Night Book Review

“Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us.”

Synopsis

Born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to Auschwitz concentration camp, and then to Buchenwald. Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must simply never be allowed to happen again.

REVIEW

Elie Wiesel’s Night is not just a book—it is a testimony, a warning, and an unflinching look into the depths of human cruelty. It is the kind of book that lingers in your mind long after you finish it, not because of elaborate prose or dramatic storytelling, but because every word feels like a wound that refuses to heal. This is a book that demands to be read.

It is impossible to read Night without feeling the weight of history pressing down on you. Wiesel does not soften the horrors of the Holocaust. He writes with stark simplicity, his words stripped bare, because the truth needs no embellishment. From the moment he and his family arrive at Auschwitz (and even before!), the nightmare unfolds with a quiet, relentless inevitability:

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 that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. 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.

What makes Night so devastating is not just the brutality Wiesel endured but the slow, agonizing loss of faith—faith in his God, faith in humanity, even faith in himself. It is a raw and painful realization, one that echoes throughout the book. This is not just a story of survival; it is a story of what happens when the world turns its back, when people choose apathy over action.

And that is why this book matters. Wiesel reminds us that silence is complicity. He writes, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” To read Night is to bear witness—to refuse to forget, to refuse to let history repeat itself. This book is not comfortable, nor should it be. But it is necessary. It is the kind of book that changes you. And we should all let it.

Publication date was 1 January 1956.