Night

Rating:
Summary: This is not a boring book review
Review: Night is a very powerful and moving story. It brings you through a life of a Jewish boy who watches his family picked apart in front of his eyes. At first I was going to read this book so that I could read a 109 page book and get a good grade in library. Expecting to have to choke this book down I began to read. I ended up putting myself in a state so that I could not put it down. It is very powerful. It is a eyeopener to a subject that some didn't really want to accept such as I felt. It gives you a step by step life of a Jew going through the Nazi death camps at the near end of the world war. Yet as I read on I became to realize what the horrible things really happened while I wasn't alive. At my age this was a true wake up call to what really happened so long ago.

Rating:
Summary: Book Review of Night by Elie Wiesel
Review: Night By Elie Wiesel
A Review
Elie Wiesel's account of his terrifying trials he experienced during the Holocaust are chronicled in his memoir titled Night. In his bone chilling and often gruesome chronicles the reader seems to be there with Elie as the blows from his oppressors rain down upon him. Elie Wiesel brings us back to the chaos of World War II with his very detailed and descriptive writing style. Night is both a terrifying and beautiful book. As we journey through the various nazi concentration camps with young Elie we are treated to horrifying memories and a tale of triumph over evil and unsurmountable odds.

It is late 1944 and as the western front is pushed back upon Poland young Elie Wiesel and his family become embroiled in the conflict. Being Jewish, as the Reich initiates the "Final Solution"plan Elie's life is turned upside down. Him and his family are carted off to the Warsaw ghetto where brutality becomes a day to day occurrence. Elie and his fellow jews are savagely beaten and degraded by the nazi forces. After his terrible time in the Warsaw ghetto him and his family are loaded onto cattle cars and taken to Auschwitz; an infamous death camp. Along the way they see people breakdown and come to the realization there is no hope for them, all is lost. Once at Auschwitz Elie being only fifteen years old is separated from his mother and sisters forever. What follows is a struggle is a struggle of obstacles him and his disenfranchised father must overcome. It is a very tragic reality that Elie Wiesel had to face.

As aforementioned, often times the brutal experiences are almost to hard to read. This book is not for those who are weak of heart. The brutal and blunt accounts are sometimes emotionally draining and very hard to read. For example, when Elie recounts the day a young boy was hung in Birkenau he tells of how he struggled and fought against asphyxiation for hours eventually dying in the end due to massive trauma to the head inflicted upon him by a camp guard. On the other side though, if you are into history or find stories about triumph and tragedy interesting this is the perfect choice.

Amongst the terrifying imagery displayed in this book there is great triumph. Elie faces oppression and all the odds stacked against him, yet prevails. It is very inspiring to read about someone who faces certain death and loses everything he holds dear only to prevail in the long run. Mr. Wiesel survived the horror only to write this book and inspire and motivate many readers. It is also an excellent story because through Wiesel's intense writing you feel like you the reader are there in the camp with him. Elie Wiesel is an excellent writer and through his journalistic approach we learn a lot about the tragedy he faced during the Holocaust.

Night is an exceptional read, sometimes hard to read it deals with tragedy and teaches us how to prevent it. It is a very inspirational account about a young boy who quickly matures as he experiences the worst of humanity head on.

Mrs. Clynckes English 12
Justin, Zach, Kevin, Steve, Andrew
October 15th, 2001

Rating:
Summary: Marred by misrepresentation, but a good novel all the same.
Review: Elie Wiesel, Night (Bantam, 1960)

availability: on most high-school reading lists. will
never go out of print.

The first novel in Wiesel's well-known holocaust
trilogy (Night, Dawn, and The Accident) was originally
passed off by Wiesel as autobiography. While it's as
incorrect to call Night complete fiction as it would
be to hang that tag on, say, Bukowski's novel
_Hollywood_, there's still an air of duplicity about
it. Exaggerating and playing up the details of the
production of a Hollywood film can be seen as amusing;
exaggerating and playing up the details of Auschwitz
is probably best left to Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder.
Wiesel himself admitted the book contains fictional
content decades ago, yet it's still marketed-- and,
more depressingly, assigned to high school readers--
as straight autobiography. We're raising a generation
who still believe the holocaust is called the
holocaust because the Nazis lined up Jews in front of
flaming trenches and pushed them in alive.

That said, I finally got over my distaste for Wiesel
himself and cracked the cover on this. As a novel,
there's certainly much to be said for it. It could be
argued that Wiesel's style here is the basis for much
of what's come to be known as extreme fiction
(splatterpunk, etc.)-- Wiesel wouldn't allow himself
to write about the holocaust for ten years after its
end, and that time allowed him to adopt a detached,
almost journalist-style air. Detachment, as we all

know, is a much better way of getting horror across
than high emotion. The book is quick and coherent, and
Wiesel writes with an easy lucidity. The book is
simple and easy to follow without the feeling that the
author is ever talking down to his audience, which is
definitely a point on the positive side. In fact, the
only negative I can come up with about the text itself
isn't really a negative at all-- there's another
description of the forced march that takes up the last
third of _Night_ in Miklos Nyiszli's book _Auschwitz_,
and Nyiszli goes into a bit more detail, which allows
the reader to get a more personal view of the event.
However, that's not to take anything away from
Wiesel's account.

