Night

I was looking for a new book to read and saw Night by Elie Wiesel at the library. I had been wanting to read this book again (I'd read it originally in high school) after I heard Elie Wiesel passed away in July. Night is the true story of Elie Wiesel's experiences as a Jewish teenager during the Holocaust and his time in two different concentration camps.

This book was a hard read, as most Holocaust books are. It is so terrible to read Elie's accounts of the things he went through and the way he was treated. Elie said in the preface, "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." I'm really glad he told his story so that it cannot be forgotten. When I finished this book, though, it kind of left a bad taste in my mouth because it had such a different feel from books like The Hiding Place and Unbroken--instead of finding God amidst terrible suffering, Elie lost his faith. He described a time when thousands of men in the concentration camp were participating in a solemn service and praying, "Blessed be God's name." And Elie questioned, "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 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 ended up in furnaces?" Anyway, it goes on. And I don't blame him because I totally see where he's coming from. It was just a negative feel that doesn't align with how I see God even when terrible things happen in our lives and in the world. But, anyway, I do really respect Elie Wiesel--he ended up being a contributor to getting the Holocaust museum in DC built, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize. I read his speech online, and one part stuck out to me as applying well to the current events regarding refugees: "And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe."

Rating: * * (2/3 = Liked it)