Night

Rating:
Summary: An Epic Story
Review: Night by Elie Wiesel is a great autobiography. It all starts in the small Jewish town of Sighet in Translyvania. Then moves to Auschwitz and then he gets moved to Buchenwald, both are concentration camps. This all takes place in World War Two. It starts with a very religious boy who begins to losing faith in his God once he sees the pain God is putting his people through. He talks about life talks about his life before the concentration camps, in the Ghetto, and waiting for deportation. He watched everyone he loved and cared for fade away. Wiesel writes with great description and imagery. He really captures the light of life in the gloomy devastating concentration camps. You grow so close to all the characters in the book and he really helps you under stand the lives and thoughts of everyone. The two main characters, Elie and his father, aren't too close in the beginning of the book but as time goes on they grow very close but yet quite distant because they no longer feel emotion for one another. I'm a freshman in High School and I loved this book. It's probably meant for teens and younger adults, but I think everyone should deal with this subject eventually. It really makes you think how lucky you are to not have to go through anything close to that. I'd have to say this is a must-read book for everyone.

Rating:
Summary: Unbelievable
Review: Night is a book that really needs no review on how great it is. I have read the book several times over to fully understand what the author is trying to explain to the reader.
This book stars off with a boy (Elie) who wants to learn more about his religion, which is, of course, Judaism. He wants to study and find out a much as he can. He lives in a house with a mother, father and, sister. They all have heard about the war and are ignorant to the fact that they have heard stories that the Nazi are placing Jew into a camp, called a concentration camp (death camp). He and his family one-day find out what the cost of being ignorant is. The Nazi's come to his town and quickly starts placing all the Jews who live there into ghettos. Elie and his family go through unspeakable torture. They are sent to Auschwitz. Auschwitz is infamous for being one of the most unbelievable death and work camp in the Nazi history.
This book helped me to see the real horrors of the holocaust. I had to stop numerous times while reading this book to stop and say wow how could this possible happen? I feel that this is a great book to read.

Rating:
Summary: Wiesel's "Night" Good Reading and Thought Provoking Work
Review: "Night"by Elie Wiesel, evokes feeling for the Jewish people who suffered through the Holocaust and also brings one to ponder just how these things happen in the first place. Upon reading we can't help to get an insight into the horror the story tells, albeit a very small part, but it also brings questions to our own minds. How is it so many people can torture other human beings simply because a leader decides it is right? How is it that as human beings we are so weak we can be swayed to go along blindly and kill innocent people,among them thousands of children? Futhermore, it makes one question whether it is possible that so many thousands of people could have committed such horrendous acts without regret and conscience. Not only does the reader feel for the victims but also feels for those who were forced to take part in the slayings as it is inconceivable that so many people could have willingly partaken in the Holocaust. This account of the Holocaust has brought not only emotions of anger and sorrow for the Holocaust victims but has also promoted a great remorse that human beings have been, are, and will likely continue to harm others for any variety of reasons. This book brings alot of questions to mind about the shortcomings of the human race. Elie's account of the Holocaust is definately worth reading and reading again.

Rating:
Summary: You'll find yourself enveloped in the Night
Review: This book is listed as fiction, but is largely based on the author's experience as a concentration camp survivor during the Jewish Persecution of World War II. It is powerful in its compactness. My wife and I read it aloud to each other on the course of a 5-day backpack trip in Desolation Wilderness. It really read like a true to life horror story of the atrocities humans can inflict upon other humans. The most frightening thing about the book is the refusal to believe the impending hardships and relative blind sightedness the Jewish community in the Hungary village undergoes during the first part of the book. Hindsight offers us the element of dreaded expectation we feel in horror movies before something really bad is about to happen to the unwary on-screen character. Only with this book it really did happen. The author starts out with a developing devout mystical faith in God and by the end loses it in its entirety. No human bean should have to lose their faith that way and that really is the power of the book. At some of the holocaust displays and concentration camp sites that I have seen in Europe are the words, "Lest we forget." This book sears the lessons humanity learned from the terrible tragedy of the holocaust and leaves us with a yearning to never let those events occur again. Of interesting note is that the high tide of the protagonist experience in the book is when they are sequestered off within a controlled Jewish Ghetto in their Hungary village. The characters enjoy cultural unity and isolationism and find it comfortable and familiar. All this in the face of eventual imprisonment and extermination. There are parallels to the modern day Balkans and the sectionalization movement around the globe to align political entities with ethnic entities. Maybe it makes a group feel comfortable to be surrounding with like people. We just can't afford it in modern society. The world moves towards diversity and those that find a way to thrive and revel in that diversity will succeed. Lest we Forget.

