Night is a book that won the Nobel Peace Prize that was published in 1956 by the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. A moving book that calls for the remembrance of mass tragedies, Night is a wholly worthwhile book to read, seeing how it describes Wiesel’s own experience at Auschwitz, arguably the most infamous Nazi concentration camp, as well as the fact that Wiesel calls for traits like sympathy and tolerance to be adopted, as the alternatives, intolerance and bigotry, as encapsulated in Hitler’s Germany, are truly horrifying and inhumane when put into practice.
Wiesel begins his book by writing that Night is his most important work. He states that humanity has frequently committed terrible atrocities against itself due to stupid reasons, and that he found it surprising how he survived Auschwitz as a teenager, as he wasn’t particularly strong or talented. Wiesel speaks of the dual nature of human potential and of the insanity of things like mass murder: “was there a way to describe the last journey in sealed cattle cars, the last voyage toward the unknown? Or the discovery of a demented and glacial universe where to be inhuman was human, where disciplined, educated men in uniform came to kill, and innocent children and weary old men came to die? Or the countless separations on a single fiery night, the tearing apart of entire families, entire communities? Or, incredibly, the vanishing of a beautiful, well-behaved little Jewish girl with golden hair and a sad smile, murdered with her mother the very night of their arrival? How was one to speak of them without trembling and a heart broken for all eternity? Deep down, the witness knew then, as he does now, that his testimony would not be received. After all, it deals with an event that sprang from the darkest zone of man. Only those who experienced Auschwitz know what it was. Others will never know. But would they at least understand?” Wiesel writes that Night was only published after being repeatedly rejected by numerous publishers. Wiesel discusses the last time he saw his father: his father was calling for him to offer him his support. However, in that terrible environment, not only did he refuse to, but he felt angry at how he was complaining, seeing how an SS was irritated at the noise he was producing and proceeded to beat him. Wiesel writes that his book has become very successful and is required reading in many areas, which is a notable improvement, as in the past talking about grim subject matters was highly discouraged by selfish and ignorant people (this is known as the ostrich effect—people deny unpleasant facts out of weakness). Wiesel then writes of the purpose of surviving: “For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” In other words, survivors try their best to educate the world on the dangers of things like prejudice, even if doing so makes them unhappy—“He does not want his past to become their future.”
Moishe the Beadle was a Jew who was a shtibl in his community: he had much general knowledge of Judaism. Moishe the Beadle relied on alms to pay for his expenses, and he was a likable person, seeing his friendliness. When Wiesel was young, he was deeply religious and focused heavily on Judaism. Wiesel had three siblings and his parents ran a shop. Wiesel, to learn Judaism, studied under Moishe the Beadle, who did a good job informing him of theology. However, the Nazis soon wrecked the life of Wiesel and those of many others in his hometown of Sighet. At first, foreign Jews were gathered by force and crammed into cattle cars. Moishe the Beadle was one of the people who were forced to leave. Months later, he showed up in Sighet once again, and it turned out he had survived mass murder: “The train with the deportees had crossed the Hungarian border and, once in Polish territory, had been taken over by the Gestapo. The train had stopped. The Jews were ordered to get off and onto waiting trucks. The trucks headed toward a forest. There everybody was ordered to get out. They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the Gestapo began theirs. Without passion or haste, they shot the prisoners, who were forced to approach the trench once by one and offer their necks. Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns. This took place in the Galician forest … Moishe the Beadle … was wounded in the leg and left for dead.” Moishe the Beadle went around town warning people of what the Nazis would do to them, but was ignored by the Jewish community (even by Wiesel, his student), as reality was too much to stomach for them. Moishe, heartbroken that no one was willing to heed his words, acknowledged that they thought he was insane. As WWII neared to an end, the Jewish community of Sighet believed they were safe, as Hitler had lost militarily. However, they underestimated his murderous resolve to commit genocide. In 1944, the Nazis arrived at Sighet. Surprisingly, Wiesel and the others still didn't try to escape, as they continued to delude themselves that the Nazis meant them no harm: “our first impressions of the Germans were rather reassuring. The officers were billeted in private homes, even in Jewish homes. Their attitude toward their hosts was distant but polite. They never demanded the impossible, made no offensive remarks, and sometimes even smiled at the lady of the house. A German officer lodged … across the street from us. We were told he was a charming man, calm, likable, and polite. Three days after he moved in, he bought Mrs. Khan a box of chocolates. The optimists were jubilant: ‘Well? What did we tell you? … Where is their famous cruelty?’” The Nazis rapidly crushed the Jewish community of Sighet by issuing edicts in close order that made it clear that they had fewer rights (they couldn’t own jewelry and were forced to wear the Star of David, for instance). The Jews of Sighet were then forced to move into the ghettos. After some time, they got used to living there. They were then ordered by the Gestapo to leave for Auschwitz, and were allowed to bring a few objects with them (that were then confiscated).
