Dec 15, 2013 12:43 PM
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(Updated Dec 15, 2013 12:55 PM)
“We cannot indefinitely avoid depressing subject matter, particularly if it is true, and in the subsequent quarter century the world has had to hear a story it would have preferred not to hear - The story of how a cultured people turned to genocide, and how the rest of the world, also composed of cultured people, remained silent in the face of genocide.”
We all have read books and seen movies on the subject of what happened to Jews in the German concentration camps during WW2. There is so much pain and so much sadness that one feels even on the mention of those dreadful camps of WW2, then why should we read about and watch movies on the experiences of those days. Why do we have to read about all that and suffer along, feel the pain of those people? Simple answer could be: To learn.
People who suffered and the people who caused that suffering, all were human. If we can do it once, we can do it again. We must take responsibility of what happened in the past and based on that, it’s our duty to make sure that it will not happen again. So, even if we don’t like, we must, time after time, read books based on such grave subjects: To learn and to experience.
“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 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.”
‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel covers the terrifying account of his own experience in the Nazi camps of Birkenau, Auschwitz and Buna. Elie was a boy of 15 something when he was taken along with his family from a town in Hungry to Auschwitz’s camp. They were warned, but they didn’t believe (who would’ve believed that such atrocious trials could be carried out through the hands of human beings). One day Germans arrived and with each passing day they were devoured of their rights and of their possessions, one after another. But still they hoped and prayed. And one not-so-fine day they were made to leave their homes and were transferred to camps, through a long painful and terrifying journey in very inhuman conditions – hoarded like cattle’s in the freight trains.
In camps, Elie faced the selection wherein young and healthy ones were selected for work while others – children, old ones, weak ones – were burnt alive in the crematories; he saw his own little sister and mother being led to one. Afterwards, Elie covers the struggle he had to go through each day to be alive, to have something to eat (*“Bread, soup - these were my whole life. I was a body.
Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.”*) and to be with his father. As his father grew old and weak, he tried to save him every now and then. Still after all his efforts, one day he found his father gone/taken, God knows where, that was just days before the end of war.
‘Night’ written in as simple a fashion as it could be. The language is very simple and narratives is one directional with no-subplots. It’s a very short novel with 100+ pages which one can finish within 2-3 hours. With that being said, I’d like to emphasize on the fact that one cannot get the essence of it by reading it at one go in 2-3 hours, then its purpose won’t be served. Reader need to reflect on each page to experience and understand, to learn the point being made. One must feel the pain, one must suffer along. One must feel the words in a fashion that one eagerly waits for the last page to arrive; but one must read it in a fashion that last page never turns up.
Other than what happened to Jews at the hands of Germans in those camps, this book also concentrates on the discrimination that happened within Jews for the survival. As you turn the pages, you find the young and strong ones neglecting and ditching the old and weak ones to survive. Every man for himself was the saying and you’ll find son’s abandoning their fathers, as they thought them to be an obstacle in their chance for survival.
Beauty of the book – If I may say so – lies in the way Elie has covered it all in a very simple manner, without going into details and still a reader can paint the terrorizing picture of his sufferings and pain. Many died in those camps and so one finds in the book as well, but as I went along with Elie I wanted his father to survive.
Every time the selection starts, I found my heart pounding, wanting to see his father pass the tests and all. And when they have to flee the camp and run for their lives through snow and storm, how I wanted them to survive it all. How I felt good to see Elie stick to his father, helping and saving him, while others abandon theirs. On brighter side, I really liked the father-son relationship shared in the book.
“One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. 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.”
‘Night’ is my third book by Elie Wiesel, before it I have read ‘Day’ and ‘Dawn’(other two books of Night Trilogy). ‘Night’ was the first book that Elie wrote and in his own words: “if he were to write only one book in his life time. It would be ‘Night’.
‘Night’ is the experience, an experience where there is no time to reflect upon. Elie covered even the gravest of tragedy in simple words and at fast pace, which one could easily relate to the fact that when all that is happening, all around you and with you, where is the time to reflect and contemplate on; whereas ‘Day’ and ‘Dawn’ are the reflections. They are the impact of the memories of those days on the life that he lived afterwards; sufferings that the memory of those days brought to him time and time again.
As I did for 'Day' and 'Dawn', I highly recommend 'Night' by Elie Wiesel. Its one of those book - Everyone must read.
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PYAR HUMEIN PHIR MILAAEGA.
