Night, the first of three books in the series, authored by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, offers a haunting firsthand account of the man-made nightmare that was the Holocaust.
The story centers on the narrator Eliezer, a Jewish teenager who lives in Sighet, a town in Hungarian Transylvania. He is an avid reader, believer, and learner of the Torah, which is the first five books of the Old Testament, and the Kabbalah, which is a doctrine of Jewish mysticism.
At the beginning of the story, World War 2 had been going on for years at this point, and concentration camps had been up and running for almost a decade. But Eliezer wasn’t concerned with either one of those things. They were so far off, and anyway, no one believed Hitler still had the might he had to make it so far as Hungry to continue rounding up Jews, that is until his Kabbalah teacher was deported by the Nazis.
His teacher, Moishe the Beadle, was a poor and awkward person that had no home, and mainly kept to himself, but kept to himself and never bothered or imposed on anyone in the town. So, when he was deported, no one made a big fuss. After all, he was a foreigner. The Nazis were just deporting foreign Jews.
Months went by. Things were back to “normal” in Sighet. Nothing more was mentioned about the deportees. After all, “What do you expect? That’s war…”
One day Eliezer was making his way to the entrance of the synagogue when he saw his old teacher, Moishe the Beadle, sitting on a bench near the entrance. His teacher told him of his journey, his dark journey. He told him how the Nazis took him and the other foreign Jews were handed over to the Gestapo once in Poland. He told him how the secret police made them dig a big trench, and that once they finished their work the Gestapo began shooting the workers and pushing them in the trench. He told them how they would use babies as one does a skeet for target practice. He told him the horrors and his drive to make it back to Sighet to warn the others of the approaching hell.
No one listens. The Nazis come to Sighet wearing a kind mask. Just as the Jews of Sighet let their guard down, the Nazis rounded them up and forced them into the ghettos. Just when the Sighet Jews adjust to their “new normal” they are forced onto train cattle cars. Trains that led to the camps. That led to Birkenau, the gateway to Auschwitz, to hell itself.
“Men to the left! Women to the right!” Eight words, eight emotionless words, that forever separated Eliezer’s family.
The rest of the story continues to follow Eliezer and his father, as they try to survive the horror trials of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
This book is a haunting reminder of the cruelty of man. It shows the terrible limits of man’s inhumanity.
Be forewarned that this book is by no means for the faint of heart. This is a book that one reads and reflects upon to gain a deeper understanding of his own savage nature.
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