While Wiesel was in the cattle train with his family, he and the others suffered from a lack of space, air, and starvation. A woman in the cattle car, Mrs. Schächter, went insane due to the horrible conditions and her losing two of her three children and her husband in a previous transport. By the third night of their confinement, she alleged that she could see a fire (quite some ominous foreshadowing, seeing that the cremation of bodies and the smoke that arose from the chimneys supported her hysteria), although at that point in time there was none to see. When Wiesel and the others reached Auschwitz, they were relieved to be let out, as Wiesel noted that a few more days in the cattle car would have driven them all insane. Wiesel and the others were sent to Birkenau, a section of Auschwitz, and Wiesel was separated from his family at the selection, as the Nazis forced the men to go to the left and the women to the right. That was the last moment Wiesel saw his mother and younger sister, as they were gassed that very night. Wiesel stayed with his father, and they were told by an inmate to lie about their ages: Wiesel was to say that he was eighteen (he was fifteen at the time) and his father was to claim that he is forty (he was actually fifty). An inmate of Auschwitz tells all the new arrivals that they should have killed themselves rather than come there, as it is a living nightmare. He tells them that they will eventually be executed and turned into smolders. Some people, upon hearing this, are ready to put up a fight, only to be dissuaded by others who tell them to keep hoping for a good future (hope, as shown in many stories like Pandora’s Box, is in fact a great evil, as it prolongs the torments of people and prevents them from taking decisive action to better their situations—in retrospect, it would’ve been better for the prisoners to have rebelled, as most of them were killed anyway). The new arrivals were examined by the infamous Mengele himself, who is noted by Wiesel to be cruel yet intelligent (a truly dreadful combination). Mengele got Wiesel’s basic information and sent him and his father to the left. Wiesel was understandably nervous, as he didn't know which direction led to survival and which to death. He then saw people being burned alive: “A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes … children thrown into the flames … A little farther on, there was another, larger pit for adults.” It turned out that the line Wiesel found himself in was the one for the survivors. Wiesel felt huge rage towards the god he once praised, seeing how he allowed horrific atrocities to occur if he did exist, making him complicit in all the ills that occur under the sun: “Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” Wiesel recollects years later of his first experience of Auschwitz and the cruelty of humans: “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small forces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived for me all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” Wiesel notes that when he reached the barracks, he tried not to make himself seem especially strong, which turned out to his advantage, seeing that the physically fit were incorporated into the Sommer-Kommando, prisoners (who would in turn be executed themselves) who worked at the crematoria—“Bélla Katz, the son of an important merchant of my town, had arrived in Birkenau with the first transport, one week ahead of us. When he found out that we were there, he succeeded in slipping us a note. He told us that having been chosen because of his strength, he had been forced to place his own father’s body into the furnace.”
