Night by Elie Wiesel
"Night" by Elie Wiesel is a poignant memoir that recounts the author’s harrowing experiences as a Jewish teenager during the Holocaust, specifically from 1941 to 1945. The narrative explores themes of identity, faith, and the struggle to understand human suffering amidst the atrocities of concentration camps. Central to the story is Wiesel’s transformation from a hopeful young boy with a deep faith in God to a survivor grappling with profound despair and loss.
The memoir highlights the chilling experiences of the Jewish community facing denial of the impending dangers and the horrors of deportation to places like Auschwitz. As Wiesel witnesses unimaginable brutality, including the deaths of his family members, he confronts the erosion of his faith and humanity in a world marked by cruelty. His journey culminates in a fight for survival, ultimately leading to liberation at Buchenwald as American forces arrive.
"Night" serves not only as a personal testimony but also as a broader reflection on the nature of evil, identity, and the quest for meaning in the aftermath of trauma. The memoir remains a crucial work for understanding the Holocaust and its lasting impact on individual lives and collective memory.
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Subject Terms
Night by Elie Wiesel
First published:Un di Velt hot geshvign, 1956; La Nuit, 1958 (English translation, 1960)
The Work
Night, Elie Wiesel’s memoir of the Holocaust, tells of his concentration camp experience. Encompassing events from the end of 1941 to 1945, the book ponders a series of questions, whose answers, Moché the Beadle, who was miraculously saved from an early German massacre, reminds the boy, lie “only within yourself.”
Moché, who teaches the boy the beauty of biblical studies, is a strange character with a clownish awkwardness, more God’s madman than mentally ill; he is also a recurring figure in later Wiesel works. After Moché returns to town to describe the horrible scenes he has witnessed, no one listens to this apparently insane rambler who, like Cassandra, repeats his warnings in vain. The clown, a moving and tragic fool, is unable to convince the Jewish community of its impending doom. Despite arrests, ghettoizations, and mass deportations, the Jews still cannot believe him, even as they embark for Auschwitz.
In 1944, the young narrator is initiated into the horrors of the archipelago of Nazi death camps. There he becomes A-7713, deprived of name, self-esteem, identity. He observes and undergoes hunger, exhaustion, cold, suffering, brutality, executions, cruelty, breakdown in personal relationships, and flames and smoke coming from crematories in the German death factories. In the barracks of terror, where he sees the death of his mother and seven-year-old sister, his religious faith is corroded. The world no longer represents God’s mind. Comparing himself to Job, he bitterly asks God for an explanation of such evil. The boy violently rejects God’s presence and God’s justice, love, and mercy: “I was alone—terribly alone in a world without God and without man.”
After a death march and brutally cruel train ride, young Wiesel and his father arrive at Buchenwald, where his father soon dies of malnutrition and dysentery. As in a daze, the son waits to be killed by fleeing German soldiers. Instead, he coolly notes, on April 11, 1945, “at about six o’clock in the evening, the first American tank stood at the gates of Buchenwald.”
In addition to wanting to elucidate the unfathomable secret of death and theodicy, the narrator lived a monstrous, stunted, and isolated existence as an adult. He saw himself as victim, executioner, and spectator. By affirming that he was not divided among the three but was in fact all of them at once, he was able to resolve his identity problem. The autobiography’s last image shows Wiesel looking at himself in a mirror: The body and soul are wounded, but the night and its nightmares are finally over.
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. Elie Wiesel’s “Night.” Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2001.
Cargas, Harry James. Conversations with Elie Wiesel. South Bend, Ind.: Justice Books, 1992. A collection of interviews with the author that cover his life, politics, and literary works. Wiesel speaks frankly and extensively about his childhood in Sighet and of his time in the concentration camps—events that formed the basis for Night.
Estess, Ted L. Elie Wiesel. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980. An analysis of Wiesel’s key literary works, including Night, Dawn, and The Accident. Night receives extended discussion in chapter 2.
Fine, Ellen S. Legacy of Night: The Literary Universe of Elie Wiesel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982. A critical study of Night and Wiesel’s other Holocaust works.
Patterson, David, Alan L. Berger, and Sarita Cargas, eds. Encyclopedia of Holocaust Literature. Westport, Conn.: Oryx Press, 2002.
Rittner, Carol, ed. Elie Wiesel: Between Memory and Hope. New York: New York University Press, 1990. A collection of seventeen essays on Wiesel’s life and literary works. Night receives an extended discussion in three essays and is mentioned in several others.
Schwarz, Daniel R. “The Ethics of Reading Elie Wiesel’s Night.” Style 32, no. 2 (Summer, 1998): 221-243.
Walker, Graham B., Jr. Elie Wiesel: A Challenge to Theology. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1988. Focuses on Wiesel’s religious dilemmas as they are reflected in his major literary works.
Wiesel, Elie. All Rivers Run to the Sea. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
Wiesel, Elie. “Why I Write.” In Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology, edited by Jules Chametzky, John Felstiner, Hilene Flanzbaum, and Kathryn Hellerstein. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001.