Night

Elie Wiesel

September 12, 2017

Night, written by Elie Wiesel is an incredibly powerful and emotional book about the holocaust. The book takes us, through Wiesel’s eyes, on a journey from his devoutly religious childhood in an Orthodox Jewish community of Sighet, Transylvania in 1940's Europe, through the horrors of Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945. The story jumps back and forth between the time of deportation and post-war recovery of Wiesel’s physical and psychological trauma.The story begins with Wiesel and his family being crowded into cattle cars and taken to Auschwitz, destroying his once sheltered childhood, and his family is soon ripped apart. Once at the camp, Wiesel and his father might never have reunified if not for the special bond Wiesel shared with his father. As their journey continues, and their faith is tested for the ultimate test, one wonder’s if redemption through survival is possible. Night is a devastatingly honest, powerful and chilling testimonial that shoulders the human atrocities of World War 2. It’s a story of impossible choices, of terrifying events and unfathomable suffering that challenges the reader to comprehend out of its layers of horror, the very beauty of survival and hope. Its pages are stained with sorrow and yet they exude a sense of hope - the hope that even in the darkest night, one can still find sparks of light and find meaning, purpose and hope in the face of adversity. Elie Wiesel wrote Night, a masterpiece of modern literature as both an account of his own experience and a testament of how life can retain its grace and beauty even under the worst of conditions.