Night

Rating:
Summary: Horrible
Review: I wish I could say this is book is fiction, but the fact that the book is retelling the author's actual experience is sickening. The book is an easy read; I read the book in about 90 minutes. How horrible can humanity be? Read this book to see the depths of human wickedness. The only thing worse than the gruesome history of the concentration camps is the group of people who are trying to deny the existence of the holocaust. The horrifying events involving the holocaust need to be remembered so that we do not let this type of thing happen again.

In the book, God becomes forgotten because of human suffering. This conclusion comes from the presupposition that God exists for human comfort on earth. Surely the Jew does not believe that God exists for their comfort, but because they go through suffering the main character in the book abandons his belief in God. This is an illogical decision made by the main character. Even if God existed for human comfort, surely that comfort should never come on this earth, but in the afterlife. Though the main character went through incredibly awful situations, he sold out on his beliefs. Too bad.

Rating:
Summary: Horrifying Account of the Holocaust
Review: Night is the story of Elie Wiesel's experience in the German concentration camp Auschwitz during World War II. He calls it a "nightmare-" this is an understatement. One can wake up from a nightmare. The horror Wiesel lived had no outlet.

A Jew from Transylvania, Wiesel grew up with a strong religious background. He found an unlikely teacher in a man named "Moshe the Beadle." Moshe taught his pupil that man could not understand God's answers to man's questions; man could only ask God the right questions. Would Elie's time in Auschwitz destroy his budding faith? The book explores faith in a searing way. A must read for all. Ages 16 and up.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece in Holocaust Literature
Review: If I had a list of required reading for the entire human population, Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, "Night", would be at the top of the list.

Reaching back into his Nazi-tormented childhood, Wiesel utilizes a rare literary talent: the ability to convey a child's impressions and experiences during one of the darkest times in our history through the wisdom of an adult's eyes. His unique power of words, combined with his incredible courage and fierce determination, continue to amaze me each time I read this book.

To one who has never read an autobiography on the Holocaust: brace yourself. To one who considers her or himself to be an authority on the Holocaust: brace yourself. For what is contained in these pages is like nothing you have seen nor read, and it is nothing like you will ever see nor read again.

I won't describe the details of "Night" -- not for fear of negatively impacting the experience first-time readers will have when they take this book into their hands -- but out of respect for the realization that I am simply incapable of doing so. It is a journey that each reader must take on her or his own.

For those of us lucky enough to never have experienced the horrific tragedy that was the Holocaust, it is the very least that we can do.

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: A frightening look at our species and civilization
Review: This is simply scary.

I'm rather familiar with Transylvania, and it was shocking to see how quickly relatively normal life can be disrupted, as authorities suddenly appear and, after a very brief pause, round up huge numbers of people, deport them, and massacre them. In Germany, it took years for the National Socialist government to implement a policy of complete annihilation of the Jewish population. In Transylvania, this happened in a much shorter time. It is mind-boggling.

I think you can understand that I was in no hurry to read this book. Too depressing! But I finally did so. And I looked for silver linings in this huge cloud. Notes of hope.

I didn't find many. Sure, there were plenty of good people. But they didn't seem to make enough of a difference most of the time.

Of course, the details in the book are heartbreaking, right through to the final words, where the author looks at himself in the mirror at the end of his ordeal and sees "a corpse" looking back at him, a face he says he never forgot.

Others ask about what human beings are really like, or what God is really like, or how one ought to behave. Well, I asked myself these sorts of questions too, and I doubt that I have anything new or useful to contribute about them. Still, what most struck me about these questions was the role of authority. We are used to obeying commands. When we're told to report to a place at a certain time or face consequences, we do it. And so on. But in that time period, obeying commands was an ideal way to get oneself killed and also enable more killing. The best chance of survival was to disobey just those commands which looked most important to obey. And if one generalizes, what kind of world would we have if everyone were so suspicious of others that we rejected most of their advice and orders?

Somehow, I concluded that of all the crimes, the worst may have been coming up with rules, commands, judgments, and laws that were designed to hurt and kill others. These remove the trust we need to have both in our fellow humans and in our most cherished institutions.

As I said, I didn't find much to be happy about in this book. Still, I highly recommend it. It's well written, and I think we owe it to ourselves to read it.

Rating:
Summary: Its Real!
Review: Night, but Elie Wiesel is a touching story about life during the German Holocaust. The memoir is told by the author Elie Wiesel himself. He tells of his struggle to stay alive, and of his faith in God that was so strong, but lost along the way. Night tells of the torture the Germans went through to be an equal in society.
When reading this memoir you will have to ask yourself, if the people committing these crimes were human, and if they were human did they have any soul. It seemed they have hate built up in them that was so strong they were trained to explode and kill the Jews. This was one side of the Holocaust the main side, the dark side, the in human side.
The other side of the Holocaust which was rare was the good side, or almost normal side. The side where the people who were committing these crimes looked at themselves are realized they were wrong, and would sometimes give leeway to the Jews. The would sometimes in the dark give words of encouragement.
This book really made me think. It was touching, yet frightening to know that these cruel crimes where happening physically in the world. It was real, it is real. Some parts I had to put the book down because it was disturbing. I would tell everyone to read this book.


