book report on night by elie wiesel

Elie Wiesel

• Literature Notes
• Book Summary
• About Night
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Character Map
• Elie Wiesel Biography
• Critical Essays
• Wiesel and the Critics
• The Focus on "Night" as a Symbol
• Elie Wiesel and Mysticism
• Elie Wiesel and Existentialism
• Elie Wiesel and the Wandering Jew
• The Theme of Faith
• The State of Israel
• Literary Devices
• A Note on Translation
• Full Glossary for Night
• Essay Questions
• Cite this Literature Note

In 1944, in the village of Sighet, Romania, twelve-year-old Elie Wiesel spends much time and emotion on the Talmud and on Jewish mysticism. His instructor, Moshe the Beadle, returns from a near-death experience and warns that Nazi aggressors will soon threaten the serenity of their lives. However, even when anti-Semitic measures force the Sighet Jews into supervised ghettos, Elie's family remains calm and compliant. In spring, authorities begin shipping trainloads of Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. Elie's family is part of the final convoy. In a cattle car, eighty villagers can scarcely move and have to survive on minimal food and water. One of the deportees, Madame Schächter, becomes hysterical with visions of flames and furnaces.

At midnight on the third day of their deportation, the group looks in horror at flames rising above huge ovens and gags at the stench of burning flesh. Guards wielding billy clubs force Elie's group through a selection of those fit to work and those who face a grim and improbable future. Elie and his father Chlomo lie about their ages and depart with other hardy men to Auschwitz, a concentration camp. Elie's mother and three sisters disappear into Birkenau, the death camp. After viewing infants being tossed in a burning pit, Elie rebels against God, who remains silent.

Every day, Elie and Chiomo struggle to keep their health so they can remain in the work force. Sadistic guards and trustees exact capricious punishments. After three weeks, Elie and his father are forced to march to Buna, a factory in the Auschwitz complex, where they sort electrical parts in an electronics warehouse. The savagery reaches its height when the guards hang a childlike thirteen year old, who dies slowly before Elie's eyes.

Despairing, Elie grows morose during Rosh Hashanah services. At the next selection, the doctor culls Chlomo from abler men. Chlomo, however, passes a second physical exam and is given another chance to live. Elie undergoes surgery on his foot.

Because Russian liberation forces are moving ever closer to the Nazi camp, SS troops evacuate Buna in January 1945. The Wiesels and their fellow prisoners are forced to run through a snowy night in bitter cold over a forty-two mile route to Gleiwitz. Elie binds his bleeding foot in strips of blanket. Inmates who falter are shot. Elie prays for strength to save his father from death. At a makeshift barracks, survivors pile together. Three days later, living on mouthfuls of snow, the remaining inmates travel in open cattle cars on a ten-day train ride to Buchenwald in central Germany. Finally, only the Wiesels and ten others cling to life.

In wooden bunks, Elie tries to nurse his father back to health. Gradually, the dying man succumbs to dysentery, malnutrition, and a vicious beating. Elie's mind slips into semi-delirium. When he awakens, Chlomo is gone. Elie fears that he was sent to the ovens while he was still breathing. Resistance breaks out in Buchenwald. In April, American forces liberate the camp. Elie is so depleted by food poisoning that he stares at himself in a mirror and sees the reflection of a corpse.

Next About Night

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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Night by Elie Wiesel

E lie Wiesel was 15 when the Nazis came for the 15,000 Jews of his hometown of Sighet, Transylvania, in May 1944. Upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, his mother and sister were murdered within hours, while he was put to work as a slave labourer. Eight months later, the Germans evacuated the camp and forced the survivors on a death march that ended at Buchenwald. Wiesel was one of the few still alive when the Americans arrived in April 1945.

One of the most horrifying memoirs ever written, Night was first published in English in 1960. To mark Wiesel's 80th birthday, the Nobel laureate's wife, Marion, has produced a new translation. In stark, simple language, he describes what happened to him and to his family. It is hard to imagine anything more hellish than the picture he paints of his arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau: "Huge flames were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children."

Throughout, Wiesel conveys a collective sense of disbelief that "disciplined, educated men" could commit such crimes. In a key scene, he tells how one of Sighet's Jews, Moishe, had been deported to Poland in 1942. Moishe and his companions had dug their own graves before being shot and left for dead. But Moishe had somehow survived and returned to Sighet to warn his friends. Yet nobody would believe him.

