ephant08's review against another edition
5.0
This book is one that touches you deep within the soul, one I will soon not forget.
thearbiter89's review against another edition
4.0
The natural follow-up to The Origins of Totalitarianism.
Night, by late Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, is a testament to the pervasive and all-encompassing evil of the Nazi machine, not just in the way it murdered untold millions with bone-chilling industrial efficiency, but also in how the totalitarian strictures and enforced privation of the concentration camps transformed the survivors of the purges, stripping them of their humanity and sentiment towards their fellow man.
It was also surprising for me (although it shouldn't have been) to learn that Night was a highly dramatised account of Wiesel's actual experiences in the concentration camps. I had expected it to be something more akin to a journal or recollection, but Wiesel, with the help of editors, transmogrified the unstructured nature of his actual experience into something approaching a literary work - replete with characters whose anguish and pain verge on the lyrical, where the scenery that cradles his prose are evoked with an almost painterly gravity. Semi-fictive though it may be, it still harbors Truth of the non-literal variety.
At its core, Night is not so much about the industrial slaughter of the Holocaust but a deeply personal work wherein Wiesel depicts the slow degradation of human feeling in the environment of the concentration camp, where every man is forced to care only for himself, where atrocity is so widespread it becomes a daily banality, its witnesses desensitised to the spectacle. The values of day inverted into the titular night.
After his family is separated at Auschwitz, Wiesel himself was sent to the factories at Buma with his father, who became increasingly unwell after the depredations of a death-march, one that Wiesel documents with ferocious feeling as one of the worst things a human could imagine undertaking. Wiesel documents, with savage self-introspection, the slow evolution of his character from loving son to resentful caregiver, culminating in a blindingly horrific scene where, lying quiet, he witnesses his father brutally beaten and left to die, listening as his father calls out his son's name with his last breath. Wiesel himself is unable to budge for fear of being beaten too, and for this he must live the horrific spectacle of seeing his father killed before his eyes, and to bear the immense burden of survivor's guilt that he must bear for allowing the seed of self-preserving sentiment to germinate in his heart. When Buchenwald is finally liberated by the Allies - a smidge too late for Wiesel's father - the catharsis is bitter.
With that simple narrative strand, Wiesel evokes the true horror of the system - one that turns people against each other, atomises them by their own volition before the iron hand of the totalitarian state. In this way, through the application of terror, dissent is quashed in its totality. Indeed, this is perhaps one of the answers to the question of why revolts in concentration camps were so rare, and why people could walk calmly to their deaths. It was a collective action problem of the worst kind.
What could such a set of experiences to do a man? In Wiesel's semi-fictional tome, he documents his utter loss of faith and the soul-crushing weight of his spiritual culpability. But he went on to become one of the most prominent figures to speak out for the amity of nations and the importance of peace. It is some consolation that even out of the utterest darkness the light of humanity may still faintly shine.
I give this: 4.5 out of 5 pairs of shoes
Night, by late Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, is a testament to the pervasive and all-encompassing evil of the Nazi machine, not just in the way it murdered untold millions with bone-chilling industrial efficiency, but also in how the totalitarian strictures and enforced privation of the concentration camps transformed the survivors of the purges, stripping them of their humanity and sentiment towards their fellow man.
It was also surprising for me (although it shouldn't have been) to learn that Night was a highly dramatised account of Wiesel's actual experiences in the concentration camps. I had expected it to be something more akin to a journal or recollection, but Wiesel, with the help of editors, transmogrified the unstructured nature of his actual experience into something approaching a literary work - replete with characters whose anguish and pain verge on the lyrical, where the scenery that cradles his prose are evoked with an almost painterly gravity. Semi-fictive though it may be, it still harbors Truth of the non-literal variety.
At its core, Night is not so much about the industrial slaughter of the Holocaust but a deeply personal work wherein Wiesel depicts the slow degradation of human feeling in the environment of the concentration camp, where every man is forced to care only for himself, where atrocity is so widespread it becomes a daily banality, its witnesses desensitised to the spectacle. The values of day inverted into the titular night.
After his family is separated at Auschwitz, Wiesel himself was sent to the factories at Buma with his father, who became increasingly unwell after the depredations of a death-march, one that Wiesel documents with ferocious feeling as one of the worst things a human could imagine undertaking. Wiesel documents, with savage self-introspection, the slow evolution of his character from loving son to resentful caregiver, culminating in a blindingly horrific scene where, lying quiet, he witnesses his father brutally beaten and left to die, listening as his father calls out his son's name with his last breath. Wiesel himself is unable to budge for fear of being beaten too, and for this he must live the horrific spectacle of seeing his father killed before his eyes, and to bear the immense burden of survivor's guilt that he must bear for allowing the seed of self-preserving sentiment to germinate in his heart. When Buchenwald is finally liberated by the Allies - a smidge too late for Wiesel's father - the catharsis is bitter.
With that simple narrative strand, Wiesel evokes the true horror of the system - one that turns people against each other, atomises them by their own volition before the iron hand of the totalitarian state. In this way, through the application of terror, dissent is quashed in its totality. Indeed, this is perhaps one of the answers to the question of why revolts in concentration camps were so rare, and why people could walk calmly to their deaths. It was a collective action problem of the worst kind.
What could such a set of experiences to do a man? In Wiesel's semi-fictional tome, he documents his utter loss of faith and the soul-crushing weight of his spiritual culpability. But he went on to become one of the most prominent figures to speak out for the amity of nations and the importance of peace. It is some consolation that even out of the utterest darkness the light of humanity may still faintly shine.
I give this: 4.5 out of 5 pairs of shoes
torydoughty's review against another edition
5.0
It's hard to review a book that is so hard to read through. Wiesel's experiences are heartbreaking - absolutely devastating - but raw, honest, and beautifully told. Because it was so heavy, this will definitely be my last Holocaust reading for the forseeable future, but I'm grateful to have read these words and I know they will stick with me for the long haul.
lemontarts's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
skylerrose16's review against another edition
5.0
*takes deep breath in and out*
This... I don’t even know what to write. This book was incredibly informative, shocking, and it made me so angry about our history with this. I can’t give a full review because this is a true story. This is somebody’s past. This was Wiesel’s experience. I don’t get to comment on it. I don’t get to say if I loved the story or not. I don’t get to say “it was good but this could’ve been written like this or this could’ve been like this.” I listened to this book.
I read it.
I loved it and the awareness it brings.
And that’s it.
This... I don’t even know what to write. This book was incredibly informative, shocking, and it made me so angry about our history with this. I can’t give a full review because this is a true story. This is somebody’s past. This was Wiesel’s experience. I don’t get to comment on it. I don’t get to say if I loved the story or not. I don’t get to say “it was good but this could’ve been written like this or this could’ve been like this.” I listened to this book.
I read it.
I loved it and the awareness it brings.
And that’s it.