Die Nacht. Erinnerung und Zeugnis. (1955)

Description from back of book

Night - a terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family...the death of his innocence...and the death of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

My Comments

I'll say it right out. I don't like Holocaust books. Now it isn't that I don't think they're important, or anything like that. They just make me sick. They make me sick to my stomach and they make me ashamed to be human. I realize it is important to read and understand the horrors in our past, but this isn't something I like to do for fun. Once in a while, though, I think it's important to read one, so that's what I did. I also don't like reading books in translation. I always feel I'm missing the cadence of the original language, missing the beauty and poignancy that the original words brought to the text. But unfortunately it becomes a necessity since I don't speak anything other than English (fluently, anyway). These two reasons are why it gets four stars instead of five.

This book was powerful. It was sad, heartbreaking, and emotional despite (because of?) its Hemmingway-esque simplicity. The sadness, the bleakness, the utterly hopelessness conveyed in this book are utterly devastating, culminating in a young boy's complete loss of faith not only in humanity but in his God. A remarkable work, although very, very, very dark and depressing. But I guess that makes sense, as it's describing first hand one of the very very darkest points in human history. ( )

As more people that can recall WWII leave us, it becomes more important than ever to keep the memories of the Holocaust alive. In this book, Elie Wiesel delivers a testament to his experience, his loss of faith, his guilt. It documents the horrors of the concentration camps by one who experienced it first-hand. It is a seminal book about the Holocaust and the Jewish experience, in the same company as Ann Frank’s [b:The Diary of a Young Girl|48855|The Diary of a Young Girl|Anne Frank|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1518903435s/48855.jpg|3532896] and Victor Frankl’s [b:Man's Search for Meaning|4069|Man's Search for Meaning|Viktor E. Frankl|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1467136625s/4069.jpg|3389674]. Unfortunately, as documented in the Preface to the New Transaltion , it was significantly edited in order to get it published back in 1958, when people were “trying to move on” from this horrific period in history. I wish I could have read the original version before the editing. Highly recommended. Be prepared for gut-wrenching cruelty. ( )

This is a hard book to get through. I have stopped and started several times but I have finally finished. It is amazing how inhumane humans can be. The German efficiency of a cruel death is mind boggling.

Mr Wiesel was a teenager when he was sent to Auschwitz. He survived and later won the nobel peace prize. He writes in the forward that he wrote the book because someone had to. He was a witness to the horrors of the massacre of Jews, and anyone else that the Germans felt were less than and he had to give testimony to the evil.

Never forget so it never happens again. ( )

This book was so powerfully moving, I will not read it again. But you should. ( )

The audiobook version of this book was excellent. George Guidall has narrated many audiobooks, and has always been good, but I thought this was one of the best. He seemed to have a very authentic accent, but was totally understandable. By the way, his real surname is Shapiro, but his stage name is a permutation of Gedalyah, his Hebrew name.

For much of this book, I felt detached, not really a part of what was happening. It didn't seem real, and although it was educational, I'd read and heard enough to know about most of it, since I'm Jewish and my father fought in WWII. But after finishing the book, I realized that I was suffering from the same problem as the victims in the book - I didn't think it was possible for many of these things to happen in the 20th century "civilized" world. But, after finishing, and listening to some added content - Elie Wiesel's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, his essay about the book, and another essay by François Mauriac, it began to sink in that this really did happen in the not-too-distant past. And what really sunk in was the part about the not-too-distant past being not too distant; in other words, it could happen again. We think that it was something that happened long ago and we're too civilized now, but after reading the book, I realize that's exactly what they thought. They refused to believe it even when it was happening, after being warned by an eyewitness and then having terrible things happen to them personally.

Early on, Hitler went after party members that questioned him, or even that might question him. Now, we have a president that is doing the same things, firing any of his staff or party members that might not be for him 100%. So far, I don't think he has killed any, but who knows what will happen once he gets rid of his opposition. He's already shown his disdain for consequences. We really need to see how civilized people can be duped into allowing this to happen before it gets to the point where people are afraid to speak out. Right now, the remains of the Republican party seem to have reached this point, where they must worship at the altar of Trump. Let us hope that's as far as it goes.

Another thing that this books does is help explain is why Israel fights so hard to keep control of the country. How can we blame a people who went through this kind of experience for wanting to live in a country that will never persecute them for being Jewish? I feel I can at least understand why they over-react to attacks even while wishing they wouldn't. But I can understand irrationality after living through the things that happened in this book.

There are many people who believe Israel is as bad as Hitler, even going so far as to deny the holocaust or belittle its seriousness, but I think these people are either delusional or very gullible. I'm pretty sure the Jews in Europe back then were not throwing bombs, rocks, etc at the Nazis, and trying to drive them out of Germany. ( )