Night
By Elie Wiesel
Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Copyright date:
September 10, 2013 (originally published 1960)
Suggested Age Range:
Grade 8 and above
Wiesel’s memoir, Night, is the harrowing story of his internment in a World War II concentration camp with his father during 1944-45. However, more than that, it is the story of all the war took from him: his family, his faith, and his belief in his own humanity:
“Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith
forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me
for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and
my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to
live as long as God himself.
Never.” (Wiesel, 1960).
The book begins in the town of Sighet, Hungary in Transylvania where 15-year old Eliezer is studying the Talmud and deeply religious. He is studying the Kabbalah at night with Moishe the Beadle, a poor eccentric who lived in his village. Moishe the Beadle disappears when all Jewish foreigners are expelled and then returns telling of the atrocities that are happening. He tries to tell the villagers of Sighet that the soldiers had made them dig a grave and then shot the rest of the group one by one. He had managed to escape so he could warn them. However, everyone refuses to believe him, thinking him crazy.
Next, Wiesel describes the horrible journey to the concentration camp and the quick finality of him and his father being separated from his sisters and mother forever. They have arrived at Auschwitz. The book describes the suffering, starvation, beatings, the horrific selections that decided who lived and died, and the other atrocities that made up daily life in a concentration camp. Through it all, Eliezer and his father manage to stay together.
However, it is the end of the book that I find most heartbreaking. Eliezer’s father’s health is failing and from time to time, the son has brief thoughts of his chances of survival if he wasn’t also taking care of his father. While looking for his father, Eliezer has thoughts that will forever haunt his future self: “Yet at the same time a thought crept into my mind: If only I didn’t find him! If only I were relieved of this responsibility, I could use all my strength to fight for my own survival, to take care only of myself…Instantly, I felt ashamed, ashamed of myself forever” (Wiesel, 1960). Wiesel describes the inhumanity the starving and near death prisoners began to show each other. His grief and guilt at his errant thoughts breaks my heart.
Finally, the camp is liberated and the book ends as Eliezer contemplates himself in a hospital mirror: “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me” (Wiesel, 1960).
This first person accounting of the concentration camps in
Germany during World War II through the eyes of a 15-year old boy is
particularly suited to teenagers. Much
like The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank,
Night tells the story through the point of view of someone their age. They are forced to contemplate a world where
someone their age lived through these atrocities and it gives personal
significance to the experiences.
One website that would be especially important is the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum: http://auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/
This site offers virtual tours and is full of historical
information and photographs.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum also offers many
resources: https://www.ushmm.org/
This book would be particularly relevant in a historical
context when studying World War II.
An extension activity that would be relevant to today’s youth would be to read Night and have students relate it to more modern instances of genocide and human rights violations worldwide.
Works Cited
Wiesel, E. (1972). Night.
New York: Hill and Wang.
