The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident
Copyright 1972, 1985 by Elie Wiesel
Hill & Wang/Farrar, Straus, Giroux 1987
Night is a story of the Holocaust that evokes philosophical questions about the nature of man, the nature of god, faith in God, and the loss of faith; about loyalty and responsibility to others, betrayal and guilt, relationship between parent and child, in particular, in this story, between father and son. Haunting are the story’s images and the narrative of the death march from Buna to the train that would take death march survivors to Buchenwald, and haunting is the passage describing the father’s death. Eliezar and his father were among twelve, of 100, who survived that train ride, and Elie Wiesel himself among 20,000 who were liberated from Buchenwald. It is thought that fifty-six thousand prisoners died at Buchenwald. Wiesel’s Night, the story of one individual, puts the human face on a dehumanized population, five to six million Jews tortured and murdered.
I cannot write about my own experience as I write about Elie Wiesel’s Night. Nothing in my own experience deserves to be written about as I write about Elie Wiesel’s Night. Though many statements, eloquent statements, found in the story are of the kind of universal nature that resonate with readers, it would seem unconscionable to form relationships between any of my experience and Night. The scale of the human suffering described is greater than I can understand, greater than it is possible for me to describe. The following are passages from the story, which I am introducing with thematic subtitles. The selected passages in italics are from Night by Elie Wiesel.
REALITY
It was neither German nor Jew who ruled the ghetto—it was illusion (21).
The Jewish who were forced into ghettos in Sighet, in Transylvania, now Romania, did not take heed of the warning signs and in the story were in denial about the danger they were in. Perhaps they simply could not conceive of such violence. Perhaps they did not want to believe it that such violence could ever happen.
HATRED
It was from that moment that I began to hate them, and my hate is still the only link between us today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first of the faces of hell and death (29).
This refers to the Hungarian police. It is a brutal admission of hatred coming from a religious young man devoted to a benevolent God.
NIGHT
Night. No one prayed, so that the night would pass quickly. The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes. There was nothing else to do but to get into bed, in the beds of the absent ones; to rest, to gather one’s strength (30).
The Jews from the larger of the Sighet ghettos have been moved to the smaller ghetto where they stay in the homes of those who have already been deported. There they wait.
SOCIAL STATUS
There were no longer any questions of wealth, of social distinction, and importance, only people all condemned to the same fate—still unknown (30).
MEMORY
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. (43).
DEHUMANIZATION
Those absent no longer touched even the surface of our memories…The instincts of self-preservation, of self-defense, of pride, had all deserted us. In one ultimate moment of lucidity it seemed to me that we were damned souls wandering in the half-world, souls condemned to wander through space till the generations of man came to an end, seeking their redemption, seeking oblivion—without hope of finding it…Within a few seconds, we had ceased to be men (45).
FAITH
I had ceased to pray…I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted His absolute justice (53).
"What are You, my God," I thought angrily, "compared to this afflicted crowd, proclaiming to You their faith, their anger, their revolt? What does Your greatness mean, Lord of the Universe, in the face of all this weakness, this decomposition, and this decay? Why do You still trouble their sick minds, their crippled bodies?" (74).
Why, but why should I bless Him? In every fiber I rebelled. Because He had had thousands of children burned in His pits? Because He kept six crematories working night and day, on Sundays and feast days?....(74).
This day I had ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was a lone—terribly alone in a world without God and without man. Without love or mercy. I had ceased to be anything but ashes, yet I felt myself to be stronger than the Almighty, to whom my life had been tied for so long. I stood amid that praying congregation, observing it like a stranger (75).
FATHER
I did not move. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, before my very eyes, and I had not flickered an eyelid. I had looked on and said nothing (48).
I had watched the whole scene without moving. I kept quiet. In fact I was thinking of how to get farther away so that I would not be hit myself. What is more, any anger I felt at that moment was directed, not against the Kapo, but against my father. I was angry with him, for not knowing how to avoid Idek’s outbreak. That is what concentration camp life had made of me (62).
He (Father) was standing near the wall, bowed down, his shoulders sagging as though beneath a heavy burden. I went up to him, took his hand and kissed it. A tear fell upon it. Whose was that tear? Mine? His? I said nothing. Nor did he. We had never understood one another so clearly (75).
Upon the death of the father: I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I had no more tears. And, in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like—free at last! (116).
I had to stay at Buchenwald until April eleventh. I have nothing to say of my life during this period. It no longer mattered. After my father’s death, nothing could touch me any more (117).
LIBERATION
Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. We thought only of that. Not of revenge, not of our families. Nothing but bread.
And even when we were no longer hungry, there was still no one who thought of revenge…(119).
HAUNTING OF MEMORY
…I had not seen myself since the ghetto.
From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.
The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me (119).
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