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Night
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Night Trilogy: Book 1

Night (1955) (edit title/settings)

by Elie Wiesel (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Original Yiddish title: Un di Velt Hot Geshvign (And the World Remained Silent), 1955; rewritten in French in 1958 as "La Nuit"; original 1960 translation from French into English by Stella Rodway; later translated anew from French into English by the author's wife, Marion Wiesel

Night,... read more

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

  • - This book is about what the jews had to go through during the Holocaust through Elie Wiesel's point of view.
  • - Elie lives
  • - The tragic tale of a young Jewish teen survivng the Holocaust.
  • - Read to remember.
  • - Hitler dictates, Jews hated, concentration camps.
  • - A Jewish teen has to fight to survive the Holocaust.
  • - The life of a young jewish man during the Holocaust.

Summary edit see section history

This book is not for the faint of heart. I almost cried. This story takes place during the Holocaust (1930s- 1940s). Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor, retells his experiences as a boy who lost all faith, hope, and childhood in the Auschwitz concentration camps.

Hitler blamed the Jews... read more

This book is not for the faint of heart. I almost cried. This story takes place during the Holocaust (1930s- 1940s). Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor, retells his experiences as a boy who lost all faith, hope, and childhood in the Auschwitz concentration camps.

Hitler blamed the Jews for losing the war. He called Jews "inferior". Based on this perceived inferiority, Hitler established ghettos- which are essentially small areas of cities or towns where all Jews are sent. Most often in these ghettos, many families are packed into one house and without most of their belongings. the Jews that were enclosed in these areas were given some autonomy but were not allowed to leave the designated area. Some people said it was not that bad. They said "It's a place where we can live among brothers." They were completely unaware of the impending danger that would ravage the Jewish population forever, leaving a mark on history.

The Jews that were forced to live in the ghettos were soon liquidated from the ghetto, sent to internment camps- more commonly known as "death camps", where they would work in harsh conditions with almost no food. Approximately 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust with a larger number of them dying either on their way to these camps or in these camps. Jews were shot, tortured, poisoned, starved to death, and then burned in crematoriums. The transportation was insane. They were put in to cattle cars, 80 people to a car! They did not eat for 2 days. They could barely breathe. When they finally arrived, they saw the smoke of their ancestors endlessly raising higher and higher into the sky.

If you want to know more, than you will have to get the book and read it.

Characters/People edit see section history

  • Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel: The author and narrarator; fifteen years old during his stay at the concentration camps.
  • Shlomo Wiesel: Father of Elie Wiesel and is in the concentration camp with him.
  • Hilda Wiesel: Elie's oldest sister; arrested and deported to a separate concentration camp.
  • Beatrice, "Bea": Elie's older sister, second child of the Wiesel's.
  • Tzipora Wiesel: Elie's younger sister. She is killed upon arrival to Buna (Aushwitz)
  • Moshe the Beadle: Elie's friend who attempted to warn the Jewish members of his community of Nazi plans. He was dubbed a crazy man. He is poor and helped by the residents of Sighet.
  • Yossi: A good friend of Elie's in one of the concentration camps.
  • Madame Schachter: Terror-stricken Jewish woman who arguably sees an omen of what is to happen in the concentration camps. She dreams of the fire seen in the crematories at Aushwitz.
  • Rabbi Eliahu: Devout man in the concentration camp. His son betrayed him during the Death March, attempting to get rid of him.
  • Dr. Mengele: Angel of Death; performs experiments on Jewish prisoners and determines who lives and dies through selection.
  • Tibi: A Jewish acquaintance in the concentration camps.
  • Franek: A young Jewish musician
  • Idek: Elie's boss in one camp that publicly beats him when he witnesses something Idek has done.
  • Yechiel: The brother of the rabbi in Sighet where the Wiesel family lived.
  • Hersch Genud: Eli is a scared Jew who is forced in the camp with his father
  • Akiba Drumer: A man in Elie's concentration camp with great faith and hope that tries to keep the spirits of his fellow inmates up. He eventually loses faith and is executed during the selection.
  • Juliek: Juliek is a young man who plays the violin at the concentration camp in Buna. He has a heartbreaking death at the end of the book when he is crushed to death beneath a piles of bodies, both dead and alive. Even while enduring this though, he plays a Beethoven concerto on his violin. In the morning Elie finds him dead, with his violin, also trampled, beside him.
  • Zalman: A polish man who worked with Elie in the electrical warehouse in Buna. He was one of the first trampled to death on the death march.
  • Gustav: A soldier
  • Madame Kahn: A neighbor of the Wiesel's who provides shelter to a German soldier.
  • Rabbi Eliohou's Son: The son of a devout man in the concentration camp. He abandons his father in the long trek farther into German occupied territory.
  • Hilda Wiesel: Elie's oldest sister
Show all 22 characters
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Quotes edit see section history

