book review night elie wiesel

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Common Sense Media Review

Unforgettable memoir of teen who survived the Holocaust.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that the late Elie Wiesel's Night is one of the most widely read and accaimed Holocaust memoirs. Wiesel was 15 when he, his three sisters, and his parents were sent to Auschwitz. In spare prose, Wiesel recounts the unimaginable horrors of life in Auschwitz and Buchenwald and the loss…

Why Age 13+?

The violence is terrifying, random, and sadistic. Wiesel witnesses guards throwi

Any Positive Content?

Night is one of the few books that recounts the experiences of teens during the

Strong message about the power of memory and human resilience. Because of books

Wiesel and his father cared for and supported each other through the most unimag

Violence & Scariness

The violence is terrifying, random, and sadistic. Wiesel witnesses guards throwing children into a fire and a young boy being hung. People are shot and beaten to death for no reason. A son kills his father for a piece of bread. Wiesel is lashed 25 times by a guard. The fires burn day and night at the ovens.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Educational Value

Night is one of the few books that recounts the experiences of teens during the Holocaust. Wiesel's memoir offers a detailed and harrowing account of day to day life in Auschwitz and Buchenwald -- the starvation rations prisoners were fed, the freezing barracks in which they slept, the days spent as slave laborers, and the constant brutality of the guards and even fellow prisoners.

Positive Messages

Strong message about the power of memory and human resilience. Because of books like Night, the story of the Holocaust will never be forgotten.

Positive Role Models

Wiesel and his father cared for and supported each other through the most unimaginable circumstances.

Parents need to know that the late Elie Wiesel's Night is one of the most widely read and accaimed Holocaust memoirs. Wiesel was 15 when he, his three sisters, and his parents were sent to Auschwitz. In spare prose, Wiesel recounts the unimaginable horrors of life in Auschwitz and Buchenwald and the loss of his deeply held religious faith. "Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.” While Night is assigned reading in middle and high schools around the world, parents should be aware that the violence and brutality in the book are shocking and often unceasing. For speaking out against injustice, violence, and repression, Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

Where to Read

Parent and kid reviews.

• Parents say (9)
• Kids say (36)

Based on 9 parent reviews

Parents should read this with their children: violence, sexual references, and heavy topics

Not for kids. more disturbing, detailed, graphically violent that other holocaust stories. sexual abuse of minors, nudity, sexual references. you will likely lose innocence and sleep., what's the story.

As NIGHT begins, Wiesel is living with his family in Sighet, a town which was then part of Hungary. Deeply religious, he spends his mornings studying the Talmud and his evenings in the local synagogue. For most of Sighet, the war seems far away and there is confidence that the Russian Army will arrive before the town falls to the Nazis. But in the spring of 1944, the Germans arrive and the entire Jewish population is soon loaded onto the cattle cars that will transport them to Nazi death camps. After they arrive at Auschwitz, Wiesel and his father are separated from his mother and sisters but manage to remain together during the nightmare months that follow. As the Russians approach Auschwitz, the prisoners are forced on a deadly march through winter snows before being taken by train to Buchenwald. It is there that Wiesel's father dies, in circumstances that will forever haunt him.

Is It Any Good?

Harrowing, heartbreaking, and brutal, this unforgettable memoir of a teenage survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald is essential reading for anyone studying the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel tells his story in a voice that is quiet and spare. Only the most essential words are needed to describe the horrors he witnessed. Wiesel has stated that Night begins where Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl ends. For teens whose knowledge of the Holocaust goes no further than the young Dutch girl who wrote, "In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart," Night may be hard to process emotionally. For all readers, it could help begin difficult discussions about the nature of good and evil in the world.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk how books like Night help us to better understand history. What can you learn about this period in history from a personal memoir that you can't learn from a textbook?

Have you watched any movies or TV shows about the Holocaust? How accurately do you think they portrayed what is was like to be a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp?

Author Elie Wiesel and his family had a chance to escape before being transported to Auschwitz. Why do you think they decided against it? What would you and your family have done?

Book Details

• Author : Elie Wiesel
• Genre : Autobiography
• Topics : Great Boy Role Models , History
• Book type : Non-Fiction
• Publisher : Hill and Wang
• Publication date : January 1, 1956
• Number of pages : 120
• Available on : Paperback, Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
• Last updated : September 28, 2021

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The Story of ‘Night’

• Share full article

By Rachel Donadio

• Jan. 20, 2008

This fall, Elie Wiesel’s “Night” was removed from the New York Times best-seller list, where it had spent an impressive 80 weeks after Oprah Winfrey picked it for her book club. The Times’s news survey department, which compiles the list, decided the Holocaust memoir wasn’t a new best seller but a classic like “Animal Farm” or “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which sell hundreds of thousands of copies a year largely through course adoptions. Indeed, since it appeared in 1960, “Night” has sold an estimated 10 million copies — three million of them since Winfrey chose the book in January 2006 (and traveled with Wiesel to Auschwitz).

But “Night” had taken a long route to the best-seller list. In the late 1950s, long before the advent of Holocaust memoirs and Holocaust studies, Wiesel’s account of his time at Auschwitz and Buchenwald was turned down by more than 15 publishers before the small firm Hill & Wang finally accepted it. How “Night” became an evergreen is more than a publishing phenomenon. It is also a case study in how a book helped created a genre, how a writer became an icon and how the Holocaust was absorbed into the American experience.

Raised in an Orthodox family in Sighet, Transylvania, Wiesel was liberated from Buchenwald at age 16. In unsentimental detail, “Night” recounts daily life in the camps — the never-ending hunger, the sadistic doctors who pulled gold teeth, the Kapos who beat fellow Jews. On his first day in the camps, Wiesel was separated forever from his mother and sister. At Auschwitz, he watched his father slowly succumb to dysentery before the SS beat him to within an inch of his life. Wiesel writes honestly about his guilty relief at his father’s death. In the camps, the formerly observant boy underwent a profound crisis of faith; “Night” was one of the first books to raise the question: where was God at Auschwitz?

