Every human on this planet should read this book!
Elie Wiesel is a Nobel Prize winning author and Night was his first step into the arena. But his aim was not to become a world renown author and historian but rather to tell his personal story of the incomprehensible Holocaust. One of the passing characters in the book escapes from the concentration camp and returns to his home town to describe the atrocities he saw, and no one believes him, because how could human beings perpetrate such deeds, and how could others possibly bear them. Elie Wiesel continued his mission throughout his life with the intent of immortalizing those who died, including his entire family (except for one brother if I remember correctly). He campaigned during the rest of his life for many locations of genocide in the world, but first and foremost in the book tells his very personal story of the concentration camp inhumanity, torture and murder. He bravely describes the torment of his father and Elie's own disappointment in himself, a boy merely 16 years old, in his passivity. He makes the characters of his family come alive and you feel the grief and tragedy in their murder. But some main impressions are people's disbelief that what they heard could actually happen to them, and later the belief that tomorrow would be better but it never was. He is brave to be able to describe in detail the hunger, flith, exhaustion and death of so many in a way that lets you see the horror but not so vividly that you have to skip pages, which often happens to me with Holocaust descriptions. I think I skipped one incident. I was glad to see it available as a kindle book because I always felt it was a hole in my cultural experience that I had not read it. It is a classic and I hope it will continue to be read by many. Given that Elie Wiesel died this year I felt it provided a greater understanding of who he was and what he and his people went through. May it never happen again.!
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