Night
by Elie Wiesel
“We can never be gods, after all--but we can become something less
than human with frightening ease.” This quotation from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, written by N.K. Jemisin, perpetually
emerges in the mind throughout my reading of the book Night. Written by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel,Night is a moving and deeply poignant
account of his survival in the Nazi death camps.Wiesel’s memoir brought to me a
deeper understanding of Hitler’s great evil. This great evil lies not only in
his monstrosity of the near annihilation of a people but also in his oppression
to such a great extent as to render the Jewish people to an appalling
realization: that there lies in the human capacity for such terrible madness.
The book does not
shed hope nor give comfort. Though the Holocaust is a familiar historical
tragedy, reading Night one seems to
lose one’s innocence about the Holocaust all over again. Striving for survival
in the death camp with his father, Wiesel begins to realize the thin line
between survival and morality. In this desolate and glacial world that Wiesel
illustrates, sons turn against fathers, innocent children are hanged and thrown
into blazing fire, and everything pales against gnawing hunger. When
dehumanized and treated like cattle, the Jewish people began to lose hope,
religion and ultimately their humanity. Savageness and apathy steals the
prisoners’ minds, evident in an instance when a son brutally beats his father
for a piece of bread. I felt particular emotional intensity when the author
rages against the injustice of his God, a desperate cry against something he
once so deeply believed in. I found myself wishing I had the power to save,
that this was story and not history.
For Wiesel, days
in the concentration camp was like one long endless night stretched into
eternity. Again and again impending death washes over him; in his mind he has
died a thousand times. Towards the end, the author tells of the liberation of
the camp in one plain sentence. A line that liberated me from the terror of the
night yet holds no such power for the author. For in that instance did
salvation matter? Did it matter when he had lost his family, his religion, his
innocence and soul? The detached, single-sentence of the camp’s liberation is
the author’s answer.
Wiesel’sunflinching
narration is a display of great courage and integrity. Before reviewing this
book, I questioned my capability and right to comment. Can one really comment
on such atrocious events?No words seemed adequate, before such horrors words
became an insufficient tool. Therein lies my respect for Wiesel, who had the
capacity to relive the events by setting his story to paper. He strives to take
on the responsibility of bearing witness for the dead, by making a testimony
and trusting in the power of words. His unapologetic narrative reminds me of
the harsh truth of reality, and gives an explicit account of what is actually
possible. Moreover, he admitted his cowardice, selfishness and waver in his
religion when God did not save. Never does he shrink from his guilt; he did not
choose the easy road of oblivion.
Night, a fitting title for
the memoir of one who had gone into that never-ending night—and miraculously
reached the dawn. A disturbing yet compelling book that contains a universal
lesson. That is to never remain silent, for silence in the face of injustice is
complicity with the oppressor. Silence
never helps the victim, only the victimizer, which is why we must stand up to
the persecutor. The silence of German society during the reign of the Nazi
party brought wrath upon the Jews. Further silence today will cause history to
slip further away and the events harder to comprehend. We can never be gods,
immortal and omnipotent, but so easily can we turn from the oppressed to the
oppressor.Mankind inflicts upon itself unspeakable barbarity, and the Holocaust
will forever be a dark time for human history. Is serves as a warning and a
precedent for us all. So rather than hideaway and forget we must try to
remember and preserve. From Wiesel’s account I realized why the Holocaust
continues to haunt the human conscience and bear meaning even generations past.
His account shows humanity’s possibility of madness and reminds us that it is a
human consequence for which we must all carry.