As the events of the 1940s slip ever further away, they become harder to comprehend and imagine. In his foreword, Wiesel explains why he felt compelled to write Night , saying his "duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living". He has done more than most to keep alive their memory.

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Analysis & Opinions - The Forward

• Samantha Power

Words tend to fail us most in two circumstances — in the face of profound evil and of transcendent decency. When Elie Wiesel first tried to describe his experience in the camps, he later wrote, “I watched helplessly as language became an obstacle.” We who have the honor to speak about Elie have the opposite challenge, finding words that capture the fierce and magical essence of this marvelous man. Elie gave friendship with the intensity of a young man fresh out of college—with innocence and adamant conviction that that friendship would be an eternal bond, which, in Elie’s case, it usually was. He used to quote someone who said in French, “Ma patrie, c’est les amis.” “My friends are my homeland.” 

It was Elie’s belief in friendship that relates so powerfully to the miracle of his joyfulness. Of course, we must consider the context from which that joy somehow emerged. None of us will ever comprehend the depravity of what Elie experienced during the Holocaust. He tried to help us see and feel that pain, but he knew our limits. Nor can most of us fathom the aloneness that Elie experienced after he was liberated from Buchenwald on April 11, 1945. Imagine the 16-year-old boy who walked out of those gates. A boy with A-7713 tattooed on his arm. A boy who, as far as he knew, had lost his entire family, and who — when he gazed at himself in the mirror for the first time since being sent to the concentration camp — saw a corpse staring back at him. “The slightest wind would blow me over,” he later said.

Many of us have been struck by the fact that it took Elie 10 years to prepare himself to put into words the horrors of what had been done to him and to his family and to his people. A whole 10 years before he could begin to write. And when he did so, in the spring of 1955, this wise old man who had been to hell and back was just 26 years old. What must it have been like for this man, in his Paris lodgings, to rouse the demons — to hear once again what he called the “silent cries”? “While I had many things to say,” he would later write, “I did not have the words to say them….. How was one to rehabilitate and transform words betrayed and perverted by the enemy? Hunger — thirst — fear — transport — selection — fire — chimney… I would pause at every sentence, and start over and over again. I would conjure up other verbs, other images, other silent cries. It still was not right.” He reimmersed himself in that period, into the darkness of night. The approach that came most naturally to him was blunt and unsparing. What he bore witness to — and thus relived — were the horrors inflicted upon him, but also his own most searing moments of dehumanization, when he could not bring himself to help the person whose companionship had helped keep him alive in Auschwitz and later, on the death march — his father. As he eventually wrote, “He had called out to me and I had not answered.”

In the original text, which Elie wrote in Yiddish, he had added, “I shall never forgive myself.” Elie Wiesel carried all of this.

It can be hard to imagine that there was a time when the prevailing wisdom was not to bear witness. But that is precisely what it was like when Elie was writing. Survivors did not speak about their past — even to their own children. Here in the United States, there were no memorials to the 6 million Jews who had been killed. The word “Holocaust” did not even appear in The New York Times until 1959. Even in Europe — where the mass murder had taken place and entire Jewish communities had been wiped out — the topic was hardly mentioned. It was against this wall of silence that Elie wrote. And then the man whose life’s mission would be to combat indifference laid his heart out to the world, presented his experiences, his story, and they reacted with indifference. Although he had cut the original Yiddish version from more than 800 pages to a little more than 100, all the major publishing houses turned the book down. The renowned French novelist François Mauriac resolved to help Elie. “No one is interested in the death camps anymore,” publishers told Mauriac. “It just won’t sell.” When Elie went in search of an American publisher, he later recalled, their rejection letters often noted that American readers “seemed to prefer optimistic books.”

All who have read “Night” are haunted, perhaps above all, by Moishe the Beadle. Moishe was among the first wave of foreign Jews deported from Elie’s town of Sighet, who were transported by train to a forest in Poland, where they were forced to dig their own graves at gunpoint, and then executed en masse by the Gestapo. Moishe survived, wounded, faking his death, and eventually made his way back to Sighet, where he told his neighbors what he had witnessed. “Jews, listen to me!” he yells outside the synagogue, weeping. “That’s all I ask of you. No money. No pity. Just listen to me!” But no one listens. Moishe is ignored — dismissed as a madman. How cruel was it, then, that young Elie Wiesel, who was taunted by his perpetrators that nobody would ever know or care what had happened to him and his people, how cruel was it that he encountered a world that again seemed indifferent to what he had gone through? When he was trying to place his manuscript, did he feel somehow like Moishe the Beadle, a man who possessed the truth, but was ignored? And yet none of this appears to have diminished the determination of Elie Wiesel. “Night” of course did eventually find its publishers, and after several years, its readership did begin to grow, at first gradually, and then exponentially.

