Night - Elie Wiesel Book Review

• Paperback: 109 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books; WITH A NEW PREFACE BY ROBERT MCAFEE BROWN edition (March 1, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553272535
• ISBN-13: 978-0553272536
• Genre: Non-fiction
• Days spent reading: 2 days

This is not a book review. I’ve been wanting to do reviews of the books that I’ve read. But my incapacity to organize my thoughts and put them into words, set the limitations.

A friend of mine lend me this book, Night by Elie Wiesel. Night is the first book in a trilogy—Night, Dawn, and Day—reflecting Wiesel’s state of mind during and after the Holocaust. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, the Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a “messenger to mankind.” Elie Wiesel statement …"to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all…" stands as a blunt summary of his views on life and serves as the driving force of his work.

Many of us know about the appalling event in history known as Holocaust. When you hear or see this word, the only thing that comes to your mind is the tragic situation of six million Jews during World War II. Search the word “holocaust” in the web and you’ll find innumerable exposition about it.

Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. “Holocaust” is a word of Greek origin meaning “sacrifice by fire.”

I’ve heard about the persecution of the Jewish people in my younger years. Seen some movies about it, too.  Howbeit, I didn’t know that it is called holocaust, not until a friend of mine explained to me the real meaning of this dreaded word.  when I saw a documentary about Adolf Hitler’s regime, I was so much interested and have always wanted to know more about this dark period of history.  Thus, the start of my fascination in reading books or watching films that pertains to it. One of them is The Diary of Anne Frank of which I also wrote about here.

At the moment, I am reading another book of the same theme. Surviving Auschwitz* by Primo Levi. It tells of his remarkable and disheartening experience and survival in Auschwitz concentration camp of which he calls “hell.”
*Primo Levi, Survival In Auschwitz, trans. Stuart Woolf (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958).