Working as a journalist in his mid-20s, Wiesel wrote the first version of “Night” in Yiddish as “Und di Velt Hot Geshvign” (“And the World Remained Silent”) while on assignment in Brazil. But it wasn’t until he returned to Paris and met François Mauriac, a noted Catholic novelist and journalist, that “Night” took the shape we know today. Mauriac urged Wiesel to rewrite the book in French and promised to write a preface. Still, “it was rejected by the major publishers,” Wiesel recalled in a recent interview, “although it was brought to them by François Mauriac, the greatest, greatest writer and journalist in France, a Catholic, a Nobel Prize-winner with all the credentials.” Les Éditions de Minuit brought it out in 1958, but it sold poorly.

The American response was similarly tepid. Georges Borchardt, Wiesel’s longtime literary agent and himself a Holocaust survivor, sent the French manuscript to New York publishers in 1958 and 1959, to little effect. “Nobody really wanted to talk about the Holocaust in those days,” Borchardt said. “The Diary of Anne Frank,” published in the United States in 1952, had been a huge success, but it did not take readers into the horror of the camps. Although “Night” had sophisticated literary motifs and a quiet elegance, American publishers worried it was more a testimonial than a work of literature. “It is, as you say, a horrifying and extremely moving document, and I wish I could say this was something for Scribner’s,” an editor there wrote to Borchardt. “However, we have certain misgivings as to the size of the American market for what remains, despite Mauriac’s brilliant introduction, a document.” Kurt Wolff, the head of Pantheon, also turned “Night” down. Although it had qualities “not brought out in any other book,” Pantheon had “always refrained from doing books of this kind,” meaning books about the Holocaust, he wrote to Borchardt.

Finally, in 1959, Arthur Wang of Hill & Wang agreed to take on “Night.” The first reviews were positive. Gertrude Samuels, writing in the Book Review, called it a “slim volume of terrifying power.” Alfred Kazin, writing in The Reporter, said Wiesel’s account of his loss of faith had a “particular poignancy.” After the Kazin review, the book “got great reviews all over America, but it didn’t influence the sales,” Wiesel said.

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Summary and Reviews of Night by Elie Wiesel

Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

• Critics' Consensus:
• Readers' Rating:
• First Published:
• Jan 16, 2006, 144 pages
• Jan 2006, 144 pages
• Biography & Memoir
• 1940s & '50s
• Jewish Authors
• War Related
• Publication Information
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About This Book

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Book Summary

An autobiographical narrative in which the author describes his experiences in Nazi concentration camps, watching family and friends die, and how they led him to believe that God is dead.

Night is Elie Wiesel’s masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie’s wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author’s original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie Wiesel reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forget man’s capacity for inhumanity to man.

Preface to the New Translation by Elie Wiesel

IF IN MY LIFETIME I WAS TO WRITE only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past lingers in the present, all my writings after Night , including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear its stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works. Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind? Was it to leave behind a legacy of words, of memories, to help prevent history from repeating itself? Or was it simply to preserve a record of the ordeal I endured as an adolescent, at an age when one’s knowledge of death and evil should be limited to what...

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If you liked Night, try these:

Helga's Diary

by Helga Weiss

Published 2014

About this book

The remarkable diary of a young girl who survived the Holocaust—appearing in English for the first time.

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Published 2012

The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz is the extraordinary story of a British soldier who marched willingly into the concentration camp known as Auschwitz III, to testify at first hand the atrocities occurring in the camp.

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Book Reviews

Night by Elie Wiesel: Book Review

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Honestly, I can’t help but feel that for me to sit in judgment of a memoir of the Holocaust would be terribly presumptuous. We can’t ever forget the Holocaust, and any work that reminds us of what happened is important and should be read as widely as possible. The style is a little sparse for me, but do we really need lavish descriptions of crematoriums? I didn’t think so. What is important is that Wiesel laid out his thoughts and feelings for all the world to see, an act of unimaginable courage. It is amazing to me how quickly he and the other prisoners were stripped of their very humanity. It is also amazing how tiny acts of kindness stand out in his memory. But we all know those were too few and far between. Just read this.

Today, April 11, 2010, is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Six million Jews were killed in WWII.  Six million . How do we even begin to wrap our minds around that kind of loss? It’s as if everyone in the cities of Los Angeles and Chicago were gone. No longer there. Because of violence and ignorance and prejudice.

We cannot forget the loss of these people.  The Jewish people are the chief mourners, but we should all mourn their loss.  The victims weren’t “only” Jews, they were citizens of the world.  My world.  Your world. Our world. Who knows how things might be different now if such a staggering loss hadn’t occurred then?

Read Elie Wiesel’s 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

Visit the US Holocaust Museum’s Days of Remembrance page.

Visit the US Holocaust Museum’s Holocaust Encyclopedia.

Here are links to other books I’ve read, both fiction and non-fiction, that focus on the Holocaust.

Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began Art Spiegelman wrote these graphic novels chronicling his father’s concentration camp experiences. These would be a good introduction to the Holocaust for younger readers. They’re also packaged together as The Complete Maus .

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom–Corrie endured the camps after sheltering Jews.  She makes me wonder if I would have that kind of courage. 

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay–Tells the little-known story of the Vélodrome d’Hiver, the stadium in France where Jews were held for days and days without food or water before being deported.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak–My favorite book, period. It’s worth reading for the story of “The Word Shaker” alone.

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum–Wasn’t exactly about the Holocaust, but the camps play a huge part in the story.

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake–This isn’t exactly about the Holocaust either, but it shows the early days of the war when Jews were trying to flee and other countries wouldn’t let them in.

I’m currently reading Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl for the first time. Hopefully I’ll have a review up today or tomorrow.

I haven’t read Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally, but the 1993 Spielberg movie adaptation was powerful. I highly recommend it.

Do you have any recommendations to make or thoughts to share on this topic? Please leave them in the comments.

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I read this book in high school and it broke my heart. I've always wanted to read the other two in the trilogy-Dawn and Day but have never gotten around to it.