Wiesel’s body was shaved and he was forced to strip naked and to put on prison garb. He and the others were taken to the main section of Auschwitz, where a prisoner (the Blockälteste) informed them that they have already survived the selection, and that they can survive if they maintain their desire to live and evade despair. The prisoner informs the new arrivals that they should see themselves as family, as they are in a horrendous situation with each other. The prisoner continues his kind words by telling them that they are in Block 17 and that they can come talk to him if there are any problems. Wiesel and his father went to sleep on a bunk, and when they awoke they allowed their arms to be tattooed with a number. An obscure relative of Wiesel who had been sent to Auschwitz much prior (supposedly in 1942) asked him for the health of his wife and two children, and Wiesel lied to him, saying that they were okay (he didn't know where they were). The Blockälteste was quickly removed due to his being too kind to the prisoners, and in his place was appointed a brutal prisoner. Wiesel’s relative paid him visits and was very happy to believe that his wife and children were supposedly okay, as he stated that without them, he would lose his will to live. An arrival soon came from the area they lived in, and when he went to see them, he learned the truth and probably lost the will to live, causing him to give up and be executed (he wasn’t mentioned again in the book by Wiesel). Wiesel and his father were eventually taken to the concentration camp Buna to work. On the way there, the guards around them were paid attention by some young girls who flirted with them (despite knowing what they did to the prisoners): “On the way, we saw some young German girls. The guards began to tease them. The girls giggled. They allowed themselves to be kissed and tickled, bursting with laughter. They all were laughing, joking, and passing love notes to one another. At least, during all that time, we endured neither shouting nor blows.” At Buna, Wiesel and his father were lucky to be assigned under a good commando, as his job consisted of learning to march and of counting mechanical items (ex. bolts and bulbs). Wiesel recollects, “It was good to have a Jew as your leader. His name was Alphonse. A young man with a startlingly wizened face. He was totally devoted to defending ‘his’ block. Whenever he could, he would ‘organize’ a cauldron of soup for the young, for the weak, for all those who dreamed more of an extra portion of food than of liberty.” Wiesel also made friends with Yossi and Tibi, two brothers whose parents were exterminated in Birkenau. Their parents, like Wiesel’s, didn't escape when they still had the time, showing the true prevalence of the tendency to deny unfortunate facts and circumstances. Wiesel’s gold crown was almost removed by a doctor, seeing how the Nazis tried to fund their conquests by taking everything of value from their victims. The only reason he kept it was due to the doctor responsible for doing so being arrested and later executed for embezzlement (he used the gold teeth to make some money for himself). Wiesel worked next to a young French girl in the warehouse, and she proved her sympathetic side by offering him some bread and verbal comfort after he was ferociously beaten by Idek, a prisoner in a position of power. Years after that happened, Wiesel came across her in Paris, and when they spoke, she said that she did what she did due to knowing that he wouldn’t betray her. In another instance, Idek severely beat Wiesel’s father with an iron bar in a fit of rage. Wiesel, while watching, kept silent: “What’s more, if I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo but at my father. Why couldn’t he have avoided Idek’s wrath? That was what life in a concentration camp had made of me.” One day, Franek, the foreman, noticed Wiesel’s gold crown. He demanded it from him, but Wiesel refused. Franek got retaliation by physically abusing for weeks his father due to his being unable to march in unison. Unable to handle the pressure, Wiesel gave in, and Franek sneered and told him that because he made him wait, he also had to give him some bread. After acquiescing, “Franek became pleasant again. From time to time, he even gave me extra soup. But it didn't last long. Two weeks later, all the Poles were transferred to another camp. I had lost my crown for nothing.”
