This isn't really a review because I don't think books like these can be judged on basis of writing skill or story-telling, not that this book suffers in those respects at all. What matters here is the story, the terrible horrible history of one of the darkest times in human history. A history that must never be forgotten. Elie Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor and he fills the terrible role of a witness. This book is very short at only 170 pages or so yet it's very heavy and having just finished it there feels like there's a weight in my heart. The writing was very simple, straight-forward, and unsentimental which I felt highlighted the inhumanity of what was being experienced. I don't have much else to say other than- Read it!
A few quotes:
"But we were pulling into a station. Someone near a window read to us: 'Auschwitz.' Nobody had ever heard that name."
" I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people."
"Listen to me, kid. Don't forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every man for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even your father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone."
Night is the hesitantly told story of Elie Wiesel and his family and their experiences in the German concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Wiesel suffered his teenage years as a prisoner in both prison camps and vowed never to speak of his experiences there. In Wiesel's own words, "To be silent is impossible, to speak forbidden."
ReplyDeleteBecause of his lost spiritualism and faith in mankind he kept his word for ten years but was persuaded by French novelist Francois Mauriac to complete it for the world. Night exposes Wiesel's struggles during and after the Holocaust and it is brilliantly written and emotionally charged. This true documentary will upset your sensibilities but the spirit of the man who endured it will most certainly lift yours.