AP World History Book Report: Elie Wiesel's Night

8/1/11 AP World History Book Report Elie Wiesel's Night is a terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horrors that turned between 11 to 17 million people into agonized witnesses to the deaths of their families and friends. I chose this book to read because I had heard from numerous people that it was "the best book about the Holocaust I could ever read" . I read it and found out that it went into much more detail than some of the other Holocaust books I had read. This book was extremely powerful as it awakened me to the terror that many people went through during the Holocaust at the concentration camps. I found the book to be incredibly addicting and easy to read. The true story of Wiesel's encounter starts off by him reminiscing about
his childhood with his Jewish family, living in Hungary during the World War II time period. Towards the middle of World War II, they are deported out of Hungary and into German concentration camps, where the father and son are separated from the mother and daughters.
The story then focuses on just the experiences of the father and the son. During their time in the labor camps, they are beaten badly on multiple occasions, and go through lots of suffering. In the end, Eliezer's father died right before they were liberated, and Eliezer never managed to find his mother and sisters. The first quote I chose was, "I had watched it all happen without moving. I kept silent. In fact, I thought of stealing away in order not to suffer the blows. What’s more, if I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo, but at my father." (Page 54). I thought that this quote was very sad, and it even made me feel a little nauseated. I was sickened by the fact that in just a short time in the concentration camp, Eliezer changed so much that he could watch his own father be beaten and not have any feelings of remorse for him. My second quote was, "The Lagerkapo stepped up to the condemned youth. He was assisted by two prisoners, in exchange for two bowls of soup." (Page 62). I was shocked when I read these sentences because it showed Jews taking other Jews to the gallows in exchange for food. But on the other hand, it makes me mad at the Germans because they provided the Jews with so
little food, that they were willing to send people of their own kind to the gallows just so they could possibly survive for another day. The last good quote that I found was, "All eyes were on the child. He was pale, almost calm, but he was biting his lips as he stood in the shadow of the gallows. This time, the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner." (Page 64). I thought that this was a good quote because based on what I was taught about the Holocaust, I saw the Germans as cold, heartless people. But when the German executioner had the task of killing a Jewish child, he couldn't find it in himself to complete the task, which made me view the Germans in a different light. The time period that this book covers is the World War II time period, starting in 1943 and ending when the camps are liberated by the Americans in 1945. Eliezer's story focuses on the Holocaust, and the experiences of Jews in the concentration camps. Wiesel seems to focus a little more of his attention on how the concentration camps transformed people so much that they became somewhat selfish enough that they would cast away their family members and good friends, just so they could survive. While reading this book, I learned that not all Jews were killed by the gas chambers or by being shot at the concentration camps. Some of them were chosen to work in labor camps, and there were some extremely lucky Jews, who actually served in the German army. I thought that all of the Jews did their best to stick together, and fight for all of their well-being. Instead, many of them were so dead-set on surviving that they were willing to let loved ones suffer so that they could live to see another day. I would definitely recommend this book to other students as a good way to learn about this time period. It covers information about the Holocaust that wasn't taught to us in class, such as the exact conditions of the camps and the tasks they were forced to do and see just to stay alive.