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• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORY | HOLOCAUST | GENERAL HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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BOOK REVIEW

by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen

by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal

by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel

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Google Rating

INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990). 

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-679-42850-X

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Jon Krakauer

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SEEN & HEARD

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

From mean streets to wall street.

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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• About the Book

NIGHT is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.

NIGHT offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

Night written by Elie Wiesel , translated by Marion Wiesel

• Publication Date: January 16, 2006
• Genres: Nonfiction
• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• ISBN-10: 0374500010
• ISBN-13: 9780374500016

Elie Wiesel

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Book Review

• Elie Wiesel
• Historical , Memoir

Readability Age Range

• Bantam Books
• Because of this book and other writings, Elie Wiesel eventually won many awards. In 1978 Wiesel was made Chairman of the President's Commission on the Holocaust. In 1980, he became Founding Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. In 1986 Wiesel received the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 1992, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Year Published

NIght by Elie Wiesel has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting magazine .

Plot Summary

In 1941, Eliezer Wiesel lives in a Jewish community in Sighet, Transylvania. An avid student, he wants to know God and studies the Kabbalah with Moishe. Moishe is deported with other foreign Jews but returns near the end of 1942. He warns the Jews that the Nazis massacred all the other deportees. No one listens. In spring 1944, the Hungarian police empty the two ghettos in Sighet and herd Eliezer, his family and the rest of the Jewish population into crowded boxcars for transport.

At Birkenau, 15-year-old Eliezer sees flames rising from the chimneys and smells the odor of bodies being burned. He sees his mother and sister for the last time there. A Jewish inmate tells him that Jews are being exterminated at this camp.

Eliezer’s memories of the camps revolve mainly around two relationships: his relationship with God and his relationship with his father. Though Eliezer states that the events in camp during his first night killed God, he continues to reflect on God throughout the book, but his bitter rejection of God deepens as he experiences and witnesses the cruelties of the camps. When 10,000 Jewish men gather to observe Rosh Hashanah, Eliezer stands apart, quietly denouncing God to himself, and he does not fast on Yom Kippur. During a death march from Buna, he startles himself by praying to a god he no longer believes in.

Many of Eliezer’s other memories revolve around his determination to support his father and receive support from him. While in Buna, father and son endure starvation, hard labor, threats, beatings, betrayals and the constant fear of being chosen for the crematorium. They also watch hangings and shootings. Eliezer’s greatest desire is to be a good son, but his father’s frailties are sometimes burdensome, and Eliezer struggles with his responses. He chastises himself for failing to be a perfect son.

In January as the Red Army approaches Buna, the camp is evacuated. Eliezer has an injured foot, but he leaves with the prisoners because he will not be separated from his father. Many die on this march and during their train ride in open boxcars. At Buchenwald, Eliezer’s father dies from dysentery, but this death is hastened by an SS officer’s beating. Eliezer writes that nothing was important to him after his father’s death. The camp is liberated on April 11, 1945. Eliezer becomes ill and nearly dies. In the hospital he sees himself in a mirror, and he looks like a corpse.

Christian Beliefs

None are stated in the text. In the foreword, the French writer Mauriac suggests that all human suffering, even that of the Jews, can be reconciled in the Cross of Jesus.

Other Belief Systems

Before going to the concentration camps, Eliezer studies the Talmud, which is a collection of rabbinic writings that discuss Jewish law and life. He also studies the Kabbalah, mystical Jewish writings that attempt to explain how a divine and infinite God relates to the physical, created world, including mankind. Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah or the Son of God. Moishe, Eliezer’s religious teacher, says that according to the Kabbalah, the redemption of the divine is yet to be. He also tells Eliezer that human beings get close to God by asking God questions and listening for God’s answers. However, human beings will not understand God’s answers. Eliezer reads one of the pages of the Kabbalah again and again in hopes of finding God. He thinks his study will bring him into eternity.

Eliezer shows the Jews pleading to God for mercy, believing that God can do miracles, giving God thanks in times of hope and saying kaddish, prayers of mourning for the dead. Seeing and suffering the horrors of the camps, Eliezer rebels at glorifying God. He says that God, who is all-powerful, caused the Jews to be so cruelly treated. He describes himself and others in the camp as lost souls forced to endlessly wander in an abyss with no hope of redemption or release. After being in the camps for a number of weeks, he accuses God of being uncaring and unjust and believes himself stronger than God because he is now separate from God.

One Jew in the camp says that the camps are God’s test. God is watching to see if they can purify themselves and murder the evil that is within each of them. And if they are being punished by God, it demonstrates that He loves them even more. Another Jew says that the camps signify the end of the world and that the Messiah is coming.

A young Pole, who may be a communist because he refers to the men as comrades, tells them to not give in to despair; they need to put their faith in being alive and believe that liberation will come. In the meantime, he says they should all help one another.

Authority Roles

Eliezer’s father is a respected leader in the Jewish community. In the camps, Eliezer relies on his father for advice and support, but Eliezer also portrays him as a broken man. At times Eliezer resents his father’s weaknesses and resists looking after him. Although subtle, Eliezer’s father also protects and encourages Eliezer. Eliezer’s father seems to have given up on God when Eliezer finds him after the Rosh Hashanah service. The elders of the community cooperate with the civil authorities, and at Auschwitz, they discourage the young men from fighting SS guards.

The Hungarian police, using clubs and verbal threats, round up the Jews and herd them onto the train. In the camps, the SS guards are callous toward their prisoners. While marching them to another camp, they flirt with young German girls. During the death march from Buna, the SS shoot any man who falls behind. During an air raid, guards shoot a man who is trying to eat from the soup cauldron.

Some inmate overseers, Kapos, are just and protective. A young Pole Kapo tells Eliezer and the other new prisoners that they should help each other. Eliezer remarks that the young Pole is soon after removed from his position because of his humanity and replaced with a cruel overseer. Other Kapos and their assistants are vicious and misuse their positions of authority. Idek, a Kapo in the Buna camp, has a reputation for being explosive. He gives Eliezer an undeserved beating. He also beats Eliezer’s father. Idek takes the work detail to the warehouse so that he can have sex with a young girl. Another Kapo, Franek, beats Eliezer’s father ostensibly because his father cannot march in step, but Franek is actually trying to force Eliezer to give him something he wants. A Jewish dentist extracts gold teeth from prisoners for his own use. He is discovered and hung. A Jewish doctor is trustworthy, operating successfully on Eliezer’s foot and helping him get well.

