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Night (The Night Trilogy #1)

by Elie Wiesel, Marion Wiesel (Translator)

4.29 · Rating Details · 699,962 Ratings · 21,830 Reviews

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 ...more

Paperback, First Printing Edition, 120 pages

Published January 16th 2006 by Hill and Wang (first published 1958)

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Night: A Memoir
by Elie Wiesel, Marion Wiesel (Translation), Barack Obama (Contributor)

Release date: Sep 12, 2017

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Jan 05, 2017 Sasha Alsberg rated it it was amazing

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

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Jul 29, 2008 Kim rated it really liked it

Shelves: cultured, for-realz, warfare, mmix, rubbernecking, and-i-feel-fine

There is little that freaks me out more than the Holocaust. And I'm not belittling it at all with the phrase 'freaks me out.' Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I felt sufficiently desensitized enough by television violence to be able to gauge how often I need to shake the jiffy pop and run to the bathroom before the program/violence resumes.

Elie Wiesel's Night brings me back to my senses, makes me hate the cold hearted bitch I've learned to be. And not by some overtly dramatic rendition of the ho ...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Navessa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, what-teens-should-be-reading, history, all-the-feels, holocaust, broke-me

The author, who is actually in the above picture, said it best in the forward; “Only those who experienced Auschwitz know what it was.” I think we can all agree with that. But can we, the reader, even understand what happened there? Can modern men and women comprehend that cursed universe?

I’m not entirely sure.

I first read this in my eighth grade History class. I was 13. It changed my life. Before this book my world was sunshine and rainbows. My biggest concern was whether or not a boy named Ja ...more

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Mar 18, 2010 Stephen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, easton-press, audiobook, history, classics-americas, world-war-the-sequel, literature, non-fiction, 1954-1969, life-changers

This book is a hard, righteous slap in the conscience to everyone of good will in the world and should stand as a stark reminder of both: (1) the almost unimaginable brutality that we, as a species, are capable of; and (2) that when it comes to preventing or stopping similar kinds of atrocities or punishing those that seek to perpetrate such crimes, WE ARE OUR BROTHERS' KEEPERS and must take responsibility for what occurs "on our watch."

This remarkable story is the powerful and deeply moving acc ...more

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Sep 30, 2016 Brina rated it it was amazing

Shelves: memoirs, holocaust, rereads

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, and, as a result, my classmates and I were the torchbearers to tell people to never forget and were inundated with quality Holocaust literature. Yet even though middle school students can comprehend Night, the subject matter at times is still way over their heads. The book itself although a prize 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, and, as a result, my classmates and I were the torchbearers to tell people to never forget and were inundated with quality Holocaust literature. Yet even though middle school students can comprehend Night, the subject matter at times is still way over their 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 for my adult life. Upon hearing that Nobel Laureate Eli Wiesel passed away recently I thought now was as good of 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 in regards to taking care of his father while in Buna and Birkenau camps. It was not easy to digest.

Wiesel also writes in 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 are 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. ...more

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Jan 16, 2017 Chris Horsefield rated it it was amazing

Upon completion of this book, my mind is as numb as if I had experienced this suffering myself. So much pain and suffering are thrown at you from the pages that one cannot comprehend it all in the right perspective. One can only move forward as the victims in this book did. Step by step, page by page. Initially, numbness is the only way to deal with such anguish.
Otherwise one becomes quickly overwhelmed by the images that evoke questions that cannot be answered. And yet, I read this book from t Upon completion of this book, my mind is as numb as if I had experienced this suffering myself. So much pain and suffering are thrown at you from the pages that one cannot comprehend it all in the right perspective. One can only move forward as the victims in this book did. Step by step, page by page. Initially, numbness is the only way to deal with such anguish.
Otherwise one becomes quickly overwhelmed by the images that evoke questions that cannot be answered. And yet, I read this book from the comfort of a warm home and a full stomach. Imagine the impact if it were otherwise. Imagine being forced from your home to live in barracks, living off soup and bread, forced to go outside in the winter without a jacket, and perform manual labor from dawn to dusk with the smell of a crematorium in your backyard.
How many of us could endure this for just one day, let alone, for years? What would this do to us physically and more important, what would this do to us mentally? Yet, we witness in this book the miracle of the prisoner's survival. The strength and raw endurance of the human spirit. We must be reminded of this this glorious strength, but also reminded that it was the weakness of the human spirit that inflicted these crimes on others.
Humanity has the capability of extreme strength, but also of extreme weakness (which often hides under the guise of self-righteousness and need for power over others). This book is necessary in order to remind us of this. These things must not be forgotten. Read this book even if you think you have read enough of the Holocaust and of pain and suffering. Every book that I have read about the Holocaust offers something new including this one. Read it as a memorial and a tribute. Read it as a reminder of how fortunate we are to have a free society and how we must preserve this freedom at all costs. There are those who would like to take it away. Fascism is alive and well.
I started reading Holocaust novels after reading Edelweiss Pirates ‘Operation Einstein'. (Edelweiss Pirates #1) [bookcover:(Edelweiss Pirates #1) ‘Operation Einstein'

