Book Review: Night by Elie Wiesel

Night By Elie Wiesel




From Amazon


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.

Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

My Thoughts:

Night is a memoir of Mr. Wiesel's life as a young man imprisoned during the holocaust.  Such a great book that left an everlasting impression on my heart, just as I knew it would. 

Night starts out giving you the feeling of community that he came from then takes you on to the suffering that he and his family endured.  At times it became a very hard read for me as the unimaginable sadness and terror hit me right in the face. I gave myself a break at those times till I could calm down and pick it up again.  

I was so impressed with Elie and his loyalty to his family.  He was a strong, reliable young man and loved God. At times he dealt with questions about where God could be and why he lets things happen. We all would feel the same.

So sad so many turned the backs on what was happening in their backyard.  It wasn't happening to them so they just ignored it. I can see where history could repeat itself if we let it.  So  glad he told his story so that we should never forget.

This was one of the books I read for our Library's summer reading program.