“If in my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one" (vii). Thus begins Elie Wiesel’s preface to Night, the horrific tale of his journey to and interment in Nazi concentration camps. Wiesel’s book brings to life the senseless acts of terror that have since become known as the Jewish Holocaust. His use of imagery and vivid accounts of the smells, sounds, and sensations associated with his imprisonment draw the reader into the experience alongside Wiesel and his family.
Wiesel uses his narrative to express the story of all European Jews of the 1940s. Hate, torture, death, and, perhaps most devastatingly, denial became the norm for Jewish communities throughout the lands occupied by Nazi Germany. Wiesel uses the preface to the newest translation to articulate his objective for writing Night. He writes, “The witness has forced himself to testify. For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want his past to become their future.” In short, he writes lest we forget, and in forgetting allow these atrocities to happen again.
The darkness of the time, perhaps the darkest time in the modern era, became more than a theme for Wiesel. The title of the book itself suggests the gloom Wiesel felt. Night, for Wiesel, proves to be more than a comment on the despair of Jews imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. It also represents his life and the undying memory of the suffering he experienced. He writes, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed” (34). Wiesel endeavors to share this feeling, this hopelessness, with his readers in hopes that it will sear the images he reveals into their memory. His descriptions of the sights, sounds, smells, and physical pain endured by him and his comrades ensure that his readers will not forget.
Wiesel uses the absence or death of God as a consistent theme through the book also. This theme is played out in an exchange with an old rabbi. The rabbi tells the young Wiesel that the activities of the camp have caused him to question his own belief in God. In Wiesel’s position, I would respond to the rabbi in a few ways. First, I would tell him, “I believe God is with us. God is here suffering with us and mourning the dead with us. God has not abandoned us; just as God never abandoned the Israelites wondering in the desert or exiled in Babylon.”
Second, I would answer his question, “Where is the divine Mercy?” There is no mercy in the crematorium or the gallows or the factory. I do believe that God is merciful. I do not believe that people are innately merciful, especially the people running the camp. You can see God’s mercy in each little act of kindness. An extra ration offered to a sick inmate; a kind word from a friend; a gentle or forgiving kapo. Each, to me, is evidence of God’s mercy.
Finally I would address his question about believing in God. I would respond, “I hope you can believe in a God who does not cause or condone this place or these actions. I believe that in giving us free-will God ceded control of this world to God’s children. Unfortunately, as I said, they do not act with mercy as God does. If you cannot believe in God as described, I understand your reluctance to believe at all.”
I would not call Night an enjoyable book. The atrocities described by Wiesel should not be enjoyable. That being said, I would recommend that most everyone read this book. I would recommend Night because it is an important book. I recommend it, firstly, for the exact reason given by Wiesel as his motivation for writing the book. It serves as a stark reminder of that evil exists in this world, and it reminds us that ignoring or denying the existence of that evil will only allow it to flourish. I would also recommend the book as an example of people of faith struggling with important questions about the nature of God; questions of God’s love and mercy and power and presence. Night does not offer many answers to these questions, but through his book Wiesel tells his readers that the questions are valid. It is in the response to the book that the questions are answered.
Elie Wiesel’s Night brings the terrors of Birkenau and Auschwitz and Buchenwald to life even 75 years after the events of the book. Through his detailed descriptions Wiesel draws the reader into the ghetto, the train, the camps to live the horrors of his childhood. Because he brings us along on his journey the responsibility of remembering and making sure the story survives passes to us. In that passing, the past is kept alive and less apt to be forgotten. So we, the readers, are tasked with preventing this past from becoming the future.
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