(Edelweiss Pirates #2) The Edelweiss Express by Mark A. Cooper

they are must reads in this genre are of course Number the Stars

Number the stars.
I enjoyed that authors other works. That novel was 'The Book' that turned me onto YA WW2 novels. They allow us to reflect on our own lives, learn history and become better people. ...more

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Dec 21, 2016 Stephanie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: finished-2016, classic, non-fiction

I am at a loss for words - just moved beyond belief. I decided to re-read this book in 2016 - the year that Elie Wiesel passed away.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 where the Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a "messenger to mankind," stating that through his struggle to come to terms with "his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler's death camps", as well as his "practical work in the cause of peace", Wiesel had delive ...more

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Apr 21, 2016 Candi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics-shelf, non-fiction, favorites, book-i-own, biography-autobiography, ww-2

"I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy."

These words and this book just tore at my heart. I have seen Night, have heard of Night for many years now. I waited to read it, unsure what I could possibly gain from reading another account of the evil existing among our fellow human beings – I will become enraged and depressed. I can’t change history. I will be forced to examine my own faith and I ...more

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Mar 26, 2008 Martine rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, historical-fiction, continental-european, memoirs, war

This book has garnered so many five-star reviews and deals with such important subject matter that it almost feels like an act of heresy to give it a mere four stars. Yet that is exactly what I'm going to do, for while Night is a chilling account of the Holocaust and the dehumanisation and brutalisation of the human spirit under extreme circumstances, the fact remains that I've read better ones. Better written ones, and more insightful ones, too.

Night is Elie Wiesel's somewhat fictionalised acco This book has garnered so many five-star reviews and deals with such important subject matter that it almost feels like an act of heresy to give it a mere four stars. Yet that is exactly what I'm going to do, for while Night is a chilling account of the Holocaust and the dehumanisation and brutalisation of the human spirit under extreme circumstances, the fact remains that I've read better ones. Better written ones, and more insightful ones, too.

Night is Elie Wiesel's somewhat fictionalised account of the year he spent at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. It's a chilling story about his experiences in and between concentration camps, his gradual loss of faith (he was a very observant Jew who obviously wondered where God was while his people were being exterminated), and his feelings of guilt when he realised that his struggle for survival was making him insensitive towards his dying father. It's gruesome, chilling material, and I felt very quiet after having read it. Yet I also felt vaguely unsatisfied with the book. I wanted more detail. I wanted fleshed-out writing rather than a succession of meaningful one-line paragraphs. I wanted less heavy-handed symbolism (the book very much centres on troubled father-and-son relationships, to echo the one central Father-and-Son one) and more actual feeling. I wanted a writer (and a translator) who knew better than to call an SS officer 'an SS'. And most of all, I wanted a less abrupt ending. I wanted to ask Wiesel what happened in the immediate aftermath of the liberation of Buchenwald. I wanted to ask him what happened to his leg, on which he marched for several gruesome days just days after having undergone an operation, and how he picked up the pieces afterwards, and why on earth his two eldest sisters, who died in Auschwitz as well as his mother and younger sister, never warranted more than a single mention. The latter was an example of seriously shoddy writing, I thought.