Arguably no single work did so much to lift the silence that had enveloped survivors, and bring what happened in the “Kingdom of Night” out into the light, for all to see. And yet. Injustice was still rampant. Genocide denial against the Armenians, the horrors of his lifetime — Pol Pot, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Syria in his later years. He lived to see more and more people bear witness to unspeakable atrocities, but he also saw that indifference remained too widespread. Amid all the pain and disappointment of Elie’s remarkable life, how is it that the darkness did not envelop him, or shield him from the sun? How is it that the light in Elie Wiesel’s gaze was every bit as defining as his life’s experiences? “What is abnormal,” Elie once told Oprah Winfrey, “is that I am normal. That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life — that is what is abnormal.” Elie raged against indifference to injustice, to be sure, but he also savored the gifts of life with ferocious zeal. “We know that every moment is a moment of grace,” he once said, “every hour is an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them.” Maybe it was because Elie had such a strong sense of purpose on his journey — to help those who could still be helped. A duty to his neighbor. To the stranger, the stranger that he once was. He called it his 11th commandment: “Thou shalt not stand idly by… . You must speak up. You must defend. You must tell the victims, … ‘You are not alone, somebody cares.’”

Through the years, Elie ventured out to the most unlikely, isolated places. There was Elie in a tiny village along the Thai border with Cambodia, meeting with refugees who had just escaped the Khmer Rouge. There was Elie, crossing the jungle in Nicaragua on foot and in a kayak, to reach the Miskito Indians who had been driven from their land. “I,” Elie reflected later, “who have been known to lose my way in my own neighborhood and don’t know how to swim,” traveled all that way to bear witness to their displacement and see how he could help. Now one might think that in these encounters Elie found only suffering, but he did not. He found meaning. Abe Foxman remembered visiting a school program in Tel Aviv that Elie and Marion had helped set up for undocumented children from Sudan — one of many such initiatives they created — and Abe remembers seeing Elie singing and dancing with the kids, in pure, almost childlike joy. Elie Wiesel often wrote of the anger within him. But what he projected most effortlessly was his love. Jews, Elie would often say, are a people of unparalleled gratitude — so much so, he pointed out, that they begin the day by thanking God for opening their eyes. Elie’s greatest joy came in the time he spent with those closest to him, his wife, Marion, and his son, Elisha. A few years ago, when he was recovering from heart surgery, Elie was visited by his beloved grandson, Elijah, then just 5 years old. Here is how Elie describes the encounter: “I hug my grandson and tell him, ‘Every time I see you, my life becomes a gift.’ Elijah observes me closely as I speak and… responds: ‘Grandpa, you know that I love you, and I see you are in pain. Tell me: If I loved you more, would you be in less pain?’”

Elie writes, “I am convinced God at that moment is smiling as He contemplates His creation.” I am so very sad that my children will not have the chance to talk metaphysics with the master. But let me offer another reason that God is smiling today. As our nation goes through difficult days, “Night” is a book that is firmly ingrained in that small canon of literature that kids and young adults read when they are growing up in America. Alongside Atticus Finch and Scout, one of the narrators that will have an early shot at shaping our children’s moral universe is 16-year-old Elie. So, while the void is enormous — above all, for Marion, Elisha, and the rest of the family — and the void is enormous for our world, I too am filled with profound joy knowing that my 7-year-old boy and my 4-year-old girl — like Elie’s grandkids, and their children after them — will wade into big questions for the first time with Elie Wiesel as their guide. That they will be less alone for having Elie with them. That “Night” will be one of the works that lay the scaffolding for their moral architecture. All because Elie Wiesel was optimistic enough to keep going — and to find the strength to shine his light on us all.

From the new introduction by Samantha Power to “Night” by Elie Wiesel, published by Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright 1958 by Les Éditions de Minuit. Translation copyright 2006 by Marion Wiesel. Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech and Nobel Lecture copyright 1986 by The Nobel Foundation. Introduction 2017 by Samantha Power.  

