and life-changing as I'd expected, walking among the ghosts, and on the ashes, of those like Elie Wiesel who lived and died in such horrific conditions.

Rereading Night this week, I could not ignore how dispassionately this man had to report his experience, since what he endured must have felt as if it were happening to someone else, like an unreal nightmare. Just like how a soft talker forces you to lean in to listen more carefully, Elie Wiesel's startlingly matter-of-fact portrayal of his personal horrors draws you even further into his memories of the massive evil that was the Holocaust.

This is one of those books you have to yield to, you must endure, because as a human being you hold the responsibility of understanding mankind's history in order to prevent the same atrocities from happening again. It's such a small price to pay, to suffer through a short memoir such as this, compared to the ultimate sacrifice millions of innocent Jews, Soviets, homosexuals and more paid back in the 1940s.

“How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?”

A heartbreaking first-person account of the Nazi concentration camps and of the world that let them happen. One of the many things that struck me in this book was the author’s description of how hard it was for Jews in Germany to believe, or to respond behaviorally to, even the most horrendous warnings. Sometimes the nonresponse came down to feeling that one just couldn’t start all over again: “I am too old, my son … Too old to start a new life.” Other times, the warning itself was doubted, because of its extremity.

“Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns … Jews, listen to me! That’s all I ask of you. No money. No pity. Just listen to me!”

It was also striking how quickly the author's family went from being in their home in society at large to being forcibly separated (him and his father from his mother and sisters) and sent to concentration camps, wherein previously unimaginable horrors became part of their everyday lives. When it started happening, when it became clear that the warnings were accurate, it was too late, everything moved so quickly.

“They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death.”

IMPORTANT QUOTE:

“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

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

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

My first reading of Elie Wiesel's Night occurred during this year's Holocaust Memorial Day.


Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.

Words cannot begin to comprehend the plight of suffering and cruelty revealed in this book that had me on the verge of breaking into sobs page after page, so I'll let the writing speak for itself by sharing moments and passages that cannot be forgotten in time:



This here is exactly why I refuse to participate with anything regarding Germany; the world is complicit in its indifference.  “...my hatred remains our only link today.”



It pained me beyond words to see my people fall under the “this surely won’t happen to me” spell.



And the effect spreads like a snowball, gathering more and more edicts as the days go by.



Nothing gets my blood boiling quite like seeing the numerous acts of silence committed by these citizens. People love to victim-blame the Jews by asking the distasteful question of why they didn't stand up to the oppressor... But a more pressing notion, for me, is why those German citizens, watching idly by in the face of atrocity, didn't stand up to their fellow Nazis… 



I was appalled from start to finish with the above. Not only do they watch idly by from a short distance away, but to then FLIRT with them…

You think you've reached the peak of cruelty, but then you read on:



Experiencing numbness in order to remain sane at the sight of tragedy.



This French girl's wisdom has stayed in mind, in particular, because the next paragraph describes an out-of-this-world experience wherein Elie Wiesel stumbles upon her eons later:



But the most painful of all remains to be the relationship portrayed between father and son that keeps both alive in the face of inhumanity.



Many more sorrowful revelations are shared within the pages of this must-read. Elie Wiesel's raw written voice commemorates all that must never be forgotten.



My arms gathered with goosebumps at that because the date I was reading this book was April 11th.

I'll end this review by sharing my favorite Elie Wiesel quote:

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”

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This review and more can be found on my blog.

Night by Elie Wiesel is not only one of the definitve works on Holocaust literature, it is one of the most definitve works on humanity.
This is a factual record of Wiesel's experiences from 1941, when the author was 12 years old, dedicated to learning Talmud and thirsting to learn Kaballah, to his experiences after Jews were forced into ghettoes and then transported to the death camps.
Written in Yiddish in 1958 and translated into English in 1960.
It is a record of Wiesel's childhood in the death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. It is dedicated to the memory of Wiesel's parents and his little sister Tzipora who were cruelly murdered in the Nazi inferno.
The book is stark in it's record of everything seen by the author and asks many questions for which answers are difficult to find.
It tells of the vow of Wiesel and a friend in the camp to emigrate to the Land of Israel if they survived, a dream shared by millions who died in and lived through the Shoah.
Perhaps the most horrifying and moving account in the book is when the author reveals how during the first night in Auschwitz, he and his father wait in line to be thrown into a firepit. He watches a lorry draw up beside the pit and deliver its load of children into the fire. While his father recites the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead.
" Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never".
Elie Wiesel was a voice of conscience in the world ever since this book became known.
He penned various other bestsellers. His Elie Wiesel Foundation For Human Rights has done valuable work in this field for many years.
In a plea for the plight of his own people today, especially the youth and children of Israel today targeted by terror and forces of genocide (such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Ahmadinejad regime- as well as all who are sympathetic to these anti-Jewish elements) he penned an open letter to President Bush stating: "Please remember that the maps on Arafat's uniform and in Palestinian children's textbooks show a Palestine encompassing not only all of the West Bank but all of Israel, while Palestinian leaders loudly proclaim that 'Palestine extends from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, from Rosh Hanikra (in the North) to Rafah (in Gaza). Please remember Danielle Shefi, a little girl in Israel. Danielle was five. When the murderers came, she hid under her bed. Palestinian gunmen found and killed her anyway. Think of all the other victims of terror in the Holy Land. With rare exceptions, the targets were young people, children and families. Please remember that Israel--having lost too many sons and daughters, mothers and fathers--desperately wants peace. It has learned to trust its enemies' threats more than the empty promises of 'neutral' governments".

Elie Wiesel was atrue voice of truth and conscience

What can I say about this book that hasn't been said better by Wiesel himself? Powerful and moving. My copy has his 1986 Nobel Acceptance Speech at the end, and there is so much there that applies to this moment in our history that it's eerie.