Profanity & Violence

These words are used once: h—ish, H— (as a place), d–ned (as in people who are separated from God’s mercy)

So many people are crowded into a boxcar that they must sit in shifts. When a hysterical woman will not stop screaming, people in the boxcar beat her into silence. The men are marched past pits filled with the burning dead bodies of children and adults. Brutality in the camps is commonplace. Several beatings are vividly, but succinctly, described: Eliezer’s father is slapped so hard he falls and crawls back to his place; Eliezer is whipped and passes out; his father is beaten with an iron bar; an SS officer strikes his father on the head because his father is crying out for Eliezer. Men and boys are forced to run naked in front of Nazis to see if they are unfit for work and should be chosen for the crematoriums. Men are shot. A dentist using an old spoon removes a gold crown.

Two hangings are described. In both instances, the other prisoners are forced to watch and then look into the faces of the hanged people. In the second case, the hanged boy, still alive, twists and turns on the rope. (His emaciated body was too light to bring him a quick death.)

The descriptions of the death march and the train ride to Buchenwald are heart wrenching. Emaciated men and boys are forced to run on a snowy march. SS guards shoot any prisoner who cannot keep the pace. A young boy collapses and is run over by the others coming behind him. Given permission to stop, exhausted prisoners collapse on the snow and die. During the long train ride in open boxcars, the SS occasionally stop the train and tell the prisoners to throw the dead into the frozen fields. The men do, but not before stripping the dead of their clothing. Men are forced into overcrowded barracks, where they pile on top of each other, smothering those beneath them.

Sexual Content

In the boxcar on the way to the camps, young people under the cover of darkness caress without thinking of others present. In the camps, the men are forced to be naked for a time. While the author and some others are being marched to a different camp, their German guards flirt with, kiss and tickle young German girls. Nothing is described, but Wiesel says that he learned later that homosexuals in the camps were trafficking in children. Eliezer stumbles on a Kapo and a young Polish girl having sex. The girl is half naked.

Discussion Topics

Get free discussion questions for this book and others, at FocusOnTheFamily.com/discuss-books .

Additional Comments

Some scenes are vividly portrayed, while others are only touched on. It is difficult to know how a young person’s imagination will fill in those understated scenes if a teen does not have a historical basis for what took place. The graphically horrific scenes will impact a young person’s mind.

Some will be overwhelmed with the suffering and hopelessness that the author both speaks and whispers. Parents may want to spend time praying with and for their teen if their teen is required to read this book for school and the parent has agreed that he or she can read it.

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

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Elie Wiesel, Marion Wiesel | 4.52 | 1,311,703 ratings and reviews

Ranked #1 in Oprah , Ranked #2 in Holocaust — see more rankings .

Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of Night from the world's leading experts.

Johanna Reiss Elie Wiesel wrote..that he was considering running into the barbed wire once, but he didn’t because his father needed him. (Source)

Steven Katz Probably the best known memoir that has been written about the experience of the death camps. (Source)

Rankings by Category

Night is ranked in the following categories:

• #6 in 10th Grade
• #46 in 11th Grade
• #29 in 12th Grade
• #9 in 13-Year-Old
• #6 in 14-Year-Old
• #6 in 15-Year-Old
• #46 in 16-Year-Old
• #29 in 17-Year-Old
• #29 in 18-Year-Old
• #45 in 20th Century
• #11 in 8th Grade
• #6 in 9th Grade
• #53 in Academia
• #9 in Autobiography
• #89 in Award-Winning
• #29 in Awarded
• #91 in Bestseller
• #22 in Biography
• #97 in Bucket List
• #22 in Buzzfeed
• #59 in Catalog
• #32 in Class
• #83 in Classic
• #38 in Death
• #62 in Documentaries
• #36 in Dramatic
• #44 in Emotional
• #7 in European History
• #16 in Evil
• #52 in Existential
• #77 in Existentialism
• #52 in Factual
• #27 in Fascism
• #9 in German History
• #34 in Graduate School
• #14 in High School
• #15 in High School Reading
• #4 in Historical Nonfiction
• #13 in History
• #11 in Human Rights
• #29 in Humanity
• #18 in Important
• #67 in Influence
• #36 in Influential
• #49 in Insightful
• #44 in Inspiring
• #67 in Intellectual
• #2 in Jewish
• #2 in Judaism
• #36 in Justice
• #37 in Life Changing
• #79 in Life Lessons
• #94 in Literature
• #9 in Memoir
• #62 in Middle School
• #75 in Modern Classic
• #10 in Modern History
• #22 in Morals
• #54 in Nobel
• #23 in Nonfiction
• #39 in Perspective
• #9 in Poland
• #49 in Prison
• #87 in Racism
• #42 in Rated
• #21 in Real Life
• #93 in Religion
• #35 in Resilience
• #20 in Sadness
• #13 in Short
• #50 in Social
• #39 in Social Studies
• #20 in Survival
• #45 in Teacher
• #48 in Teaching
• #29 in Thought-Provoking
• #65 in Top Ten
• #27 in Translated
• #25 in Trauma
• #9 in True Stories
• #9 in True Story
• #16 in War Fiction
• #10 in Wars
• #11 in World
• #19 in World History
• #6 in World War II

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Night by Ellie Wiesel Essay (Book Review)

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Introduction

Review/analysis, works cited.

During the Second World War, a number of scholars and writers came up with various writings to express their opinions, views, and standpoints. The Night, by Ellie Wiesel, is one such book that expresses the views of the writer.

Life was unbearable during the Second World War, particularly in Germany whereby concentration camps existed. Wiesel describes the state of affairs in the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

Many people lost their lives, including property. Families broke up because family members had to be taken to different places. Others were unable to escape and found themselves in death camps whereby they could provide cheap labor without payment.

