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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book
Comment: If you haven't read this book then you must read it. I have nothing else to say about it than that.
The feelings and emotions this book stirred within me are too great to put into words. At the end of
the book there is a speech given by Elie Wiesel and there were two phrases that jumped out at me and
that's what I will finish with.

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Simple, thought provoking
Comment: I've never read such a short book with such a huge impact. When I read this as part of a college
class, we learned that it was originally some 600 pages long. Then the author decided to cut it down
to the absolute bare bones - and it worked brilliantly.

Too much writing could cushion
the devastation - getting bogged down in details could allow a reader to become jaded. However, such
stark minimalism forces a reader to think about what is being said. And significantly, Wiesel
doesn't describe every horror. He leads us to the brink, and lets the reader imagine the next step.
Rather like watching a horror movie and seeing a character walk into the dark without seeing what
happens to them. Just as many Jewish families had to do during this time, when loved ones were taken
away never to return. The intentionally large gaps between some of the paragraphs faithfully evoke
the silence the author needs to convey so a reader must contemplate what has passed.
/>Much like "The Color Purple" evoked the reality of blacks in that time with the deceptively simple
diary of one young black woman, "Night" reveals the tangible horror the Jews faced around WWII from
the eyes of a Jewish boy. I have seen the film version of The Color Purple, and also Schindler's
List. Both are strong films, but they lack the power of this simple narrative. The best book I
have ever read about the tragedy of the Holocaust.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Words Can Not Describe.....
Comment: Man's inhumanity to man from one who survived it.

As Mr. Wiesel notes in the
introduction of his book, words can not--do not--describe what it was like--must have been like--to
endure man's inhumanity to man. We in this day and time can't imagine, can't begin to fathom, what
Mr. Wiesel's words try to describe.

The Holocaust, combined with the Russian Army's
treatment of German women and with Japanese treatment of the Chinese surely must mark one of the
darkest, most despicable times of man upon the earth.

Where, in deed, was God? />
Yet, because we are still here--the Director did not come on stage and stop the play to use
C.S. Lewis' imagery--there is still hope. God has not yet given up on man, but sometimes we
wonder--at times like Mr. Wiesel describes--why He hasn't. He must see something, some possibility
in man that we don't always see ourselves--and sometimes try very hard to hide and overcome. />
Mr. Wiesel's Nobel Prize acceptance, coming as it does, at the end of the book, is one of
the most powerful statements ever made about man's responsibility--about our individual
responsibility--to stand up for those who need our help and support.

Abraham Lincoln
may have said it best in his Gettysburg Address, "...That these dead have not died in vain...." />
Mr. Wiesel's work speaks powerfully toward that end.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Horrific and spellbinding
Comment: This novel to me portrays the absolute depravity and madness that humanity can fall into. The
beginning superbly portrays the false hope that many people had that this situation would just blow
over until it was too late despite the warnings from many people that it was just beginning. The
language is so heart-rending and drips with rhetoric and deep meaning that sears the soul. The
authors portrayal of his loss of faith and soul is so beautiful and yet so devastating in it's
simple clarity that I felt I was there with him losing my mind. The deaths of those around him and
the way he explains it makes me feel like their deaths weren't in vain and are left unsullied by his
beautiful words. There is only one thing I would wish for this novel and that would be for it to be
longer...I was left wanting to hear more about what happened.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Night
Comment: I liked this book but its sad. I got this book because I like history and wanted to know more about
what happened in WWII.