Certainly worth reading, but remember-- it IS a novel.
** 1/2

Rating:
Summary: Terrific Power of Faith
Review: Night written by Elie Wiesel is one of the most powerful novels I have ever read. The Nobel Peace Prize winner of 1986 tells a terrifying tale in graphic detail of Elie Wiesel's experience of the World War II and inparticular the way the Jewish society was treated by the Nazis.
This book shows that if you have faith there is hope. Elie Wiesel had faith. He survived through the ghettos, the torment of the Nazis, stuffy crowed trains, lack of food and water and two different death camps. The description of the two death camps is so real and horrible that you wish in some parts it was not, and wish this was only a fictitious novel. It was only faith that helped him through this.
He explores some very strong theological ideas, the strongest though being, why does God let such suffering happen. In one episode three people are 'strung up' and hung. Two of which are men and one a small child. The men die quite quickly but the boy is so light he gradually suffocates to death over more than half an hour. Elie describes the way they are all (the men and boys of that section of the death camp) forced to watch this boy die, and as they do one man says, 'Where is God now?' and Elie answers him in his thoughts, 'Where is He? Here He is ' He is hanging here on these gallows''
Just those powerful lines remind us of the death of Christ and the amount of suffering he went through and his identification through suffering with all who suffer. It might not strike Elie that way because he was of the Jewish faith but to Christian it certainly strikes us that way. This novel is a very intriguing one that should be read by everyone (when they are of an age suitable enough to read it) so that in the future this may never happen again. When people do read this they will be able to see what pure hatred can do to people and why it is important to keep the faith.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: Night is the most powerful book I've ever read about anything; especially the Holocaust. I have read many other books and historical accounts, visited the Holocaust museum in Washington DC, and seen many movies such as Schindler's List that attempt to convey the atrocities of Hitler's Germany; but none of them had an impact on me comparable to that of Wiesel's Night. The book absorbs you and creates the most realistic images of the horrors experienced by the Jews. I firmly believe that every high school student in America should be required to read this book. I was, and it had a profound impact on my life.

Rating:
Summary: The Definitive Account of the Holocaust
Review: Wiesel's account is a powerful exploration of the Holocaust. A young Transylvanian ... lives a sheltered life. His family is wealthy and he is into religious dogma. Then comes the Nazi Wehrmacht to crush everything he assumes or believes in. First forced into a ghetto then into several concentration camps, his experiences grow more and more dark and depressing. His sister and mother are seperated from his dad and him, and are probably killed. Grueling work and no food are small problems, but the prisoners become monsters equivalent to the Nazis guarding them. Several passages, such as the son abandoning his father during a run so as not to be shot, and another son killing his father for a crust of bread, are among the most poignant in the book. Eventually the young boy forsakes God, becomes bitter and withdrawn, and, after many Jews are killed as examples and his father dies, he tries only to survive. This is a must for everyone to read, because if people are educated about hate and what it does to people, this might not happen again.

Rating:
Summary: Night was a fantastic novel
Review: Elie Weisel did an excellent job in writing this book. It may not seem to be a difficult read, but if you only read it once you haven't even scratched the surface of the book's meaning. I've read this book several times over the past few years and every time I read it I find new meaning in the words. Mr. Weisel wrote with book with a lot of care and I encourage anyone who hasn't read it to do so and for those who own it, read it again.

Rating:
Summary: wow :'(
Review: this is the only book that has ever made me cry... i was reading it at school and i could hardly stay in control. it really amazes me that people think this book is poorly written. i guess they can't read between the lines and see powerful emotions behind the simplest statements... "night" actually allows the reader to *feel* the holocaust as elie weisel felt it. i recommend it to anyone, even people who are not really interested in this subject matter. i love this book :)

Rating:
Summary: ONE SPECIAL EVENT IN THIS REMARKABLE BOOK
Review: There have been numerous people who have written so much about this remarkable book. I would like to comment on one event in the book. Mr. Weisel and his father had survived Auschwitz but they had to leave and march for miles and miles to another camp. The walk was extremely difficult. If you stopped walking, you might be executed immediately. Mr. Weisel's father was walking when he tripped over a person that had fallen. This person was concerned that his violin would be damaged. It was remarkable that this person could have the strength to carry his violin under such difficult circumstances. As a musician, I gained a new appreciation for the importance of music to certain individuals. Music was the strength that kept several people alive. I am grateful that Mr. Weisel shared this incident and the other events in this amazing book. This book should be read by everyone.

Rating:
Summary: A Personal Emotional Account of the Holocaust
Review: Jewish writer and historian Elie Wisel was cut off from his childhood learning of his faith when the Nazis took him and his family away from home. Wiesel encountered a new home and new world view in which bigotry, theft, murder, and genocide existed. Wiesel's account of his experience while in the concentration camp leaves the reader on the brink of despair, which is where Wiesel had been. But perseverance and love for his father, respect and faith in his people led him away from the camp to the days of freedom only to be left with the tragic memory. That tragedy led to this compelling story of his life. Highly reccomended!!