One day, Wiesel caught Idek copulating with a Polish girl. Unfortunately, he laughed when he found them together, and was subsequently caught by Idek. That evening, Idek had Wiesel whipped until he fell unconscious. Sometime later, Allied airplanes bombed the Buna factory to destroy the military capability of the Nazis. While this was happening, a prisoner tried to consume some soup, only to be shot for doing so. The raid lasted for more than an hour. Not long after, a prisoner, a person Wiesel’s age, was hanged for stealing materials during the raid (this could be a bogus allegation, seeing how the Nazi authorities wanted to terrorize the prisoners back into submission once again, seeing how watching the air raid made many prisoners hope for the future). After he was hanged, the Kapos (prisoners who have authority over most of the others) forced those present to look at the corpse of the boy. In another instance, a young boy who was physically attractive was hung. Wiesel describes, “I watched other hangings. I never saw a single victim weep. These withered bodies had long forgotten the bitter taste of tears. Except once. The Oberkapo of the Fifty-second Cable Kommanda was a Dutchman: a giant of a man, well over six feet. He had some seven hundred prisoners under his command, and they all loved him like a brother. Nobody had ever endured a blow or even an insult from him. In his ‘service’ was a young boy, a pipel … (In Buna, the pipel were hated; they often displayed greater cruelty than their elders. I once saw one of them, a boy of thirteen, beat his father for not making his bed properly … But the Dutchman’s little servant was beloved by all. His was the face of an angel in distress.) One day the power failed at the central plant in Buna, The Gestapo … concluded that it was sabotage. They found a trail. It led to the block of the Dutch Oberkapo. And after a search, they found a significant quantity of weapons. The Oberkapo was arrested on the spot. He was tortured for weeks on end, in vain. He gave no names. He was transferred to Auschwitz. And never heard from again. But his young pipel remained behind, in solitary confinement. He too was tortured, but he too remained silent. The SS then condemned him to death, him and two other inmates who had been found to possess arms.” When the three prisoners were put to death, the SS was more attentive than usual, seeing that executing a child in front of thousands was quite outrageous, even by their standards. While the two men died relatively quickly, the pipel took more than half an hour to perish, as he weighed little: “‘Where is merciful God, where is He?’ someone behind me was asking … And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’” Later, Wiesel continued this theme of the death of god and the utter apathy of the universe towards the well-being of sentient (not just human) life: “What are You, my God? … How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies?” When the Jewish year came to an end, those desperate for a meaning to continue their lives (which were unimaginably miserable then) praised the god they still believed in. Wiesel hauntingly and pointedly adds, “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 He kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death?” Wiesel states that Auschwitz has turned his spirit into ashes, into something completely unrecognizable from his former self: “My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy. I was nothing but ashes now, but I felt myself to be stronger than this Almighty to whom my life had been bound for so long. In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger.”
On New Year’s Eve, the SS allowed the prisoners to go to bed earlier as a “present.” A veteran of Buna who had survived much horror told Wiesel of the past: “‘Today, this is paradise compared to what the camp was two years ago. Back then, Buna was a veritable hell. No water, no blankets, less soup and bread. At night, we slept almost naked and the temperature was thirty below. We were collecting corpses by the hundreds every day. Work was very hard … The Kapos back then had orders to kill a certain number of prisoners every day. And every week, selection. A merciless selection … Yes, you are lucky.’” The person narrating this dreadful instance tells Wiesel that he was scared like Wiesel when he was first sentenced to the concentration camp. A selection soon occurred, and Mengele was the presiding judge (executioner) once again. Wiesel survived yet again, as he ran too quickly to be deemed physically unfit to live. Moreover, his friends Yossi and Tibi also survived, as well as his father. Wiesel notes that the drummer of his block, Akiba Drumer, lost the will to live and was consumed with terror, and was eventually put to death. Wiesel’s right foot suffered from inflammation due to his working in the cold and he was sent to the infirmary to recuperate. While he enjoyed his stay very much, seeing the lack of cruelty and deprivation, he was informed by a prisoner who was dying next to him that the Nazis will liquidate them due to their losing the war. Wiesel underwent a surgery by a kind doctor who was also a prisoner, and the operation was a success: the doctor informs him that after two weeks of recovery, he will be able to use his foot once again, as before it was cured of its ailment its sole contained much pus but nothing else that may warrant worry. The prisoner next to Wiesel told him, upon hearing a rumor that the Red