This piece of writing revisits the works of Wiesel in the book titled Night. The paper summarizes the reasoning of the writer and goes a notch higher to analyze some of the themes in order to establish the relevance of the book to the modern political environment. In other words, the paper looks at the strengths and weaknesses of the book.

The writer explains that life in the concentration camps was unbearable. He wonders where God was when such injustices were mated out to the Jews.

He concluded that God might have died because he could have intervened could he be alive. To the writer, life had taken a new twist meaning that the relationship between family members had changed.

The writer complained that his father had burdened him since he had to take care of him in everything. This was a great challenge to the writer given that he was only sixteen years.

In the concentration camps, family relations had no meaning. This is captured in a statement where the writer complained that if he could only eliminate his father since the old man was a form of a burden to him.

However, he regretted using such string words on his father. In the book, the writer shows that life had taken a new twist meaning that moral values were no more. In the concentration camps, there were no fathers, no brothers, and no friends.

In 1945, the writer reveals that the US liberated Buchenwald, even though it was late for his father who had already perished in the hands of Nazi.

In the introduction, the writer gives a brief description of his life (Wiesel 35) He reports that he was born in a place referred to as Sighet, which is a town situated in a hill in Hungary.

Before invasion, laws had been passed aimed at suppressing the Jews. Things got worse when Adolf and his men invaded Hungary.

Wiesel was separated from his family as his mother was taken to the gas chamber in Auschwitz and his father and he were taken to Buchenwald. The mother could not survive the conditions of Auschwitz and passed on immediately while his father died some few days before liberation.

Moshe the Beadle

The narrator tells us the importance of religion in society in this section. He claims that he cried uncontrollably when he noticed that the Temple had been vandalized. Moshe the Beadle was a man in charge of marinating the Synagogue.

In other words, he was a caretaker who ensured that everything went well during prayers. The caretaker is presented as a humble man who never quarreled with any one in society. In 1942, the man of God was whisked to Poland but he managed to come back in order to pass the information to villagers.

However, the villagers never minded listening to him. The story of Moshe the Beadle shows that a political enemy always targets the soft sport, which is normally the religious leader.

The villagers could not listen to Moshe simply because he was not influential. In the section, the government of Hungary proved that it was part of the Nazi project since it ordered all non-citizen Jews to leave.

This is one of the strengths of the book since the Holocaust could not have materialized without the help of other Eastern European governments.

The Sighet Ghettos

Jews were restricted from participating in important societal activities and enjoying their lives to the fullest. In this regard, Jews were not supposed to own property or to practice their religion.

Wherever they moved, Jews were required to wear the Yellow Star, as a form of identification. The Hungarian administration came up with a decision to transfer Jews to one of the Ghettos for easier supervision.

The Jews were only restricted to two Ghettos and the rest of their residences were closed. This shows how the Nazi regime was ambitious to control the influence of Jews in other neighboring countries.

The Jews could not influence political leaders to come up with fairer laws since their movements were easily monitored in the Ghettos. The writer reports that the Ghettos were self-contained meaning that all social services were provided.

No Jew could move out in search of a social amenity. In fact, they were allowed to appoint their councils, referred to as the Jewish Council, which could arbitrate on any issue in the ghettos This was meant to facilitate compliance since the Nazi government could easily approach the council leaders and inform them about the new developments.

After sometime, the Ghettos were closed and the Jews were transferred to the concentration camps in Poland and Germany. The writer reports that the Hungarian police had no mercy since each person was mistreated irrespective of his or her societal standing.

The writer reports that he was moved to one of the concentration camps referred to as Auschwitz, together with other eighty members of his community, including Madame Schachter.

Schachter prophesized that the bodies of people were burning but the rest of the Jews could not believe her, just the way Moshe the Beadle had been ignored. People were put in different sections based on gender, age, and health.

Unfortunately, the narrator’s mother was send straight to the gas chamber owing to her old age and deteriorating health. The Auschwitz shows that political opponents will never have mercy because they will ensure that only relevant individuals are allowed to live.

The weak are eliminated immediately to avoid any costs. Children were eliminated right away since the writer reports that the lorry delivered children into a burning fire while he was watching with the father.

The political class and the politicians will never care about morality as long as their interests are well catered for by the existing policy. In the book, the main aim of the political class in Eastern Europe was to acquire wealth.

The political class never cared about the value of human life. They would allow the soldiers to strangle innocent children only to frustrate parents.

Buchenwald and Liberation

In the last section of the book, which talks about the Buchenwald camp and subsequent liberation, the writer does not explain the factors behind liberation. He simply goes ahead to describe how liberation came about but does explain the immediate and long term factors that were responsible for liberation.

In Germany, there had been some sort of resistance since some leaders wanted the government to close the concentration camps. In Europe, other world powers such as Britain and Russia had gained momentum and wanted to liberate their citizens who had been kidnapped by the Nazi regime as prisoners of war.

The writer does not explain all these factors. Furthermore, he does not give a brief explanation of how the US joined the war. There had been some developments in the international system, which could not allow Germany to continue oppressing the Jews.

In the beginning of the story, the writer explained that the old and those perceived to be unhealthy were eliminated immediately. However, he explains towards the end of the story that his father was ailing from dysentery.

The question is how comes the father was allowed to live yet it was against the policy of the Nazi government. This leaves us with some questions to answer.

The chapters of the book by Wiesel are arranged in a manner that would help the reader to comprehend the real meaning of Holocaust and how the Nazi unleashed terror on the Jews.

The book has some strengths including explaining how the Eastern European states contributed in implementing the Nazi policies. The Hungarian government declared that all immigrants would be deported in case they could not provide sufficient documents.

This proves that the government of Hungary knew what was just about to happen to the Jews. One weakness of the book is that it does not give authentic information.

At one moment, we are told that the old and the sick were never allowed to see the day while at other times the writer tells us that the sick could be left to suffer.

Wiesel, Elie. Night . New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012. Print.

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Themes and Analysis

By elie wiesel.