Perhaps my questions were answered in the original version of Night, which never got published. In his introduction to the new English translation of Night, Wiesel mentions that the book as it is today is a severely abridged version of a much longer Yiddish original called And the World Remained Silent. I think I can see why the original wasn't published (quite apart from the fact that the world wasn't ready yet for concentration camp literature, the few quotes provided in the introduction make for heavy reading). The abridged version definitely seems more readable than the full-length one, and does an admirable job getting the facts across. Even so, I think the publishers might have gone a step too far in abridging the book to the extent that they did. No doubt the very brevity of Night is one of the reasons why it's so popular today, but personally, I would have liked to see a middle road between the original (detailed) manuscript and the incredibly spare barebones version sold now. Don't get me wrong, the abridged version is effective, but as far as I'm concerned, it's the Holocaust for people with short attention spans. I prefer Primo Levi and Ella Lingens-Reiner's more complete accounts of life in the camps myself, not to mention several Dutch books which sadly never got translated into other languages.

But still. Night is an important book, and one that deserves to be widely read. In fact, one that should be widely read, by people of all ages and nationalities, to prevent nightmare like this ever happening again. ...more

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Dec 17, 2007 Kat rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: anyone with a soul

Shelves: eyeopening

I teach this book yearly, but my students seemed distant from the true reality of the story. When I use the Holocaust Museum's interactive of Lola Rein's dress, it hits them. Real people, real history. The immediacy of the tragedy that was Wiesel's then comes to life in a way that a junior or senior can grasp. I also tell the story of my friend, Ida, and her "no grandparents". That is the hardest part for me as it is so personal. She was the daughter of survivors - she had no grandparents and I ...more

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Jan 03, 2017 Lindsay rated it it was amazing

5 stars......I am at a loss for words.......upon finishing this memoir, I am so full of intense emotion yet I feel empty at the same time......

This is a DEEPLY moving and powerful book about the author's experience in concentration camps and the atrocities that happened during the Holocaust. Words cannot describe how I truly feel about what I read on these pages. It is impossible for us, as readers, to truly fathom this piece of history, unless we lived it. I hope everyone takes the time to read ...more

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Apr 13, 2016 Councillor rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed, classics, rated-5-stars, ebook, nonfiction, war, read-2016, first-person-narrator, those-books-anyone-should-read-once, personal-must-read-list, heart-breaking, read-in-one-sitting, biography-memoir, 1950s

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. ...more

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Jan 16, 2014 Erika rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-read-in-2016

I’ve been meaning to read Night for years and finally picked it up shortly after hearing about Eli Wiesel’s death. Night is not a book that I can review. It defies critique, and even analyzing it from my sunny porch with a cup of coffee, feels wrong. Yet it’s the reasons that Night belongs outside of criticism that make it so important.

There is the Holocaust and then there is the world’s relationship with the Holocaust. By the end of the 60s that relationship encompassed adult children of survi I’ve been meaning to read Night for years and finally picked it up shortly after hearing about Eli Wiesel’s death. Night is not a book that I can review. It defies critique, and even analyzing it from my sunny porch with a cup of coffee, feels wrong. Yet it’s the reasons that Night belongs outside of criticism that make it so important.

There is the Holocaust and then there is the world’s relationship with the Holocaust. By the end of the 60s that relationship encompassed adult children of survivors, scholars, deniers, apologists, voyeurs, and people who hold their ears the moment the subject comes up.

Night was written before any of that. It isn’t influenced by other Holocaust literature; instead it is a foundational text, unvarnished source material describing one of most terrible things our species ever did. For that reason, I believe it should be required reading for everyone.

Night is short and the writing is simple. It feels stark, honest, and hallowed in the way of powerful memorials. In the preface of my edition, Wiesel writes:

“There are those who tell me that I survived in order to write this text. I am not convinced. I don’t how I survived; I was weak, rather shy; I did nothing to save myself. A miracle? Certainly not. If heaven could or would perform a miracle for me, why not for others more deserving than myself? It was nothing more than chance. However, having survived, I needed to give some meaning to my survival. …I knew that I must bear witness.

Wiesel was a brilliant light in the darkness he depicts so powerfully. His obit in the New York Times, puts it well, “There may have been better chroniclers who evoked the hellish minutiae of the German death machine. There were arguably more illuminating philosophers. But no single figure was able to combine Mr. Wiesel’s moral urgency with his magnetism, which emanated from his deeply lined face and eyes as unrelievable melancholy.”

