Introduction: Night

            Mark Twain is noted to have said the following: “ ‘Classic.’  A book which people praise and don't read.”  Night is a seminal book about the Holocaust, but it is one that I have never read.  Unfortunately, I think I fall into that category of people Mark Twain so bluntly defines.  I’d like to change that.

            I know only a fraction of the chilling details of the Holocaust, and even in the little knowledge I possess, most of it comes from historians and observations from the outside.  I read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, but that was fictitious and to some degree “lightened.”  From what I’ve read so far about Night, it is everything but fictitious and lightened.  Elie Wiesel, the author of the book, lived through the Holocaust, and he does not hold back when it comes to relating the unimaginable atrocities that so quickly became his reality.  The New York Times remarks that this novel is “A slim volume of terrifying power.”  It is a literary work to be reckoned with.

            It’s hard to express my feelings toward starting this book.  I am glad to finally be able to handle such a difficult story (I think) and I would be willing to bet that I’ll be much more aware and thoughtful when I am finished.  But the Holocaust was not a joyful story.  It does however have valuable lessons that everyone should learn.

            I did read the forward, however, and based off of the short introduction, I can make a few predictions.  Wiesel won’t hold back.  As I mentioned a little earlier, he is described as being an unapologetically blunt author.  I learned that “He had seen his mother, a beloved little sister, and all his family except his father disappear into an oven fed with living creatures” (viii).  I think Wiesel will definitely push me out of my comfort zone.