  • “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim”
    Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel
  • “Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow”
    Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel
  • “'What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet?' His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily:'I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.'”
    Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel
  • “From the depths of the mirror,a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.”
    Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel
  • “Behind me, I heard the same man asking:'For God's sake, where is God?' And from within me, I heard a voice answer: 'Where he is? This is where- hanging here from this gallows...' That night, the soup tasted of corpses.”
    Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel
  • “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.”
    Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel
  • “"I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death. So that you could prepare yourselves while there was still time. To live? I don't attach any importance to my life any more. I'm alone. No, I wanted to come back, and to warn you. And see how it is, no one will listen to me."”
    Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 1
  • “"But I had no more tears. And, in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like-free at last!"”
    Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 8
  • “Then I had to go to sleep. I climbed into my bunk, above my father, who was still alive. The date was January 28, 1945.”
    Elie Wiesel
  • “The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.”
    Elie Wiesel
  • “Our first act of free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. That's all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread.”
    Elie Wiesel
  • “The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.”
    Elie Wiesel
  • “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears.”
    Elie Wiesel
  • “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me.”
    Elie Wiesel
  • “Then the train resumed it's journey, leaving in it's wake, in a snowy field in Poland, hundreds of naked orphans without a tomb.”
    Elie Wiesel
  • “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget these things, even were I condemned to live as long as God himself. Never.”
    Elie Wiesel
  • “Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes...children thrown into the flames”
    Elie Wiesel
  • “It was pitch dark. I could ehar only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life, The whole of his life was lgiding on the strings--his lost hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again. I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget that concert, giving to an audience of dying and dead men! To this day, whenever I hear Beethoven played my eyes close and out of the dark rises the sad, pale face of my Polish friend, as he said farewell on his violin to an audience of dying men.”
    Elie Wiesel
  • “"The night was gone. The morning star was shining in the sky. I too had become a completely different person. The student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it."”
    Elie Wiesel
  • “"The race toward death had begun."”
    Elie Wiesel
  • “"I woke up at dawn on January 29. On my father's cot there lay another sick person."”
  • “"At last, he said wearily: 'I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.'" page 81”
Show all 22 quotes from this book

Setting & Locations edit see section history

Organizations edit see section history

  • Nazi Party: The group of people who tried to systematically kill all those not of pure German dissent.

First Sentence edit see section history

They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname.

Table of Contents edit see section history

No chapters are named, although the book does contain chapter-like breaks.

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • Religion: Elie struggles during the course of the novel with his beliefs in God. How can a God who is deemed merciful allow this horrible event (Holocaust) to occur?
  • Survival: Throughout the novel, there are several instances in which the Jewish people had to demonstrate that they were useful to the Nazi party (labor camps). It was a paradox -- the Jewish were not fed well, disease ran rampant within the camps, they were victim to the elements, and little to no care was available. The people in this nonfiction text had to sacrifice relationships, beliefs, etc. to survive these challenges. At times, family stood between a person and his/her survival.
  • Silence: Throughout the novel, many people/groups keep silent rather than say something. The world did nothing when thousands of people were being slaughtered (the Germans tried to cover up all of the killings), God stayed silent when his followers prayed for his help, and the prisoners stayed out of the other prisoners' business to keep themselves safe.
  • Father-Son Relationships: The relationship between Elie and his father evolve throughout the book.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 1 of 3 in Night Trilogy. (standard series)

Followed by Dawn.

This is book 75 of 194 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2010). (authoritative list)
This is book 76 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 75 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 72 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2010). (authoritative list)
This book is in The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge. (community list)
This book is in Short Books. (community list)
This book is in Never Again: Atrocities of the 20th Century. (community list)
This is book 76 of 93 in Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List. (authoritative list)
This is book 60 of 70 in Oprah's Book Club. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Elie Wiesel (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Stella Rodway (Translator) - 1960
  2. Marion Wiesel (Translator) - 2006

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: Yiddish
Publisher: Mark Turkov, Tzentral Varband fun Polishe Yidn in Argentina
Country: Argentina
Publication Date: 1955
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 245

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PQ2683.I32 N8534
  • Dewey: 940.5318092

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Young Adults

The novella focuses on real Holocaust experiences so it's not appropriate for young children.

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • The Painted Bird
  • If This Is A Man and The Truce
  • The Diary of a Young Girl
  • Daniel's Story
  • Survival in Auschwitz
  • My Father Bleeds History
  • The Complete Maus
  • And Here My Troubles Began
  • The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
  • The Cap: The Price of a Life
  • All But My Life

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