When I started this review I was going to post a famous photo of him as part of a group of emaciated prisoners on the day that Buchenwald was liberated. But after reading that beautiful quote, I would rather close with this photo of the day he won the Nobel Peace Prize, which illustrates the knowledge he gave the world rather than the darkness he endured.

Wiesel

...more

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Jun 06, 2011 Kristen rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: 5-star

A poignant and unforgettable 5 star read.

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

It's been years since I've read this book, but as my son needed to read it for school, I decided to read it with him. I'm glad I did.

Night, which is one man's tragic yet remarkable survival of the Holocaust, is a powerful, shocking, heartbreaking, poignant, yet triumph-of-the-soul biography. This book speaks to humanity about the atrocities man is capable of committing. It ...more

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Sep 09, 2014 Kelli rated it it was amazing

Shelves: not-fiction

This is not a review. I am not worthy to review this book. This is my third time reading Night, having read it as a requirement in both high school and college. I picked it up at the library because it was upright on a shelf and I noticed it had a new preface by the author. I have read that preface four times so far. The PREFACE is that important, that thought-provoking. I am speechless. I am awestruck by the tremendous person that Elie Wiesel is. The story is a heartbreaking, terrifying account ...more

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Jan 24, 2017 Vanessa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: on-my-bookshelf, favourites

Wow this book..can't express the feelings during my reading of this, so enthralling, captivating but oh the horrors! Unimaginable horrors. Tore my heart out into a million pieces. I regret not having read this earlier, this is a true account of Elie Wiesel as a young Jewish boy who has no foreseeable knowledge and understanding of what was around the corner when his family are forced to flee from their home in Romania, and the unknown horrors that awaited them. Even though I've read and have stu ...more

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Oct 12, 2016 Steven Godin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, other-european, historical, war-conflict

From the first few sentences, to the final closings words, I did not move. Elie Wiesel had my complete attention, and total respect, for the immense courage it must have taken to relive the horrors he went through in writing this book. Harrowing and chilling but told with great compassion, his struggle for survival during the holocaust is almost too unbearable to contemplate. But this has to be read, and everyone should do so, it makes all the mundane things in life seem far more important. Afte ...more

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Jan 12, 2008 Sean Gray rated it it was ok

Recommends it for: eh

Recommended to Sean by: the michigan state board of education

Night, was possibly one of the worst books I've ever read. I was suprised when I logged on to find, Five star reviews of this book. Yeah, so it was written by a holocaust survivor. It doesn't make it well written. From a literary standpoing, purely. It was terrible. As Ms. Hawley would say, It lacked sentence variation. Maybe it was better when it was written in German? Maybe he should have let a "professional" writer, write it for him. I'm not bashing him, or his writing. Kind of. His writing n ...more

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Aug 02, 2009 K.D. Absolutely rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: Oprah Book of the Month

Shelves: memoirs, holocaust, saddest

If Anne Frank was 13 when Germans came to Netherlands, Elie Wiessel was 15 when the same thing happened in Romania. Two teenage children who saw the atrocities of the German armies who were blinded by their loyalty to Hitler. There were a few differences: Anne Frank died in the concentration camp while Elie Wiessel survived. Anne Frank's diary, first published as The Diary of a Young Girl in 1950, was written in young girl's language while she was on a hiding while Night by Elie Wiesel tells the If Anne Frank was 13 when Germans came to Netherlands, Elie Wiessel was 15 when the same thing happened in Romania. Two teenage children who saw the atrocities of the German armies who were blinded by their loyalty to Hitler. There were a few differences: Anne Frank died in the concentration camp while Elie Wiessel survived. Anne Frank's diary, first published as The Diary of a Young Girl in 1950, was written in young girl's language while she was on a hiding while Night by Elie Wiesel tells the experience of a 15-y/o boy inside the concentration camps told later in the language of a 30-y/o man. Of course, I am not expecting Wiesel to do ala Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes, winning the Pulitzer and later be hounded by controversy that what he told in the story were exaggerated if not untrue. Reading Night was still a haunting and extremely sad experience for me just like any other holocaust novels that I've read so far. I just thought that it would have been more gripping if Wiesel put more meat in his descriptions of the locales in the same manner as what Imre Kertezs (another Holocaust survivor) did in his Fatelessness and of course, Thomas Kennealy (he is a writer only) in Schindler's List. They are just too many books on Holocaust now and these are just the 4 among the more "famous" ones but my heart still cries buckets of tears while reading them.