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Night by Ellie Wiesel Essay (Book Review)

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.

Why Elie Wiesel Wrote Night: Understanding the Author’s Purpose

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Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, is a powerful account of his experiences during the Holocaust. The book is a haunting reminder of the atrocities committed during World War II and the impact they had on millions of people.

Many readers have wondered why Wiesel felt compelled to write this memoir, and what motivated him to share his story with the world.

Elie Wiesel was a survivor of the Holocaust, and his experiences during that time had a profound impact on him. Night is a deeply personal account of his time in concentration camps, and it is clear that he wrote the book as a way to process his own trauma and to bear witness to the horrors that he and so many others endured. In addition to being a memoir,

Night is also a work of historical importance, providing a firsthand account of one of the darkest periods in human history.

Wiesel’s decision to write Night was also motivated by a desire to educate others about the Holocaust. He believed that it was important for people to understand the atrocities that had been committed so that they could work to prevent similar tragedies from happening in the future.

Through his writing, Wiesel hoped to give a voice to the millions of people who had been silenced by the Holocaust, and to ensure that their stories would never be forgotten.

Historical Context and Background

The Holocaust and Its Impact

The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was a genocide of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime during World War II. The Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, believed in the superiority of the Aryan race and sought to eliminate those they considered “inferior,” including Jews, Romani people, disabled individuals, homosexuals, and others. The Holocaust had a profound impact on the world and continues to be a significant event in human history.

Sighet and the Wiesel Family

Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, a town in Romania that was annexed by Hungary in 1940. The Wiesel family was deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition and Elie grew up studying the Torah and Talmud. In 1944, when Elie was just 15 years old, his family was forced into a ghetto in Sighet along with other Jewish families. Later that year, they were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp in Poland.

Elie and his father were later transferred to Buchenwald, another concentration camp, where his father died just weeks before the camp was liberated by American forces in 1945. Elie was one of the few members of his family to survive the Holocaust.

The experience of the Holocaust had a profound impact on Elie Wiesel and influenced much of his writing. In his memoir Night, Wiesel recounts his experiences in the concentration camps and the loss of his family. The book has become a powerful testimony to the atrocities committed during the Holocaust and a reminder of the importance of remembering and bearing witness to such events.

Elie Wiesel as a Witness

Elie Wiesel wrote the book Night as a witness to the atrocities he and his family endured during the Holocaust. As a survivor of the concentration camps, Wiesel felt a deep responsibility to bear witness to the horrors he witnessed and to ensure that the world never forgets the atrocities committed against the Jewish people.

Personal Suffering and Family Loss

Wiesel’s own experiences of suffering and loss are evident throughout Night. He was only 15 years old when he and his family were deported to Auschwitz, where he was separated from his mother and sister and witnessed their deaths in the gas chambers. The loss of his father, who died shortly before the camp’s liberation, was another devastating blow.

The Role of Faith and Religion

Wiesel’s faith was also deeply shaken by his experiences in the concentration camps. In Night, he describes how he struggled to reconcile the suffering he witnessed with his belief in a just and merciful God. His experiences led him to question the role of God in human suffering and to explore the limits of faith in the face of unimaginable horror.

Despite his doubts, Wiesel remained committed to his Jewish faith and drew strength from the traditions and teachings of the Talmud and Torah. His studies of Kabbalah and Cabbala also played an important role in his spiritual journey.

Through Night, Wiesel bears witness to the suffering of millions of Jews during the Holocaust and reminds us of the importance of never forgetting the atrocities of the past. His powerful testimony serves as a reminder of the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable horrors, and his commitment to justice and humanity continues to inspire people around the world.

Literary Significance of ‘Night’

From ‘Un di Velt Hot Geshvign’ to ‘La Nuit’

The book ‘Night’ was originally written in Yiddish by Elie Wiesel under the title ‘Un di Velt Hot Geshvign’ which translates to ‘And the World Remained Silent’. The book was later translated into French by Marion Wiesel and published under the title ‘La Nuit. The book is a memoir that chronicles the experiences of Elie Wiesel and his family during the Holocaust.

‘Night’ is considered a significant work of literature because it is a firsthand account of the horrors of the Holocaust. The book has been translated into over 30 languages and has become a classic of Holocaust literature. The book has been widely read and studied in schools and universities around the world.

