Book Review: The Night Trilogy Consisting Of A Memoir, Translated By Marion Wiesel, And Two Novels: Night, Dawn, Day
Author: Elie Wiesel
Publisher: Hill and Wang A Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
339 pages, paperback
Author
Elie Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor, award-winning author of 57 books, Nobel Peace Prize winner, professor, and political activist.
Night
In his "Preface to the New Translation" of Night, Elie Wiesel begins by stating: "If in my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one." (p. 5) He then claims that it is the key to understanding all of his other works. Then he goes on to reflect on why he wrote Night.
Night was a testimony written by Wiesel as a witness to what happened in the Holocaust. It was written as a moral obligation to prevent the enemy from succeeding in erasing their crimes from history. "Convinced that this period in history would be judged one day, I knew I must bear witness." (p. 6)
According to Wiesel: "Only those who experienced Auschwitz know what it was. Others will never know." (p. 7) Hence the necessity of Holocaust survivors being witnesses and bearing testimony to the world.
Wiesel grew up in the town of Sighet in Transylvania. He was a devout Jew who studied Talmud, the Jewish mysticism of Kabbalah and attended synagogue.
Wiesel describes how his mentor, the Beadle, Moishe had escaped from the Nazis and came back to Sighet to warn the people there of how the Nazis were killing Jews and that their lives were in danger. Tragically no one, including Wiesel, believed him. Some thought he was even mad.
No one believed the Nazis would come to Sighet, until one day they did.
When the Nazis came, they systematically destroyed the rights, privileges and freedoms of the Jews in Sighet. They also took their silver, gold, jewelry, and other valuables. Then they were loaded into box cars and taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
On the first day in the concentration camp Wiesel witnessed people being thrown into a burning pit, including young children and babies. Witnessing this evil, he wrote:
"Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes." (p. 52)
One day, a young boy along with two men were hanged, and all the other prisoners had to watch. The boy however remained alive for over half an hour. Everyone had to walk past him. Behind Wiesel a man asked: "For God's sake, where is God?" And from within me (Elie), I heard a voice answer: "Where He is? This is where--hanging here from this gallows...."(p. 83)
Wiesel tells of the Jews in the concentration camp participating in the last day of the year--Rosh Hashanah service. Rather than blessing God's name, Wiesel asks God some difficult questions, functioning like a prosecuting lawyer, placing God on trial.
"How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces?" (p. 84)
Wiesel goes on to say: "I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without (sic) man. Without love or mercy." (p. 86)
Wiesel goes on to describe the cruel struggle for survival until the Americans arrived at Buchenwald on April 11, 1945.
Dawn
In his Preface to this, his first novel, Wiesel describes the setting: Palestine under Great Britain, prior to the state of Israel. He also describes the protagonist, Elisha, a member of the Jewish resistance. Wiesel also mentions some of the questions raised in the novel such as: good and evil, hatred and revenge, terror and justice.
Elisha was a young 18-year-old Holocaust survivor. He left Buchenwald concentration camp to live in France. One day he met Gad, a messenger, who recruited Elisha to join the Jewish resistance Movement for an independent homeland.
A Movement fighter, David ben Moshe was captured by the English and he was to be executed at dawn--rejecting appeals to show clemency.
The Movement had captured British Captain John Dawson. Elisha was assigned the responsibility of executing Dawson at dawn.
The Movement told the British that for every Movement member the British captured and executed the Movement would capture and execute a British soldier. Their ideology was to use violent, terrorist tactics against the English to force them out of Palestine.
"If we must become more unjust and inhuman than those who have been unjust and inhuman to us, then we shall do so. The commandment Thou shalt not kill was given from the summit of one of the mountains here in Palestine, and we were the only ones to obey it. But that's all over; we must be like everybody else. Murder will be not our profession but our duty." (pp. 162-163)
According to the Movement's leader, called the Old Man, they were to live by the eleventh commandment--hate your enemy.
The night before Elisha is going to kill John Dawson, he is plagued with the following thoughts: "He who has killed one man alone is a killer for life. He may choose another occupation, hide himself under another identity, but the executioner or at least the executioner's mask will always be with him." (p. 195)
Day
Day, Wiesel's second novel, is a sequel to Dawn.
The protagonist in the novel is hit by a taxi crossing Times Square in Manhattan, and struggles between life and death.
Is there meaning in life after Auschwitz? The tragedy of indifference and survivor's guilt are, among others, themes in this novel.
After surviving surgery, the protagonist's worst enemy was a fever. He tells the doctor: "You see, Doctor, what people say is true: man (sic) carries his fiercest enemy within himself. Hell isn't others. It's ourselves." (p. 245)
The novel then moves to Paris, where the protagonist--who is still not named--meets Kathleen. In the beginning of the book he had been with Kathleen on their way to a movie, when the taxi hit him.
In his thoughts, the protagonist struggles with theodicy and seems angry with God. "Man (sic) prefers to blame himself for all possible sins and crimes rather than come to the conclusion that God is capable of the most flagrant injustice." (p. 264)
"Yes, God needs man (sic). Condemned to eternal solitude, He made man (sic) only to use him as a toy, to amuse Himself." (p. 265)
The protagonist--a Holocaust survivor, seems like he is Elisha from the first novel, even though he's still not named--suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and has nightmares and screams.
Elisha's thoughts as a Holocaust survivor are imprisoned by the past: "You cannot hide suffering and remorse for long. They come out. It was true: I was living in the past. Grandmother, with her black shawl on her head, wasn't giving me up." (p. 325)
He continues this line of thought concerning survivor's guilt: "We cannot forget. The images are there in front of our eyes. We feel ashamed and guilty to be alive, to eat as much bread as we want, to wear good, warm socks in the winter." (p. 325)
At the end of the novel, a Hungarian artist friend, Gyula, appears. He speaks of life and death and shares his thoughts about their meaning. He leaves by carrying out one final act.
These three works of Elie Wiesel are very sobering, difficult and challenging to read. However, I would recommend them as essential resources on the Holocaust.
