Summer Reading: Post 2 - Night

" . . . books, just like people, have a destiny.  Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both." 

- - Elie Wiesel

Source

Night by Elie Wiesel
I've read a lot of Holocaust Literature and other books, fiction and nonfiction, centered around the Jewish Holocaust (To See You Again, The Sunflower, Sarah's Key, The Book Thief, and Maus to name a few great ones) but I sadly hadn't read Night, which we all know is so short it can literally be read in an afternoon.  So what was I doing with my time and in my classes?  Well, for one reading Jane Austen's novels over and over again for numerous different courses.

Even though Night is deemed one of the 'classics of Holocaust Literature,' I found its abrupt ending somewhat unsettling and it just seemed like there was something missing.  In the Preface, Wiesel mentions that the book, which "was written in Yiddish as And the World Remained Silent and translated first in French, then into English - was rejected by every major publisher, French and American" (8).  He also notes that he made numerous cuts and was told countless times that it was just too long (although most of us know it's fairly short for a memoir/novel, my copy was just 135 pages).  Though the version I read was a more recent translation, I sensed that perhaps these cuts might have been extremely important and should have been left in as he would have liked.  In the Preface he gives several examples of narrative that was cut when translated into English and these seemed to me the strongest, most reflective of the book.  Most likely he included them in the Preface so that they could, in a sense, be included despite publishers' best efforts to keep them out.

Perhaps I've just read so many other narratives about the Holocaust that touched me more (others were written from young women's perspectives, which might have something to do with it?) or maybe I started reading, knowing that there were things missing that he would have liked to have included.  Either way it was an honest portrayal of his devastating experience during the Holocaust, but more importantly, as he writes in the Preface:

"In retrospect I must confess that I do not know, or no longer know, what I wanted to achieve with my words.  I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer - or my life, period - would not have become what it is: that of a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory" (6).

Source

More quotes from the Preface . . .

"Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly as language became an obstacle.  It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language.  But how was one to rehabilitate and transform words betrayed and perverted by the enemy?  Hunger - thirst - transport - selection - fire - chimney: these words all have intrinsic meaning, but in those times, they meant something else" (7).

"And so I persevered.  And trusted the silence that envelops and transcends words.  Knowing all the while that any of the fields of ashes in Birkenau carries more weight than all the testimonies about Birkenau.  For, despite all my attempts to articulate the unspeakable, 'it' is still not right" (8).

"To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time" (13).

"Sometimes I am asked if I know 'the response to Auschwitz;' I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don't even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.  What I do know is that there is 'response' in responsibility.  When we speak of this era of evil and darkness, so close and yet so distant, 'reponsibility' is the key word.  The witness has forced himself to testify.  For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow.  He does not want his past to become their future" (13).