Narrative Style and Structure

The narrative style of ‘Night’ is subjective, and the narrator is Elie Wiesel himself. The book is written in a first-person point of view, which adds to the authenticity of the story. The book is structured as a series of short chapters , which makes it easy to read and understand.

The book is divided into three parts: the first part describes the experiences of the author and his family in the ghetto and their deportation to Auschwitz; the second part describes the author’s experiences in the concentration camp; and the third part describes the author’s liberation and his struggle to come to terms with his experiences.

The narrative style and structure of ‘Night’ contribute to its literary significance. The book is a powerful and moving account of the Holocaust, and it has had a profound impact on readers around the world.

Themes and Symbolism

Darkness and Night as Metaphors

One of the most prominent themes in Elie Wiesel’s Night is the use of darkness and night as metaphors for the absence of God and the horrors of the Holocaust. The title itself, Night, refers to the darkness that enveloped the concentration camps and the darkness that descended upon the Jewish people during this time. Throughout the book, Wiesel uses vivid imagery to convey the sense of darkness and despair that permeated every aspect of life in the camps.

The darkness also serves as a metaphor for the absence of God in the face of such evil and suffering. Wiesel, who was a deeply religious person before the Holocaust, struggles with his faith throughout the book. He questions how God could allow such atrocities to occur and ultimately concludes that God must be dead. The darkness and night that surround him represent the spiritual darkness and emptiness that he feels.

The Struggle for Humanity in Inhuman Conditions

Another key theme in Night is the struggle for humanity in inhuman conditions. The book portrays the dehumanizing effects of the Holocaust on both the victims and the perpetrators. The SS officers and kapos, who are supposed to be human beings, become monsters who treat their fellow human beings with unimaginable cruelty. The prisoners, on the other hand, are reduced to mere numbers and stripped of their humanity.

Despite these inhuman conditions, Wiesel and some of the other prisoners try to hold onto their humanity. They form bonds with each other, help each other survive, and try to hold onto their dignity in the face of the horrors they are experiencing. This struggle for humanity is symbolized by the fire that burns at the end of the book. While the fire represents death and destruction, it also represents the human spirit that refuses to be extinguished.

Overall, Night is a powerful and haunting book that explores the darkest depths of human experience . Through its use of powerful imagery and symbolism, it conveys the horror and despair of the Holocaust, as well as the resilience and strength of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable suffering.

Impact and Legacy

Educational influence and remembrance.

Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night has had a significant impact on education and remembrance of the Holocaust. The book has been widely used in classrooms around the world to teach students about the atrocities of the Holocaust and the importance of empathy and compassion. It has been translated into over 30 languages and has sold millions of copies worldwide.

Night has also had a profound impact on the way the Holocaust is remembered. Wiesel’s vivid descriptions of the horrors he experienced during the Holocaust have helped to ensure that the world never forgets the atrocities that took place. The book has become a symbol of the Holocaust and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable evil.

Wiesel’s Role as a Nobel Laureate

Elie Wiesel’s impact on literature and genocide awareness was recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The Nobel Committee praised Wiesel for his “practical work in the cause of peace” and for being a “messenger to mankind”. Wiesel used his platform as a Nobel Laureate to advocate for human rights and to speak out against genocide and other atrocities around the world.

Wiesel’s legacy as a survivor, writer, and activist continues to inspire people around the world. His message of hope, empathy, and remembrance serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of standing up against injustice and fighting for a better world.

In conclusion, Elie Wiesel’s Night has had a lasting impact on education, remembrance, and genocide awareness. His role as a Nobel Laureate further solidified his legacy as a powerful voice for human rights and justice.

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Night Paperback – January 16, 2006

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Book 1 of 3 Night Trilogy
• Print length 120 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Hill and Wang
• Publication date January 16, 2006
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.39 x 8.26 inches
• ISBN-10 9780374500016
• ISBN-13 978-0374500016
• Lexile measure 570L
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com review.

“A slim volume of terrifying power.” ― The New York Times

“Required reading for all of humanity.” ― Oprah

“Wiesel has taken his own anguish and imaginatively metamorphosed it into art.” ― Curt Leviant, Saturday Review

“To the best of my knowledge no one has left behind him so moving a record.” ― Alfred Kazin

“What makes this book so chilling is not the pretense of what happened but a very real description of every thought, fear and the apathetic attitude demonstrated as a response . . . Night, Wiesel's autobiographical masterpiece, is a heartbreaking memoir. Wiesel has taken his painful memories and channeled them into an amazing document which chronicles his most intense emotions every step along the way.” ― Jose Del Real, Anchorage Daily News

“As a human document, Night is almost unbearably painful, and certainly beyond criticism.” ― A. Alvarez, Commentary

From the Inside Flap

About the author.