Critiquing a well-loved book like this is like blasphemy. I just feel like I am doing the 6 million Jews who perished in that horrendous shameless genocide an injustice if I say something about any literature depicting what they went through.

What they went through has marked a permanent etch in our collective psyche. Their stories need to be told to and read by all the future generations. I hope that this generation and all the next ones will remember the Holocaust and learn the lesson from it. Saying these things is almost like a cliche since it is just stating the obvious from a well-known fact.

This sounds like a beauty-pageant-kind-of-question but if I were given a chance to talk to one famous living person, I would choose Elie Wiesel. I will ask him what exactly he was thinking in that scene when the young boy with angel's sad face was hanged. He was looking at the boy, who because he weighted light (being a boy), did not die right away but hanged there still breathing for few hours. Somebody at the back said: "Where is God? Where is God now?" The 15-y/o Wiesel said: "Where is He? Here He is - He is hanging here on this gallows." I know that he lost faith in God, but later in the scene when there was another "selection" he cried out to God again. I would like to know how he was able to switch back his faith despite what he was experiencing in the camp. What is it that make us believers cling on to God despite being all the hopelessness and desperation that we all go through at times?

Elie Wiesel is in the second row from the bottom. 7th guy from the left

Oh, I have other questions but I hate long reviews. Primo Levi is next. ...more

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Mar 03, 2014 Tom Mathews rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Anyone and everyone.

Shelves: history-historical, non-fiction, world-war-2, europe, read-before-2010, read-in-2016

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, "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. 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, "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 drop 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." As some people drink to forget, I read to remember.

Eliezer Wiesel's memoir sits with Anne Frank's diary at the top of the list of must-read books about the holocaust. While Frank puts a human face on those who died, Wiesel, as one who witnessed and endured the horrors of the holocaust takes the stand and testifies with heartbreaking eloquence of all that he saw and suffered.

Much of Wiesel’s eloquence is in its brevity. In little more than 100 pages he dishes up one of the most powerful indictments of Hitler’s Final Solution ever written.

“Men to the left! Women to the right!”
Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words.
Yet that was the moment I left my mother.

Wow. In 28 words he consigns over half his family to the crematorium. No emotion. No blubber. Yet nothing he could have said could have made the reader feel more keenly the horror of the event.

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.

Those were my thoughts when I heard the sound of a violin. A violin in a dark barrack where the dead were piled on top of the living?

It had to be Juliek.

He was playing a fragment of a Beethoven concerto. Never before had I heard such a beautiful sound. In such silence.

I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men.

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.
...more

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Dec 15, 2011 Lyn rated it it was amazing

Terrifying.

I have read two books that described a nightmare, painted a picture of hell. The second was Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy and first is Night.

I still think of this book sometimes and shudder and I realize that evil is never too far buried in us. The scene where the line of doomed prisoners splits in two with Mengela conducting, a perverse parody of the last judgment seems ripped from Dante.

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Feb 17, 2017 Katie rated it it was amazing

Difficult to review. Night is a brutal first-hand account of life in Auschwitz. We’re all very familiar with the visuals of the journey in the cattle truck, the arrival in Auschwitz, the squalor and deprivations of life in the barracks, the selections. Wiesel tells us with simple but supremely eloquent prose what effect these daily horrors had on the human soul. Tells us, in effect, how low we can go, how even a son can kill his own father for a morsel of bread if subjected to inhumane treatment ...more

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Nov 15, 2010 Elyse rated it it was amazing

I read this book once before
but read it again yesterday---with the new preface by his wife Marion Wiesel.

I did not plan on reading the whole thing--I just wanted to read the new Preface---but then while sitting around (with sick people in the house)--I just dived into the horror again.....(with expanded thoughts than in years pass).

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Jul 20, 2007 Daniel rated it it was amazing

I had put off reading this story for a variety of reasons, main among them that I knew what I would be facing, and was eager to find an excuse not to. After having been to the Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany, the images of the now-dead ovens still linger somewhere in the recesses of my mind, and to back to it, to read from someone who went through it, was not something I readily wanted to do. But I did; I gathered myself up and read through in a couple of days, the end of the book taking me ...more

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Dec 13, 2016 Sidharth Vardhan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: europe, nobel, bestest, non-fiction, bio-memoir, war-genocide

"Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness, the immense, terri- fying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind?"

