"Night" Elie Wiesel

There is a glass-case for exhibits on my way to church. One year there was a display of pictures of people from concentration camps during World War II. I remember the first day when I saw it. I asked myself, “What illness made them look like skeletons?” Today I know the answer; it was Holocaust, the greatest disease of the 20th century. We deal with this tragedy in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night.
Since this novel is actually a memoir, it is told in the first person, Elie Wiesel. He relays his traumatic experience of being sent to two concentration camps: Auschwitz and Buchenwald. When he was only fifteen, as the German army crossed the Hungarian border in 1941, the Jews from his town of Sighnet were rounded up and transported to Auschwitz. Wiesel stayed there with his father under inhumane conditions, while working for the oppressor on the field. They are then deported to another camp with slightly better conditions, Buna in Buchenwald, and stay there until the Americans liberate them from the German’s hands. Severe conditions, lack of food and medical care have a horrible effect on the prisoners. After the manumission, Elie looks in a mirror and “a corpse gazed back at [him].” This fully describes the horrifying appearance of the captives from these camps; no wonder a six-year-old might have thought of them as skeletons.
The most memorable character in the story is the young boy who is hanged in Buna. He was a servant of one Dutch Oberkapo who was accused of cooperating with the opposition movement. The Oberkapo was killed in Auschwitz, but the Germans keep the boy, so they could torture him until he confesses. The youngster doesn’t utter a word. He is eventually hanged in front of the whole prisoner block. Since he possesses refined and beautiful face, the prisoners think he is an angel. The boy does not weigh much, so he suffers the agony of slow suffocation, making the indifferent prisoners cry out in grief. The hanging becomes symbolic. The author answered a cry “Where is God now?” with words, “Here He is- He is hanging here on this gallows.” These are very bitter words, which makes even the evening soup taste like carrion.
Elie Wiesel uses a lot of foreshadowing in his memoir. The most vivid among these is of Madame Schchter, one of the fellow citizens of Sighnet who was in the car with Elie. She cries in agony about the fire that she sees out of the window. There is no fire, so people in the car tell her to be quiet then eventually beat her. They assume she goes insane due to the loss of her family. Everyone realizes, however, what she means once they arrive in Auschwitz. By then it is too late. The smell of burning flesh makes them dizzy. When they saw the furnaces and the inflamed people inside they can’t believe that it is real. Wiesel says he will never forget the small furnace where the children are sent. The flame not only consumes the babies, but also the author’s faith as well.
The message of this memoir is quite clear: Holocaust is the most horrible action one party can inflict upon another. Most importantly, there is a warning here against genocide, that it can happen anytime and anywhere in the world as it did during World War II in Central Europe. We have to learn from this period of world history, and never repeat what the Germans did to their prisoners of war. We are still not able to calm ourselves after the lecture of Night by Elie Wiesel. How could we ever endure the shock of a real murder of such measure?
Night is a very good, although disturbing memoir. It made me think, oncee more, about the Holocaust. I suddenly remembered that dim, autumn day when I saw the exhibition in the case. I have read many books dealing with Holocaust. Night is not the most powerful book, but it still leaves a lasting impression of disgust and pity. I just hope that there is no one that will want to continue Hitler’s hatred that bears misery to the hated.