Elie Wiesel is the author of more than fifty books, including Night , his harrowing account of his experiences in Nazi concentration camps. The book, first published in 1955, was selected for Oprah's Book Club in 2006. Wiesel is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and lives with his family in New York City. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Hill and wang, chapter one.

Excerpted from Night by ELIE WIESEL Copyright ©1985 by Elie Wiesel. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0374500010
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hill and Wang; Revised edition (January 16, 2006)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 120 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780374500016
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374500016
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 570L
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.39 x 8.26 inches
• #2 in Jewish Holocaust History
• #3 in Historical European Biographies (Books)
• #15 in Memoirs (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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Book Thoughts | Night by Elie Wiesel

Night was selected by my book group for our June read. Our wives (we’re all men) give us a lot of flak because so many of our discussions tend to come back to war, and after reading this one, I’m not sure we’re really going to break ground when we meet next month to discuss it. Sure, it’s about the the Holocaust, about Wiesel’s experience at Auschwitz and Buna and other camps, and the horrors that the Nazi’s imposed as they stripped Jews of their humanity. But, still: World War II. Nazi’s. It’s not new ground.

And, yet, there’s something here in Night that should never be forgotten. We live in comfortable times–even in spite of apparently volatile and strange politics, where a game show host cum faux billionaire with a penchant for jingoistic and inflammatory rhetoric can garner the nomination for president of the United States…and the only other choice Americans have is a woman with a tenuous relationship to truth but an easy willingness to sell her time and access to the highest bidders.

But none of that compares to the dark and in humane place that Germany took all of Europe and much of the world to in the 1940s. Yet, you can read all the histories, statistics, and maps, and none will give a picture of what it was to be a Jew in Hitler’s “Final Solution” quite the same way that the personal accounts of the survivors will provide. Of those, Weisel’s voice is vivid, economical, and potent. He tells his story with a parsimony that lends itself to someone who has spent innumerable hours reliving and retelling the events of his early teen years, from his home in Hungarian Transylvania in training to become a Jewish scholar, to collection and detention in the ghetto, to Auschwitz and…well.

Wiesel wastes no words in the telling of his story, leaving the reader to draw his own lessons and conclusions. The result was powerful, moving, poignant, and heart-wrenching. With precision and coldness, the Nazis stripped away the humanity from millions of innocents, Jews, gypsies and others found on the wrong side of Hitler’s Final Solution. Wiesel does not concern himself with history, though; his story is personal, his own fight to survive and retain his humanity, to not betray his fellow man, his father, and himself. I couldn’t put Night  down. It’s not a pleasant tale, but perhaps we need to be reminded, regularly, lest we allow the inhumanity to slip in again. Perhaps no other generation in history has been as blessed, materially and otherwise, as mine, and yet, we have not become wiser for it, but only more entitled.

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Dan Burton lives in Millcreek, Utah, where he practices law by day and everything else by night. He reads about history, politics, science, medicine, and current events, as well as more serious genres such as science fiction and fantasy.

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Historical Context

By elie wiesel.

'Night' is Elie Wiesel’s best-known novel, one that encapsulates, in a semi-fictional way, his experiences in the Holocaust.

About the Book

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.

This includes his struggle with religion, his relationship with his father, and the loss of the majority of his family . 

Publication Context 

Night , in the version most commonly read today, was published in 1960. The original edition was written in Yiddish and then in French. The novel follows Wiesel’s experiences during the Holocaust and WWII. Wiesel was sixteen years old when he was liberated by the United States Army in April of 1945. Unfortunately, he lost his father, mother, and little sister, as well as innumerable friends and more distant relatives. 

The novel has since been translated into more than 30 languages and is read in schools throughout the United States and worldwide. It is also considered to be one of the most important novels in which a Holocaust survivor recorded their experiences .

It should be noted that through the translations from Yiddish to French and English, the book appears to have lost some of its original anger and truthful horror. Due to this fact, and Wiesel’s own altering of events, the book is usually categorized as novel/autobiography, semi-fictional novel, as well as other similar categorizations. Wiesel, on the other hand, called it his deposition. When speaking about the impact of the novel, critics have often cited its simplicity and minimalism as the main source of its impact. 

