Night by Elie Wiesel


Night… will be the most intense books you will ever read. It is an autobiography about Eliezer Wiesel, a Jewish teenager who lived through the Holocaust; one of the most dreadful time in history. As a thirteen year old, Eliezer had a good life and was very religious. He was a very respectful child. He listened to his elders and thought before speaking. Then Eliezer, his family, and every other Jew were taken to a concentration camp in Auschwitz.


Elie Wiesel was very brave to write about his childhood in that much detail. He said, in the preface of the book, “If in my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one.” He goes on later explaining why this one book (of many) would be it. He wrote his experience in the Holocaust in such detail that it felt like I was right there next to him during his pain, his torture, and his sadness. He explains that when his family was divided into men and women that without knowing it, that would be the last time he saw his mother and sisters. Later he explains his pain of running for two days straight with an open blister on his foot. During that time, Eliezer was fed a roll of bread, and a portion of soup. And that is what they traded for shoes, clothes, beds, and sometimes, work.


This book changed my mind about the Holocaust. I used to think that the Holocaust was a place where the Nazis just made the Jewish people work and then killed them. No; this was a place where the Nazis made the Jews suffer. Do work that couldn’t be done, just to make them pay for their failure. This was a place that the Nazis murdered Jews with no humanity. Eliezer wrote that when they first walked into the camp, it smelled like burning flesh, then he heard the screaming and then he saw the crematorium, the furnace, the pit of dead bodies on fire.


Elie Wiesel did an amazing job writing Night. He really explained his time in that camp with such detail, that I knew his pain. I knew his sadness. It felt like I was him. There were a couple things that I think could have had improvement. For instance; the dramatic parts, he didn’t write them very dramatic. When you read this book, you will not put it down for days. You will want to read more after every sentence. Night is an amazing book but an awful experience at the same time. The New York Times wrote, “A slim volume of terrifying power.” I would recommend Night to teens and adults, because of its power and Elie Wiesel’s way of explaining his time.