Elie Wiesel

Night: A Memoir

An autobiographical narrative in which the author describes his experiences in Nazi concentration camps, watching family and friends die, and how they led him to believe that God is dead.

With Related Readings

Night

Lauren Lipford

In one terrifying moment of lucidity, I thought of us as damned souls wandering through the void, souls condemned to wander through space until the end of time, seeking redemption, seeking oblivion, without any hope of finding either. 

The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion. 

“Man asks and God replied. But we don’t understand His replies. We cannot understand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die. The real answers, Eliezer, you will find only within yourself.” 

For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time. 

Books no longer have the power they once did. Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow. 

Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched as language became an obstacle. It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language. But how was one to rehabilitate and transform words betrayed and perverted by the enemy? 

I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer — or my life, period — would not have become what it is: that of a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.

Marion Wiesel

Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor's perspective, Night is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust. A compelling consideration of the darkest side of human nature and the enduring power of hope, it remains one of the most important works of the twentieth century. New translation by Marion Wiesel, with a new introduction by Elie Wiesel.

Brandon Liew

Emma Caughel

Books no longer have the power they once did.b Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorro

emphasize how strongly I fel that books, just like people, havea destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.

Julia Rivera

Jennifer Palmer

pamela enojas

this book numbed me to my senses. in every page turned, all i could hope was that he and his father will survive and to have another piece of bread.

The narration is innocent and simple, so much that i wondered why it got the award it did. Also, the situation spiraled to such inexplicable horror so quickly that i couldn't immediately grasp the reality of it. But surely none of them could too. It was wartime, it rained bad news, no one's ready for anything. By the time i got my sense working, it's just terror after terror. The book was written much later after he was released but perhaps the narration is simple because that was how the author experienced the whole thing as a 14 years old, and gdi if that ain't hurt even more now. I thought my heart hardened because i sacrifice animals a lot for occupational duty, but the book's still so emotionally difficult to read i need to put it down every so often.

 Tbh, what can i say? As a 21st century 26 years old living an extremely different life, i feel like i'm unqualified to say anything about something so colossal without reducing it to something else, to something less. I just decided that i won't steer away from war theme like i've always been from now on. The war threatens the small hope i have for human's supposedly virtuous nature, it's frightening, it raises dissonance. But what happened happened and we need to learn about it. We need to see the worst we can be to put boundaries and control ourselves accordingly. Screw my views on human nature, gotta see the facts, and retune it at all times anw.

Bethany s. 

Such a heartbreaking, stark look into the Holocaust and the will to survive. One of the first books I remember reading about trauma and injustice in the world. I don't know if they teach the Holocaust in school anymore - but this is a formative story that helped shape my empathy. My understanding that the world is bigger than myself. My humanity. 

Read it if you haven't. 

And make your kids read it, too.

Hunty

A gripping narrative of the author’s experience in the Holocaust. Relatively short but packs an emotional punch - Wiesel’s prose is devastatingly beautiful and paints a picture of the absolute devastation the worst of humanity can wreak.

Jaden Nelson

GREAT book. The actual events of the story hit you hard, but the WRITING was what really brought it through. Elie had to re account (safe to say) the most painful experience of his life, and he did it wonderfully. It is an novel of pain, dying faith, loyalty, family, and brutality, yet it is written so beautifully that you hardly realize you are reading about one of the worst things to occur in human history. I read this book about a month ago, so I don't remember everything I wanted to say on it, but it was an amazing read (also quarter 4 novel english 9), I'm glad I read it, and I think I will be reading it again.

Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor's perspective, Night is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust. A compelling consideration of the darkest side of human nature and the enduring power of hope, it remains one of the most important works of the twentieth century.

Wynter

2017: This is my fourth reading Night, and it won't be my last. A work of great importance, it must be read repeatedly to remind ourselves of grave mistakes of our past, to honour the victims, and to prevent such atrocities from happening ever again.

Midori Kobayashi

5/5stars


In the beginning there was faith - which is childish; trust - which is vain; and illusion - which is dangerous.


No words can ever do justice to this book, to come even close to explaining what reading this years and years after the publication did to me, so I cannot even begin to comprehend what it was like back then, what it was like for those who experienced it first hand. “Only those who experienced Auschwitz know what it was.” indeed. 



Blessed be God's name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because he kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end up in the furnaces? Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?



I have not read many books surrounding the holocaust but let's just say the way this small merely 100 page book made me feel so many things, I CRIED MY EYES OUT. It's gut-wrenching it's heart-breaking but it is the truth and people need to stop trying to erase this out of the history. 



To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.



People need to stop being silent. As Elie Wiesel himself mentioned in his Nobel Price Acceptance Speech, "Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."



Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.




  Obvious CWs for the book: Holocaust, Concentration Camps(vv graphic) please look into those before going into this one!

Gia Williams

Definitely read if you're interested in learning more about the holocaust.

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 on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.

Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.
source: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781466805361

Aaliyah Jenkins

So very sad. All the more so because it's true.