Army (the Soviets) were coming to rescue them, that the rumor was just that—a rumor, as Hitler made it clear he would stop at nothing until he committed genocide. He tells Wiesel, “‘I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.’” Auschwitz was eventually evacuated as Allied forces neared it. Wiesel and his father decided not to remain at the infirmary, as they believed that the Nazis would slaughter all that remained. However, this proved to be the worse course of action: “After the war, I learned the fate of those who had remained at the infirmary. They were, quite simply, liberated by the Russians, two days after the evacuation.” When Wiesel left Auschwitz, his once-diseased foot began bleeding. Prisoners before leaving were given a double ration of bread and margarine and clothes from storage. Furthermore, before the camp was evacuated, it was given some cleaning to make it seem a habitable place to those that would enter. As Wiesel went on the forced march, he suffered from the harsh cold and darkness. The SS were ordered to shoot anyone who would go under the required speed, even if it is for only a moment. Wiesel then tells the story of Zalman, a young boy from Poland who worked with him in the electrical material depot: “People mocked him because he was forever praying or meditating on some Talmudic question. For him, it was an escape from reality, from feeling the blows … All of a sudden, he had terrible stomach cramps … he began to undo his buttons. ‘I can’t go on. My stomach is bursting …’ … He lowered his pants and fell to the ground … I don’t believe that he was finished off by an SS, for nobody had noticed. He must have died, trampled under the feet of the thousands of men who followed us.” Wiesel contemplated giving up and dying, seeing how death would involve the complete cessation of his pain, but refrained due to his father needing him. The prisoners eventually stopped at a shed, and Wiesel notes that many people died from exhaustion once they took time to rest (they died in their sleep, which was a very merciful and painless way to die compared to the other methods). Wiesel came across Rabbi Eliahu, a kind man who retained his innocence to some degree even in Auschwitz. He asked around if anyone had seen his son, and Wiesel told him that he hadn't. He then realizes that he did indeed see his son: he was running away from his father for the sake of survival. Elie prayed to a god he no longer believed in to help him refrain from resorting to Rabbi Eliahu’s son’s behavior.
The prisoners soon arrived at Gleiwitz, another concentration camp. Hastened into the barracks, Wiesel saw his father and reunited with Juliek, a boy from his barracks who played the violin. Juliek touchingly played a song by Beethoven on his violin before his death: “All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek’s soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again. I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men … When I awoke at daybreak, I saw Juliek facing me, hunched over, dead. Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.” Wiesel remained in Gleiwitz for three days. He, and the other prisoners, were completely deprived of food and water. When they were forced to leave, they went on a train and resorted to eating snow to quench their terrible, burning thirst. When the train momentarily stopped, the corpses were thrown out. Wiesel’s father was mistaken for a corpse, but Wiesel succeeded in waking him up. The train continued to move, and sometimes the German populace would watch them: “Occasionally, we would pass through German towns. Usually, very early in the morning, German laborers were going to work. They would stop and look at us without surprise. One day when we had come to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. The worker watched the spectacle with great interest.” Wiesel then demonstrates the unchanging baseness and cruelty of human nature: “Years later, I witnessed a similar spectacle in Aden. Our ship’s passengers amused themselves by throwing coins to the ‘natives,’ who dove to retrieve them. An elegant Parisian lady took great pleasure in this game. When I noticed two children desperately fighting in the water, one trying to strangle the other, I implored the lady: ‘Please, don’t throw any more coins!’ ‘Why not?’ said she. ‘I like to give charity …’”. As the train continued to move, more and more people tossed food to the prisoners to see them fight and kill for it for the sake of their sick amusement: “In the wagon where the bread had landed, a battle had ensued. Men were hurling themselves against each other, trampling, tearing at and mauling each other. Beasts of prey unleashed, animal hate in their eyes. An extraordinary vitality possessed them, sharpening their teeth and nails. A crowd of workmen and curious passersby had formed all along the train … Soon, pieces of bread were falling into the wagons from all sides … I saw, not far from me, an old man dragging himself on all fours. He had just detached himself from the struggling mob … he was hiding a piece of bread … He collapsed. But his fist was still clutching a small crust. But the other threw himself on him. The old man mumbled something, groaned, and died. Nobody cared. His son searched him, took the crust of bread, and began to devour it. He didn't get far. Two men had been watching him. They jumped him … When they withdrew, there were two dead bodies next to me, the father and the son. I was sixteen.”