'Night' is a short and incredibly impactful novel that uses direct language and avoids metaphors and other figures of speech to tell its story.

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

Wiesel depicts his experiences in the Holocaust through the eyes of Eliezer who conveys the terrors of what he endured and saw. Readers will likely note reoccurring themes of faith, silence, and inhumanity, as well as symbols that include corpses, fire, and night. 

Night Themes 

Faith .

Throughout the novel, Elie is forced to question his faith in God. When God does not step in and stop the horrors around him, Elie has to consider that his faith may have been wrong all along. He learned that God demands sacrifice but is, in the end, compassionate and loving, that’s far from what he learned firsthand during his experiences in the novel, Night . Despite the fact that Eliezer says he’s lost his faith several times, Wiesel includes religious allusions and figurative language that suggest that that’s not completely true. By the end of the novel, while his understanding of the world and religion has shifted, he’s not completely without faith. 

Silence/Indifference 

This is one of the primary themes in the novel, and one that can be found in Wiesel’s other works as well as lectures. Elie is constantly bothered by the silence of God and the silence of other men and women in Europe throughout the novel.

There are numerous examples of indifference throughout the novel. Elie notes the village’s indifferent reaction when Moishe returns with news of what he’s seen, the German people’s ability to ignore what’s going on right in front of their faces, and of course, the Nazi soldier’s indifference to the lives they were destroying. One of the most telling scenes comes towards the end of the novel when the prisoners are running toward Gleiwitz and are being shot down by guards if they paused for even a moment. 

Inhumanity 

Indifference and silence go hand in hand with inhumanity in Night. It’s impossible to read this novel and not walk away feeling horrified by the inhuman practices promoted and carried out by the Nazi regime. Eliezer has trouble making sense of the world after seeing some of the terrible things that happened inside and outside the camps. One such scene comes after he’s arrived with his father and they walk past a pit in which S.S. soldiers are burning the bodies of children.

Additionally, the prisoner on prisoner violence and hate is another aspect of the inhuman environment Eliezer had to endure. The men in his camps were so desperate they turned on one another, even sons on fathers. This is seen quite clearly at the end of the novel when the prisoners beat Eliezer’s father and effectively end his life. 

Analysis of Key Moments in Night

• Elie studies with Moishe the Beadle. Moishe is expelled from Sighet. 
• Moishe returns and tells everyone what he saw and experienced. 
• German soldiers come to Sighet and place restrictions of Jews living there. 
• Eliezer and his family are moved into a ghetto
• Eliezer and his family are transported to Birkenau on cattle cars. 
• Elie is separated from his mother and sisters . 
• The men are taken to Auschwitz. 
• Elie is given number r A-7713. 
• Everyone goes to Buna. 
• Elie is beaten and has his gold crown removed. 
• Elie watches a young boy executed. 
• Elie’s father barely passes inspection. 
• The death march begins from Buna to an abandoned village and then Gleiwitz. 
• Everyone gets on a train to Buchenwald and very few survive the journey. 
• Elie’s father dies of dysentery and a beating from the other men. 
• Elie is liberated from the camp. 

Style, Tone, and Figurative Language in Night

Throughout Night, Wiesel writes about Elie’s experiences in a detached tone. He uses short sentences and clear words to report on what Elie saw and what he felt. Wiesel was trying to put his experiences into words, in a way that accurately represented them but allowed him to keep some distance from the character of Eliezer. The text is sparse, with very few complex passages or examples of figurative language. Elie Wiesel chose to speak directly to the reader in a way that could not be misunderstood.

Often, Wiesel does take a step back from a terrible scene, talking around it rather than directly describing it. For example, when he speaks about an S.S. guard shooting a prisoner. 

The tone in the novel is serious throughout . There are no light or happy moments. Even when the novel concludes and the camp has been liberated, Elie concludes the novel with a striking scene of loss and sorrow with Eliezer standing in front of a mirror. 

Analysis of Symbols in Night

Night .

One of the most obvious and important symbols in the novel is night. By naming the novel “night” and pushing themes of religious doubt, it’s important to consider Genesis and the passages regarding God’s creation of the earth. First, the Bile says, there was “darkness upon the face of the deep.” It’s this darkness, with the absence of God, that Eliezer lives through. Light is absent from some of the most important scenes in the novel, such as when Eliezer’s father is talking to him about the deportation of the Jews and when they arrive at Birkenau/Auschwitz. 

Fire is a symbol of death and destruction in Night. It is used by the Nazis to destroy evidence of their genocide. It first appears in a horrifying passage when Madame Schächter cries out “ Fire! Look at the flames! Flames everywhere ,” when the train arrives in Birkenau. When the train pulls in, Eliezer can smell burning flesh immediately. This is something that haunts the rest of the novel. The fire is an ever-present reminder of the deaths waiting for those able to escape the initial threat of the crematorium. 

Corpses 

Corpses appear throughout the novel, bringing into the light the true extent of the horrors the Nazi regime perpetrated on the Jewish people. Eliezer is forced to witness deaths and sees piles of bodies. The image of a corpse also appears at the end of the novel when Eliezer looks at himself in the mirror and thinks that he looks more than a corpse than he does a living person. It’s a symbol for the death of who he was, the strength of his faith, and the loss of the 11 million who did in the Holocaust . 

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Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

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Elie Wiesel

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At the start of the memoir, it's 1941 and Eliezer is a twelve-year-old Jewish boy in the Hungarian town of Sighet. He's deeply religious and spends much of his time studying the Torah (the Bible) and the Talmud and praying. His parents and sisters run a shop in the town, and his father is highly respected in the Jewish community. Eliezer begins to study the Cabbala, the book of Jewish mysticism, with an immigrant named Moché the Beadle . When the Hungarian police deport all of the foreign Jews, Moché is sent away, but he returns with a terrible and fantastic tale: the Gestapo stopped the train and slaughtered the deported Jews. Moché escaped with a leg wound and has come to warn the Jews of Sighet to leave. The Jews of the town can't believe what Moché is saying, and think he's gone mad.