Rating:
Summary: Night Review
Review: This autobiographical novel tells the story of Eliezer, a teenage Jewish boy from the small Transylvanian village of Sighet. He is 17 when transported to Auschwitz, Buna, and finally Buchenwald with his father. Eliezer loses his faith, argues with God, and is sustained only by the need to care for his father. Instead of God, he is rescued by an American tank. The story is a sort of Exodus in reverse, with humiliation and death as its destination, not liberation and triumph. _Night_ was the first part of a trilogy that included _Dawn_ and _The Accident_, and for these and his other Holocaust studies Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
This book details the horrors 15-year-old Elie Wiesel went through during his death camp experience. An extremely religious teen from childhood, he struggled with his religious beliefs during the Holocaust. While struggling to keep himself and his father alive, Elie also goes through severe religious struggles along with beatings, starvation, and disease

Rating:
Summary: Expansion of knowlegde
Review: The author of this memoir had no problems teling us what really happened during the rein of the Germans. Many of the things that happened in this book were incredibly gruesome.I would have to recommend this book for a mature audience. there are crucial points in this book where you feel that if that were to happen to you, you would have reacted differently.

To give an honest opinion on this book, if i didnt have to read it in class I probabaly wouldn't have picked it up.But once I opened it I couldn't close it. I had to find out what would happen. I had begun to feel if I put the book down before it was finished i would miss something.

This book would be great to read if you want to get an eyewitness feel on what took place. Like most peope want to hear the how peoplw were treated and why they were treated this way. If thats not enough you might want to go to BlockBusters and pick up Schindlers List. This way you'll be able to see what happened and not just read it.



Rating:
Summary: one night in night
Review: The book Night is a text which comments on the brutal incidents of the Holocaust.It takes you emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and visually through the trials and tribulations of Jews and other unfortunate captives during this period.
In the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, you get to live out the nightmare of the holocaust through the eyes of a 13 yr old Jew boy. This book really helps the reader visualize events by giving descriptive details of every element.It takes you through the happier times and the burdens of the father and son relationship.Throughout the book you will definetly notice the disrespectful oversight the SS officers, Gestapo, and ultimetly even the Jews have for a human life. From the emancipated lives to ones of bondage in the ghetto, from children being incenerated to the lenching of a single child, to the concentration camp and finally refuge, this book unquestionably takes you through everything.
Night was very enlightening. I cant say I liked the book because it was disturbing, nor that I disliked it because it was informative. I would reccommend this book to everyone, because I feel everyone should know the genocide that occured.


Rating:
Summary: Learning to conceive of minds different from one's own.
Review: God bless Elie Weisel, the author of "Night," for sharing with others a sense of what it was like to try to exist behind barbed wire in a Nazi concentration camp. Such unconscionable inhumanity should, in of itself, confirm the notion that "Evil" does exist in the world, and can rear its head if given the opportunity to do so & not resisted. How many times must this lesson be learned? Cambodia, Rwanda---to lesser extents in Iraq (mass graves of 100s of thousands of Saddams victims), Bosnia, and now in Sudan. It's not the possibility of "evil" that is our problem though. It is our unwillingness to recognize it swiftly enough so that we may be able to do something about it in time. With Sudan look how the world continues to give that government the benefit of the doubt as thousands are exterminated---with only Colin Powell & President Bush calling it what it is: genocide. Yet the world....papered over reports of Lenin & Stalin's butchery until such dirty deeds were completed by said dictators; looked the other way in Cambodia; ignored Rwandans; and stood up for Saddam Hussein even after 17 United Nations' Resolutions declaring him in breech of international law. Mass murder by brutal regimes may be impossible to prevent in all cases, but we sure can try our best therein & books such as Mr. Weisel's---showing the face of evil, so we can better recognize it for what it is---are must reading, consequently. I'm heartened that many teenage students are exposed to this book in schools across the USA annually; for only through education can people become men & women "of the world", intellectually speaking; and only by becoming such can come "to conceive of minds of men markedly different from themselves"---ie., ones instilled by evil. The words are Soviet historian Robert Conquest's, one of the few lonely voices who sought to enlighten the world vis-a-vis Stalin's murderous behavior, when liberal and leftist's excused such away with the notion that "one has to break a few eggs to make an omelette"---the idea that building socialist ends outweighed treating humans as living/feeling beings. That's why Elie Weisel so often speaks publicly that to forget what happened in Nazi Germany is not going to help us prevent incarnations of such behavior from occurring in the future. We are not lving up to his admonitions, of course, but---thankfully, we are beginning to make some headway of late (Mr. Weisel himself supporting President Bush's confrontation with Saddam Hussein.) Having just read "Saddam: King of Terror" by Con Coughlin---how Iraqis (by the tens/hundreds of thosands) were tortured by being lowered into boiling water and/or acid, amongst other unspeakable methods short of a bullet to the head for saying "Boo", Mr. Weisel's book/experience/words remain ever relevent still. P.S. I listened to the audio version of "Night" and hearing such words that make up this book were perhaps more moving than had I re-read them (having first read the book some years back). Hence, I offer up the suggestion of considering the audio edition of this book as an alternitive to the bound version. Cheers!