Night

Author: Elie Wiesel
Translator: Marion Wiesel
Genre: Memoir
Originally Published: 1958
Book description (from Good Reads): Born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to Auschwitz concentration camp, and then to Buchenwald. Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

Thoughts:
Just like the author mentions at the end, it is difficult to put into words the atrocities that took place during that time period.
Interesting, I have not read all that many memoirs about the subject, just beginning really but initially it is mentioned how the people in is town after the first wave of Jews were deported one managed to find his way back and warn them. He told them what had really happened to the people who were deported yet no one believed him. The Jews were holding up hope that the situation would never be as bad, they did not want to accept the reality because it was too obscure to give it credit to.

I assume that was happening all over, those who heard about the fate of those unlucky people to be taken might not have fully believed them.

The retelling of what happened in the camps, the way they were treated, the way they were discarded as if their lives did not matter at all. It is a very powerful read.
At several points:
1. The fate of babies right when they arrive.
2. The punishment handed out to prisoners or those who tried to help them.
3. The way soldiers did not even treat them human, punishing them for being weak; killing them if not obeying.
4. Forcing them to see the chambers.
5. Leaving, LEAVING the infirmary!!!
6. Marching through the snow (running through miles and miles).
7. His father calling his name over and over and the soldier....
8. When freed he mentions that first they were blah blah and had no time for vengeance, then they focused on something else and again mentions they still had not thought for vengeance. After what they all had lived they did not feel the energy to invest it like that. Again this is personal maybe others wanted nothing but violence against their captors, each person can react differently.
Can't imagine what my reaction would have been.  
9. The guilt of remembering his father last moments That s one of the most heart-wrenching moments of them all. No one should feel guilty, no one in that situation!!


Argh actually there are too many times that I felt like it was too horrible.  
This book is very short really, but it is filled with powerful retelling. I think everyone should read these retelling of the people who actually lived through them, they're harsh, they're cruel, heart wrenching but should not be avoided. 

At some point, Elie mentions that he was unable or cautious to write the one first book because he was afraid that the rights words to describe everything that happened, he could not find, that the way he portrayed might not reflect in totality the way things were lived in the concentration camps.
I think everyone can understand that; if reading about it can have such huge effect in your mental stability (health depending on your initial situation) living through it, well that's unimaginable.

I'm not going to pretend to try to rate this objectively this is solely based on the emotiveness. This story transports you to certain parts of the life at camps, it is a roller coaster of emotions (most not pleasant) and it is gripping by the simple fact that is happened.

I picked this up in Scribd it was suggested after I read the Diary of a Young Girl and I was initially planning to read it until February, putting some distance between the one book and the next about the same subject but then I just picked it up. Do not regret it at all. 

Totally recommend it. It is