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NIGHT,

by Elie Wiesel

ISBN: 0374500010

NIGHT was first published in 1960.  This week, end of February 2006, it sits prominently in first place atop the New York Times Best Seller nonfiction paperback list, and seventeenth in the nonfiction hardcover list. I for one am thankful that a new edition of this book has been reprinted given the changes one is forced to lament in current day America--America the purveyor of torture and terror in the world.

Elie Wiesel was a youngster when the Nazis unleashed their rampant horror and violence in the European continent during the 1940's. Nearly twenty years after experiencing firsthand the machinations of the genocide that the Nazis developed, Wiesel wrote this account, which although short, is extremely difficult to read due to its wrenching and shocking depiction of the horror and banality of evil. 

Born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, he was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and then to Buchenwald for extermination.

"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.  Never shall I forget that smoke.  Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity of the desire to live.  Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.  Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never." (p. 44)

As I read page upon page, I was continually confronted with the question of how this could have happened; how could the ordinary citizens of Germany allow this to happen; were all Germans evil?  Of course not, but the question is hard to contemplate without wanting to scream outloud with the utmost revulsion--YES.

Night should be mandated reading for all, especially given the recent developments in our own nation; the seeming acceptance of the use of torture without a popular uprising of condemnation; and knowing that 'detention' camps are being constructed by a burgeoning police state apparatus one is forced to contemplate: is America bearing witness, in silence, to the rise of another Holocaust? 

Ironically Americans are now the 'good Germans' as the monstrosity develops.

Victor Saraiva