Night by Elie Weisel Elie

Night by Elie Weisel

Elie Weisel's "Night" is the story of a young Jewish boy caught up in the Holocaust during World War II in Europe. He spent time in the concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and was only 16 when the Americans liberated the camps in 1945. He lost his entire family to the camps, and the book is the story of his life during that time. His credentials to write this story are impeccable, since he survived the experience and decided to share the horror of his experience with others, so they would know first hand just what the Nazis did during the Holocaust. The book was first published in 1955, ten years after the war ended.

Another theme of the book is Weisel's loss of his faith in God after he and his family were shipped off to the camps. Before his ordeal, he had a strong faith in God, but he lost it after seeing the inhumanity and suffering around him. He writes, "I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone - terribly alone in a world without God and without man" (Weisel 65). He continues this theme throughout the book, and actually ends it with the sentence, "From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me" (Weisel 109). It is quite clear this theme holds true throughout his life, and he makes his arguments forcefully and with great emotion. This is a man who has lived through Hell and now must keep those memories inside his mind for the rest of his life, and these are terrible images to bear.

For example, on his first night in the camp, he smells the definite scent of burning flesh. He starts to see people disappear, never to return, and he begins to question his life, his faith, and the motives of others. He writes, "Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky" (Weisel 32). He discovered he was there only to work, because he was strong and young, and he learned to face death in the face every day. It is a terrible lesson for a young boy to learn, and saddest thing is, he will have to live with those lessons the rest of his life.

The story does not depend on sources, other than the author's own experiences, which is all in needs to be powerful and arresting. It is a true story because the author says it is, but it is clear that the author experienced these things, no one could possibly make up the horrors that he lived with every day. For example, he writes of a young boy hanged for collaborating against the Nazis. He recounts, "For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face" (Weisel 62).

The only flaw with this book is the graphic accounts of thee way Nazis treated their prisoners. They were cruel, inhumane, and disgusting, and it is difficult to read about all the different things the Jews had to live through, or suffer through before they died. There are so many abuses; it is difficult to believe that anyone managed to survive the brutal conditions in the camps. The Jews had literally nothing to eat but scraps of bread, the Nazis often punished the entire camp for the slightest mistake. For example, he remembers the Nazis forcing them to stand still while they were naked in the snow, and he recounts a Nazi guard's rape of a Polish girl. He writes with vast emotion about the cruelties piled on the survivors, and the book is difficult to read because of these images. In another example, he states, "How long had we been standing like this in the icy wind? An hour? Simply an hour? Sixty minutes? Surely it was a dream" (Weisel 47). Sadly, the book is full of these images and it is difficult to read because of it.

The book could not be called "enjoyable," it was too dramatic and sad for that. However, it was fascinating, and even though it ended on a hopeless note, it was a book of hope because the author survived, and is still alive. He managed to beat the odds, and more importantly, he shared his story with the world. It is a terrible story, but he needed to tell it. Some people still do not believe the Holocaust existed, and reading this book it is hard to see how they could doubt it. A child lived through these horrible experiences, and just the telling of them is horrific, it must have been even worse to be there. To see the images this young boy saw, and not believe them is just too much.