Mohammed Moussa

A very dark and grim book, which follows the suffering of 15 years old boy being held in Nazi Germany concentration camps. The cruelty and excessive abuse which the jews had to suffer is presented in very realistic and gloomy fashion, the author will make you try to gasp for air just like the protagonist. Its dark and hunting and will make you feel sympathetic.

Stefanie  Uwah

How do you even rate a book like this? This is a very important book. Don't know why it took so long for me to read.

Kirsten Simkiss

It’s been a long time since I last read Night. Originally part of my 11th grade curriculum, where we covered WWI and WWII literature, I seem to remember this directly followed us reading All Quiet on the Western Front. This book’s contents are a powerful reminder of what happened in the past, why hatred must never be allowed to govern, else we turn into monstrosities capable of doing the horrible thing listed in the accounts of survivors like Elie Wiesel.

This book was deserving of it’s Nobel prize. It’s simply written, so much so that it becomes more accessible to younger generations as they grow - as mine was. Most people my age have never and will never meet a survivor of the Holocaust. This is how we must learn the crimes committed against these people, this darkness of human nature. Accounts like these are how we must learn not to become the people who commit these unforgivable atrocities.

Rereading this as an adult, I now see how simple the writing is. While it makes it more approachable as a young adult, I feel now that the author could have pushed that line a little more, make the reader feel more what he did while there. The writing style left me feeling detatched from the events, as an observer, and I wish that it would have made me feel more uncomfortable. Wiesel’s account is powerful and horrifying, and I think it could have pushed the reader’s comfort level even more than it did.

I would recommend this book to others. While not challenging in terms of the ability to read, obviously the content is more challenging emotionally. Like most accounts of the Holocaust, this is not a book for the faint of heart.

linda

alex wolfinger 

can't believe I'm only two generations away from experiencing this. absolutely haunting.

mevi

This is a biography of Elie Wiesel and his experience during the Holocaust. From being segregated from his community, being transported to several death camps, losing his loved ones, and to finally being freed. This is a necessary read for anyone to know how easy lives can be extinguished due to the heartlessness of others. That "human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere."

I was in a bookstore in Seattle, and my fiance highly recommended this book because he read it in high school. That was two years ago. I picked this up because it looked like a short read to pass the time, but never did I think I would be crying so quickly. When learning about the Holocaust in school, teachers glaze over the suffering that people went through, only showing the shoes they left behind. If you haven't read this, you need to. It won a Nobel Peace Prize for a reason.

Campbell Berry

This book was breathtaking. It tugged at my heart strings and no person should ever have to live through that.

Celeste Richardson

I can’t review this book. I last read Night in 2012, and it remains just as brutal and devastating as I remembered. I reread it in observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, designated January 27th. This is a first-hand account of life in a Nazi concentration camp through the eyes of a Jew. Wiesel’s bitterness and brutal honesty about his experience, even regarding his own decisions and regrets while suffering things that I cannot even fathom, is powerful beyond words. The version I read was translated from French into English by his wife, Marion Wiesel, which I felt added something that I can’t even put into words. While he underwent unspeakably heinous treatment at the tender age of fifteen, the fact that he lived to pen this memoir, and to marry his wife, brings a little bit of hope to the bleakness. But Wiesel was the exception to the rule; far more people died in these concentration camps than ever escaped, which is well conveyed in this book. May we never forget.

Victoria P

such a devastating story, it made my heart hurt while i was reading it and when i finished

Just to preface I am a person who likes to read, learn, and research different things about the Holocaust. I am a person who doesn’t read the forward or any other author notes before the first chapter, but with this book it gave me such  good information that was useful in reading this book. Now time for summary of my thoughts - Overall, I genuinely enjoyed this read. From the beginning it talked about life was before getting everything taken and how slowly some things happened but other happened faster. Toward the middle of the book, came the more heavy details about the torture endured during concentrations camps, and the journeys they had to go on to go from camp to camp. Finally the end of the book got sad, I don’t want to give any spoilers so I won’t say what happens, but I’d have a tissue box on hand. Truly I am happy that I read this novel, which gave me a perspective on what men went through in camps. This book is definitely not for young kids, and some teenagers who cannot handle reading deep texts. I am also reading the audacity right which is another holocaust book and will be writing a review every soon! 

Piper Summer

Heartbreaking account of the horrors of the holocaust- a story such as this one can only be written by a survivor of these tragedies, a story with this amount of pain behind the words can never be replicated by someone who wasn't there. It's an important story for everyone to read, to show what humans and hate are truly capable of.

Omar AlHashmi

No matter what your politics, religion, world views, or whatever. I think we can all sympathize with what happened in 1944. Just reading the book left me lingering with images of the situations. I can't imagine how a survivor would deal with those events drilled into their minds

J’Naia Stepp

This was a really good book. I read it for my summer reading class right before my senior year and I enjoyed seeing the perspective of someone who was actually there as opposed to history books. Obviously, the things that happened were awful and I hope something like them never happen again, but when told the way that it is in this book, I think we should all get the chance to read it.

Night: A Memoir

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