Mass Market Paperback, 109 pages
English language
Published Aug. 8, 1986 by Bantam Books.
"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. --back cover
removed the review because I more or less violated HIPAA with the previous one (help). Great book, very well written, will haunt you for months.
One of those must-read books that serves, in my case, as a reminder more than anything else. It is, as the copy I have quotes from the New York Times review of it, "A slim volume of terrifying power."
At different times Night will mean different things. To me, at this time, it read as a call for vigilance.
And then, one day all foreign Jews were expelled from Sighet. And Moishe the Beadle was a foreigner. Crammed into cattle cars by the Hungarian police, they cried silently. Standing on the station platform, we too were crying. The train disappeared over the horizon; all that was left was thick, dirty smoke.
Behind me, someone said, sighing, "What do you expect? That's war .."
The deportees were quickly forgotten. A few days after they left, it was rumored that they were in Galacia, working, and even that they were content with …
One of those must-read books that serves, in my case, as a reminder more than anything else. It is, as the copy I have quotes from the New York Times review of it, "A slim volume of terrifying power."
At different times Night will mean different things. To me, at this time, it read as a call for vigilance.
And then, one day all foreign Jews were expelled from Sighet. And Moishe the Beadle was a foreigner. Crammed into cattle cars by the Hungarian police, they cried silently. Standing on the station platform, we too were crying. The train disappeared over the horizon; all that was left was thick, dirty smoke.
Behind me, someone said, sighing, "What do you expect? That's war .."
The deportees were quickly forgotten. A few days after they left, it was rumored that they were in Galacia, working, and even that they were content with their fate.
Days went by. Then weeks and months. Life was normal again. A calm, reassuring wind blew through our homes. The shopkeepers were doing good business, the students lived among their books, and the children played in the streets.
I remember in grade 12 of high school we had the choice of what book to read for our final essay. Night was one of those options, and our teacher recommended it on account of it being really short. Naturally, most of the class decided short was good, while I went for Great Expectations, which was decidedly not. Something that was glossed over at the time was that this was an autobiographical account of the holocaust by Nobel Peace Prize winner. Maybe my superiority complex would have calmed down a bit if that had been the description rather than "it's short."
Regardless, I missed the chance for this to be my first holocaust biography and ended up reading Maus and By Chance Alone last year, both of which were phenomenal and eye-opening. Everyone with a pair of brain cells to rub together can recognize how horrifying the holocaust was, …
A near constant kick in the gut. Wiesel's plain and clear descriptions lay what happened to him - and millions of others - bare and gives no place for the reader to hide. After the first few minutes of the book and going on straight through to the last word, my throat was tight with emotion.
A book every American should have to read.
I remember reading this book in school. It is fitting for it to be on the list of most depressing books ever, but I'm glad I read it.
glad i got to this classic. Wiesel writes with great description and feeling. His age of only 13 makes the story that much more powerful. The role of father and son are reversed as his youth becomes more useful in the concentration camps than the wisdom of old age.