The second Holocaust account I read this year is from an author who was a teenager when he was in camp, and who then turned first journalist and then writer. The other was 'Fateless' by another Nobel laureate Imre Kertész.

The less you know about before starting the boo ...more

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Jul 29, 2011 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: truthiness, literature

I had trouble discerning whether this book was actually incredibly well written, or just horrifyingly honest enough to shock you into awe. What I have pulled from it is less the prose, and more the images burned in my brain from the chilling facts that they express. Having read The Lost, I was at least somewhat prepared for the places Wiesel was to take me, and the terror contained within this short volume is actually minor compared to the extensive atrocities researched and transcribed by Mende I had trouble discerning whether this book was actually incredibly well written, or just horrifyingly honest enough to shock you into awe. What I have pulled from it is less the prose, and more the images burned in my brain from the chilling facts that they express. Having read The Lost, I was at least somewhat prepared for the places Wiesel was to take me, and the terror contained within this short volume is actually minor compared to the extensive atrocities researched and transcribed by Mendelsohn in his much larger, multiple-family account which includes photographs to get you really invested, scans of documents to validate his every statement, and transcripts of interviews with dozens of survivors to carve out a sense of emotional authenticity. At the same time, Mendelsohn did not actually go through the suffering inflicted upon the Jewish people during the Holocaust, and so with his voice comes this mildly disingenuous edge. Wiesel, on the other hand, has an authority which provides such weight to his writing that I would argue that Night, though compact and limited in scope compared to other books about Nazi cruelty toward the Jewish people of Europe, is probably the better of all the books I have read on the subject. Rather than just state the facts, Wiesel lets you in on how it really felt. He fesses up to the places that hunger and anguish can take you, to the way you can start to feel animosity toward even your own father, simply for continuing to live (and perhaps dragging you down in the process). To feeling so overwhelmed by the fear of death that you are actually emotionally void as you watch someone hanged in front of you, as at least it is one less mouth to feed, at least its not you, at least... He walks you through the guilt that inevitably follows such thoughts, and the constant meditation and self-analysis necessary to maintain your humanity in such inconceivably bleak circumstances. Attempting to imagine Wiesel finding the inner strength to voice these memories is explanation enough for what at times felt like terse phrasing. Forget harsh, I would probably be a robot if I survived something like this. I would talk. about. it. like this. If. at all. After a ten year wait, Wiesel finally decided to exorcise his demons with a scream. Well, the ones that were at all willing to leave. Read it in one sitting. I'm going to go off and figure out how to separate paragraphs now.

*To be fair, I think I may have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about Mendelsohn for that article he wrote trashing Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds. His book really is solid and engaging. I just like this one (and Quentin Tarantino) better. I mean no harm. ...more

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May 12, 2016 Duane rated it really liked it

Shelves: rated-books, reviewed-books, non-fiction, memoir, 2016-book-challenge

In 1944, at the age of fifteen, Elie Wiesel, his parents and three sisters, were transported from Sighet to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Upon arriving they were ordered, "men to the left, women to the right". Elie would never see his mother and younger sister Sarah again. What followed was two years of living hell, two years of "night".

What it was like in a concentration camp, what it was like for Elie and his father, can not be put into words that would be adequate to describe t ...more

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Jul 11, 2016 Diane Barnes rated it it was amazing

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.

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Dec 30, 2015 Mario rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

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 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.

I picked up this book from the library just because it was short, and I wanted a short and easy read. I've never heard of it before, so I had no idea what I ...more

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Jul 31, 2015 Jonathan Ashleigh rated it liked it

I can't bring myself to write a review of this book. It did keep my attention and made me feel numb at times, but the things that are missing I wont describe.

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About Elie Wiesel

Eliezer Wiesel was a Romania-born American novelist, political activist, and Holocaust survivor of Hungarian Jewish descent. He was the author of over 40 books, the best known of which is Night, a memoir that describes his experiences during the Holocaust and his imprisonment in several concentration camps.

Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a ...more

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Other Books in the Series

The Night Trilogy (3 books)

Books by Elie Wiesel

The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, the Accident

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“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.” — 2009 likes

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” — 858 likes

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