WWII and the Holocaust 

It’s impossible to understand Night without having some broader understanding of the historical context surrounding the novel and everything that happens to the protagonist within it. 

While the broader history of Germany is applicable to an understanding of the novel, it’s simpler to start with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and his campaign to blame Jews for the German depression post-WWI. He appointed himself Führer of Germany and began to rebuild Germany at the expense of European Jews.

Although other cultural groups were also persecuted, it was the Jews of Europe who were faced with the greatest horrors under Hitler’s reign. Germany fell in line behind Hitler, forming the Nazi party which espoused the view that the Germans were a master race, “Aryan,” and that anyone else would pollute their gene pool and was a threat to the reconstruction of the homeland. The Nuremberg Laws implemented in 1935, as well as others, dehumanized the German Jews and placed restrictions on their lives. They were defined as separate citizens and stripped of their civil rights. 

On Kristallnacht, which occurred in November of 1938, Jewish homes and businesses were destroyed and confiscated. Men, women, and children were deported. A year later, Germany invaded Poland, beginning the Second World War. Ghettos were established in Poland, and the yellow stars were implemented as a way of separating the Jewish population from everyone else. It was in 1941 that the Nazis began to exterminate the Jews. Over the course of a year, 1,500,000 Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen, or firing squads. The first death camp, Chelmno, was established at the end of 1941. 

Hitler was not content with the suppression of a large segment of the population in Germany. The party developed the “Final Solution,” a plan to exterminate European Jews as quickly and effectively as possible. Camps included Auschwitz/Birkenau, Treblinka, and Belzec. The Jews that were moved into these camps, out of the ghettos, believed that they were being resettled. When Germany and the rest of the Axis powers were defeated in 1945, it was revealed that six to eleven million European Jews had been murdered. This was in addition to Gypsies, LGBTQ people, and others who were considered as threats to the purity of the German bloodline. 

Auschwitz, in which Wiesel spent much of his time during the Holocaust, operated through the summer of 1944. In the fall of that year, Allied troops liberated the camps throughout Germany while the Nazis tried to hide evidence of their crimes. This meant that many prisoners, including Wiesel, were forced on “death marches” in which they ran between camps in horrible, freezing conditions. 

The Jews had been gathered into concentration camps, such as Auschwitz/Birkenau, and either forced into slave labor, or immediately exterminate in gas chambers, by firing squads, and other terrifying means. The Nazis showed no mercy to men, women, or children. 

Personal Context

The author of Night, Elie Wiesel, based the character of Eliezer on his personal experiences during the Holocaust . While there are several differences between Eliezer and the author, their lives are basically the same. 

From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me. A raw quote by Eliezer from Night

Elie came from a highly religious, Jewish family and was born in Transylvania in 1928. His father, Shlomo, was a shopkeeper and Wiesel himself spent time as a child and young man studying the traditional Jewish texts, the Torah, and the Talmud. He was a thoughtful young man who cared about his studies more than most of his peers. It wasn’t until 1944 that the Hungarian Jews, of which Wiesel was one, were affected by the Second World War. 

In March of that year, the German army occupied Hungary and installed a new government that was dependent on Germany rather than the citizens of the country it was governing. Eichmann, one of the main orchestrators of the final solution came to Hungary to oversee the operation of the concentration camps. By the spring of 1944, the Jewish community was almost entirely deported to camps in Germany and Poland. By the end of the war, the Nazis murdered 560,000 Hungarian Jews. 

Wiesel lived and grew up in a small village, Sighet. Before the beginning of the War, 15,000 Jews lived in Sighet but by the end, there were only 50 remaining families. Wiesel was deported to Auschwitz in May of the same year, the site of more than a million deaths. During the Holocaust, Wiesel lost his mother, little sister, and father. 

It was only until Wiesel had observed a vow of silence for ten years after the war, that Wiesel started speaking out. He published Un di Velt Hot Geshvign, or And the World Remained Silent in English that was eventually condensed and republished as Night. 

About Emma Baldwin

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.

Cite This Page

Baldwin, Emma " Night Historical Context 📖 " Book Analysis , https://bookanalysis.com/elie-wiesel/night/historical-context/ . Accessed 12 April 2024.

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