The war continues through 1943. In 1944, the Jews of Sighet still don't really believe Hitler intends to exterminate them. Eliezer wants his father to relocate the family to Palestine, but his father says he's too old to start again. The Fascists come to power in Hungary and German soldiers enter the country. Before long, German officers are living in Sighet and then arresting the Jewish leaders of the town. Soon, the Hungarian police round the Jews up into two ghettoes. Next, they force the Jews like cattle onto trains headed to an unknown destination.

The Jews travel on the train for several days, during which time one Jewish woman goes mad and screams about fire. The train arrives at Birkenau, the gateway to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where the passengers can see chimneys belching fire and can smell burned flesh. The women are immediately separated from the men, and Eliezer never sees his mother or his younger sister again (they are immediately sent to the gas chamber). A Nazi SS doctor separates those who are going to be killed immediately from those who will work. Eliezer sticks close to his father. That first night in the camp, he witnesses babies and children thrown into a great fire in a burning ditch. Eliezer's faith in a just God is shattered.

More separations occur, but Eliezer and his father stay together. All the prisoners are tattooed with a number, and this becomes their identity. They are told they must work or they will be burned in the crematoria. They spend three weeks at Auschwitz before marching to another concentration camp, Buna. Here, Eliezer and his father spend their days working in an electrical equipment warehouse. Their Kapo (the prisoner conscripted to wield power over other prisoners) occasionally goes berserk and beats people, including Eliezer and his father. The SS doctor appears again to weed out another batch of people for the furnaces. Eliezer has a scare when his father is chosen, but his father manages to convince someone that he can still work. While at Buna, Eliezer continues to rebel against the idea of a just God. After being forced to witness the slow hanging death of a child, he ceases to believe in God, altogether.

With the front lines of the war getting closer, the prisoners at Buna are evacuated on a long, nightmare death march to a camp called Gleiwitz. People die continuously along the way as the SS forces them to run for hours and hours in the snow, shooting people who fall behind. Upon arriving at Buna, a young Jewish violinist plays pieces of a Beethoven concerto. By morning the violinist has died. The survivors of the march are kept without food and water for several days, more are separated from the rest to be killed, and the remaining prisoners are crammed onto trains in open-roofed cattle cars. The train ride is endless. The Jews have nothing to eat but snow, and people die left and right. When they pass through a German town, some German workers toss scraps of bread in the car to watch the starving prisoners fight to the death. More people lie down in the snow and die when the train at last arrives at another concentration camp: Buchenwald. Eliezer's father grows feverish, contracts dysentery, and begins to waste away. Doctors won't help, the camp doesn't want to waste food on sick people, and Eliezer can only offer his own rations to his father, who is soon delirious. The night before Eliezer's father passes away, an SS officer beats the dying man on the head. Eliezer is unable to cry or mourn. He spends another two and a half months at Buchenwald in a daze before the Nazis begin another prisoner evacuation. This time there is an armed uprising among the prisoners and the remaining SS flee. American tanks arrive, followed by food, although Eliezer gets food poisoning and spends two weeks in the hospital, near death. When he looks at his face in the mirror for the first time since he left the village of Sighet, he sees a vision he will never forget: the face of a corpse.

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Elie Wiesel

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Classic/non-fiction/memoir/holocaust/world war ii, number of pages.

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Born into a Jewish family in Romania, Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were rounded up by the Nazis, corralled into trains, and transported first to the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz and then to Buchenwald. This is his terrifying and intimate account of the increasing horrors he endured, the death of his parents and eight-year-old sister, and the loss of his innocence in barbaric hands.

Describing with immense power the murder of a people from a survivor’s perspective, Night is among the most personal and the poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust and provides rare insight into the darkest side of human nature. It is also a beacon for the enduring power of hope and continues to resonate with readers across the world today.

Marion Wiesel’s translation of her husband’s masterpiece presents the most accurate interpretation of his testimony in English and is accompanied by a preface by the author, in which he reflects on his lifelong dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets its own potential for inhumanity.

- Top Quotes from Night  -

“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.”

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed....Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”

“I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.”

“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”

“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”

“One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.”

“...I believe it important to emphasize how strongly I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.”

“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly; “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

“In the beginning there was faith - which is childish; trust - which is vain; and illusion - which is dangerous.”

Elie Wiesel is the author of more than forty internationally acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United Sates of America Congressional Gold Medal, the French Legion of Honor, and, in 198, the Nobel Peace Prize. He is the Andres W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and University Professor of Boston University.

Marion Wiesel was born in Vienna. She has translated most of her husband’s works from original French into English.

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Night: A Memoir Paperback – Large Print, September 29, 2021

A memorial edition of Elie Wiesel's seminal memoir of surviving the Nazi death camps, with tributes by President Obama and Samantha Power

When Elie Wiesel died in July 2016, the White House issued a memorial statement in which President Barack Obama called him "the conscience of the world." The whole of the president's eloquent tribute serves as a foreword to this memorial edition of Night . "Like millions of admirers, I first came to know Elie through his account of the horror he endured during the Holocaust simply because he was Jewish," wrote the president.

In 1986, when Wiesel received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wrote, "Elie Wiesel was rescued from the ashes of Auschwitz after storm and fire had ravaged his life. In time he realized that his life could have purpose: that he was to be a witness, the one who would pass on the account of what had happened so that the dead would not have died in vain and so the living could learn." Night , which has sold millions of copies around the world , is the very embodiment of that conviction. It is written in simple, understated language, yet it is emotionally devastating, never to be forgotten.

Born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were deported to Auschwitz and then Buchenwald. Night is the shattering record of his memories of the death of his mother, father, and little sister, Tsipora; the death of his own innocence; and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man.

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night," writes Wiesel. "Never shall I forget . . . even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself." These words are etched into the wall of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Far more than a chronicle of the sadistic realm of the camps, Night also addresses many of the philosophical and personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of the Holocaust.

In addition to tributes from President Obama and Samantha Powers, this memorial edition of Night includes the unpublished text of a speech that Wiesel delivered before the United Nations General Assembly on the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, entitled "Will the World Ever Know." These remarks powerfully resonate with Night and with subsequent acts of genocide.