Rating:
Summary: Essential reading for understanding the Holocaust
Review: Fortunately "Night" is short, because one cannot help but complete in one sitting.

"Night" briefly describes the German occupation of Hungary, deportation, and concentration camp experiences of the author. The description of the occupation is very insightful, describing how the Jewish community gradually lost more and more human rights and then was finally deported. The community refused to fathom that the Germans could be so cruel and that such persecution and genocide could happen in the 20th century, so they kept accepting each demotion, believing - hoping - the persecution could go no further. No doubt this pattern occurred time and time again in 1930s/40s Europe.

The description of camp life was gut-wrenching, yet told in a very detached manner. I found the narrative less disturbing than other Holocaust literature (although just as poignant), probably due both to the author's writing style and condensed nature of the tale.

I am anxious to complete Wiesel's "Night Trilogy" and read more of his writings.

Rating:
Summary: Unrelenting... A book that should never be forgotten.
Review: I know this book is already acclaimed and pretty much reccommended by everyone, but I felt I had to put in my own two cents. This book was so unrelenting, so horrifying..it's not a story about an adventure. It's not a story about a hero triumphing over his villain. This book is a essentially a series of horrific and tragic events happening to a young boy, and how he survives them. As Elie Wiesel says in the novel, "Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as God himself. Never." And neither should we.

Rating:
Summary: Detached account of a horrific event
Review: Night, by Eli Wiesel, is the story of a fifteen-year old Jew imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Wiesel wrote this book about fifteen years after the event in order to distance himself from it somewhat (obviously, the experience left too much of an impact to ever be forgotten.)

Through his direct prose and straight language, Wiesel informs the reader of the horrors of the Holocaust. SS guards, barracks, showers, transportation, death marches, rations ... nothing escapes without Wiesel's observations. However, the book lacked description, perhaps because the experience was still too painful for Wiesel to recall-or perhaps because words do not exist to describe the trial.

If only one book is read about the people behind the Holocaust, it should be Anne Frank's Diary. However, if one book is read about the Holocaust itself, Eli Wiesel's Night is compelling, shocking, and enlightening.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic read!!!!
Review: I read this book while in high school at about 16 or so. My English class were assigned "Night" by Elie Wiesel to read and I thought it was fantastic. It's now one of my absolute favourites. It's a reasonably easy read but it's really really great. Highly recommended!!!!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: A brave and important book!
Review: Eliezer was 15 years old when he, his sister and his parents were taken prisoner by the Nazis and deported from their home in Sighet, Transylvania, for the crime of being Jewish. Upon arrival to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, Eliezer and his father were separated from Eliezer's mother and sister, never to see them again. To survive the most inhumane conditions imaginable and to avoid immediate death, Eliezer and his father desperately tried to keep up their strength, thereby demonstrating to the Nazis their usefulness in their ability to work. Each day brought new horrors, torture, starvation, exposure, exhaustion, and illness. Constantly, death hovered over them and the other prisoners. Their challenge: how to avoid the physical and emotional damage that hastened that almost certain death.

The author does a stunning job of presenting the difficult subject of the Holocaust. He follows a father and son as they move from a religiously-observant life in Transylvania to the agonizingly slow and painful experience of deportation and imprisonment in a series of concentration camps. To make this story more acceptable, the author makes it neither long nor frightfully graphic. It reads as a documentary presenting in clear detail the movements and emotions of one young man caught in an unreal world and how he suffers in his attempt to survive. What causes the greatest sadness and horror to the reader is the slow realization of the degree to which man can inflict physical and emotional pain on another human being with little or no remorse. It is a difficult lesson but one which needs to be taught, understood, and remembered by all people. Elie Wiesel begins this terrible education with Night.

Rating:
Summary: Night
Review: Night. Night is the diary of a young Jewish boy named Elie Wiesel. His recollections take place in his hometown; then the story carries on to the concentration camps of Europe. His frightening tales of the horrors he experiences with his family tell of the conditions and crushing manual labor he and his father perform from the time of their capture and the time of their liberation from the Germans. I find this book to be a horrific reminder of the past and inhumanities committed against other human beings. The only drawback I can find in this book is the first one to two chapters go relatively slow, then afterwards the book picks up to a fast pace. I recommend this book to anyone who likes stories of survival against all odds. All and all a very riveting tale by Elie Wiesel.