Someone attempted to strangle Wiesel for no discernable reason, but was thrown off by Meir Katz, a friend of Wiesel’s father who was a gardener in Buna. As expected, he still had some strength, as his being a gardener provided him with more food than was typically given to an inmate. Meir Katz, for all his strength, lost his will to live due to everything he had gone through (he lost his son long ago in the first selection, but the impact of that event refrained from tormenting him until that point in time). Thus, he gave in to the elements and died on the train. The train eventually reached Buchenwald. Where a hundred people embarked on it, only twelve survived, including Wiesel and his father. Like before, the prisoners lived in cramped areas and were given little nourishment. Wiesel’s father’s health deteriorated and he suffered from dysentery. Even worse, the “doctors” present offered no medical advice and only desired for the prisoners to die. The other prisoners beat Wiesel’s father due to their being frustrated that he was defecating on the spot, as he had no strength left. The day after that incident, they robbed him of his bread while he was awake. An SS who was issuing orders became irritated by Wiesel’s father’s moaning, and dealt him a violent blow to the head to get him to stay silent. Weasel’s father perished in the evening of January 28, 1945: “I woke up at dawn on January 29. On my father’s cot there lay another sick person. They must have taken him away before daybreak and taken him to the crematorium. Perhaps he was still breathing … I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!” Weasel remained in Buchenwald until he was liberated on April 11. Before he was freed, he lost all drive to continue to survive, and only cared about eating. When the SS escaped and the Americans arrived, he and the survivors ferociously devoured the food they were provided with. Wiesel then became ill (it’s a common trend for those who are starving to overeat when given access to food, which weakens them greatly, sometimes to the point of death, due to how their bodies may have a huge amount of trouble managing all the nutrients, as they have become used to receiving close to none—indeed, Weasel noted that in Buchenwald he had not eaten for six consecutive days). Wiesel’s torment under the Nazis is concluded with the following words, “One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.” The book ends with Wiesel’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech in which he calls for those listening to be good people and to remember that at that point in time, more are oppressed than free. He makes it clear that until misery is entirely eradicated, people have no excuse to remain idle and apathetic, as people are directly counting on them. Wiesel maintains that he has hope for humankind, seeing how many individuals can learn from the experiences of others to the benefit of themselves and others.
Personal thoughts:
Night by Elie Wiesel is an extremely important and powerful memoir, as it clearly communicates Wiesel’s experience of genocide and the utter barbarity of what humans can inflict on each other. This clearly demonstrates the importance of not only technological innovation, but mutual kindness and cooperation, as a society that is militarily advanced but lacks a conscience will cause great suffering and harm to not only itself but the people around it. Wiesel’s experiences in this book are harrowing and nightmarish, but they should be read by every human being due to their implications. I appreciate how Wiesel was honest about his reservations involving god, seeing the horror that he witnessed firsthand. In my personal point of view, if the god of the Abrahamic dogmas does exist, he is to be loathed and despised, seeing all the horror he allowed to happen. If people defend their views with the concept of free will, they should think what kind of being their god is if he (assuming he is masculine for the sake of convenience) not only allows atrocities to occur, but is directly responsible for creating the torturers and executioners and the victims. I highly recommend Night to anyone interested in memoirs, the Holocaust, the depravities of which humans are capable of sinking into, and morally relevant and pressing books.
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