• Book 1 of 3 Night Trilogy
• Print length 275 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Thorndike Striving Reader
• Publication date September 29, 2021
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
• ISBN-10 1432876929
• ISBN-13 978-1432876920
• Lexile measure 570L
• See all details

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About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Thorndike Striving Reader; Large type / Large print edition (September 29, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 275 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1432876929
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1432876920
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 570L
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.6 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
• #160 in Jewish Biographies
• #8,450 in Memoirs (Books)
• #16,121 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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About the author

Elie wiesel.

ELIE WIESEL was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The author of more than fifty internationally acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, he was Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and University Professor at Boston University for forty years. Wiesel died in 2016.

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Customers say

Customers find the book full of emotion, passion, and authenticity. They describe the portrayal of cruelty as moving, heartfelt, and almost lyrical. Readers praise the book as short yet powerful, saying it's a quick read. They also mention it'll melt your heart and fill you with the resolve to never allow this kind of cruelty.

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Customers find the book well worth reading, powerful, and well-written. They describe it as a tough but wonderful read, saying it's concise, to the point, and a literary sensation. Readers also mention the book is striking in its simplicity and fast-paced terror.

"...is one of the best-known and most highly acclaimed work about the Holocaust...." Read more

"...And there are so many painful moments , most having to do with loss: the loss of God, the loss of identity, the loss of friends and family, in the..." Read more

"...account of one experience of the Holocaust and while it is striking in it's simplicity and fast-paced terror, it doesn't spend time stopping to..." Read more

"...What makes this book -- a quick read and very worthwhile -- even more unique is the very short, simple and yet eloquent writing style of it's author...." Read more

Customers find the story heartbreaking yet fascinating. They describe the book as gripping and powerful. Readers also mention it's one of the most powerful Holocaust narratives ever written. They mention the book is beautifully told and impactful.

"...of this multifaceted work render Night one of the most powerful Holocaust narratives ever written...." Read more

"...There are so many memorable scenes in this short book: the journey in the cramped cattle cars; the arrival at the camp; the sight, sound, and ash of..." Read more

"...of the Holocaust and while it is striking in it's simplicity and fast-paced terror , it doesn't spend time stopping to rework the experience in terms..." Read more

"...Elie Wiesel's NIGHT is the best book, and certainly one of the most deeply moving among these works.Arlene Sanders" Read more

Customers find the writing quality of the book well-written, poetic, and poignant. They say the English translation is sorrowful and heartfelt. Readers also mention the memoir is soul-searing to read and difficult to put down. They also appreciate the staccato sentences and straightforward narrative.

"...The brevity, poignant dialogue , almost lyrical descriptions of human degradation and suffering, and historical accuracy of this multifaceted work..." Read more

"...In its brief, straightforward narrative it captures not just the horror of the attempted extermination of Europe’s Jews, but the destruction that..." Read more

"... His account is straightforward , almost matter-of-fact, with a minimum of frenzy, inordinate dwelling on flames of infernos, prolonged death throes,..." Read more

"...The sentences are staccato , like a machine gun, with a "plain vanilla envelope" style that only adds to the boosk readability and believeability...." Read more

Customers find the book has good insights into history. They say it's well-researched, well-documented and an important read for all generations to come.

"...His account is straightforward, almost matter-of-fact , with a minimum of frenzy, inordinate dwelling on flames of infernos, prolonged death throes,..." Read more

"I liked the descriptiveness of this book. It was so personal and detailed , making it hard to put down...." Read more

"...Finally, I believe this is definitely an educational piece of literature that students should learn about...." Read more

"...He says this book is his most important work , and before reading any of his other works you must read this one...." Read more

Customers find the book full of emotion, passionate, intense, and riveting. They say it's a moving, suspenseful, tragic, and thought-provoking story.

"...It's a passionate and powerful speech teaching us ALL that we become less then human when we are indifferent to what is happening around us...." Read more

"...Night,as we are reading it has proven to be extremely sad, moving ,and truumphant in his lives story...." Read more

"...This is an emotional read . In my opinion, it may tug on some people's heart strings...." Read more

"...This book was extremely detailed and provoked an immense amount of feelings ...." Read more

Customers find the book short yet powerful. They say it's a quick read that gives them a feel for the horrific chapter.

"...The brevity , poignant dialogue, almost lyrical descriptions of human degradation and suffering, and historical accuracy of this multifaceted work..." Read more

"...In its brief , straightforward narrative it captures not just the horror of the attempted extermination of Europe’s Jews, but the destruction that..." Read more

"This is a short and vivid account of one experience of the Holocaust and while it is striking in it's simplicity and fast-paced terror, it doesn't..." Read more

"...book -- a quick read and very worthwhile -- even more unique is the very short , simple and yet eloquent writing style of it's author...." Read more

Customers find the portrayal of cruelty in the book moving, heartfelt, and almost lyrical. They say it looks deep into their souls and succeeds in portraying man's inhumanity. Readers also mention the book is clear and heartbreaking, stretching the sinews of compassion.

"...The brevity, poignant dialogue, almost lyrical descriptions of human degradation and suffering , and historical accuracy of this multifaceted work..." Read more

"...I imagine the entire book will be enlightening, gut wrenching, and heart warming ...." Read more

"...The book has an abrupt and episodic nature , but most of it focuses on Wiesel's relationship with his father Schlomo Wiesel, and how the two men..." Read more

"...The irony is that it teaches humanity by describing unspeakable inhumaneness ." Read more

Customers find the story amazingly truthful, gut-wrenchingly real, and painfully honest. They appreciate the candid way it's told and the specific perspective. Readers also mention the accounts are vivid and unforgettable.

"...person account of the terror during World War II was accessible and real ...." Read more

"I have read a lot of holocaust books but Weisel’s telling is so honest and so painful and his commentary is so true and so right that this is the..." Read more

"...This story is gripping, sad and so real ...." Read more

"...Raw, real , riveting. You will be changed forever." Read more

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