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Key insights from
Night
By
Elie Wiesel
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What you'll learn
Elie (Eliezer) Wiesel (1928-2016) was a Romanian-Jewish
journalist, professor, human rights activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust
survivor. After coming of age during the Holocaust as a prisoner in
Auschwitz and Buchenwald, he became a writer and journalist and eventually
emigrated to America, where he furthered his work as a human rights
activist while also becoming a professor. He has written over 50 books,
received almost double that number of honorary degrees, and worked on
various international efforts to promote human rights and maintain the
memory of the Holocaust. In Night, Wiesel’s first and most famous book, he
gives an account of his family’s abduction from their home in Transylvania
and their subsequent incarceration in Auschwitz and Buchenwald during the
final years of World War II. Wiesel writes about his experience suffering
under the reign of true evil.
Read on for key insights from Night.
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1. Suffering
creates fear, anger, and disgust, which create more suffering.
Wiesel recounts a troubling episode in the first days of his
forced exodus from Sighet, his hometown. After he, his family, and roughly
70 other Jews were stowed inside a train car, he recounts how the horrible
conditions in the cramped space deprived people of their wits and led to
violence. After over two days of travel with standing room only, Wiesel’s
car pulled into a station, where a German soldier informed them that if
anyone escaped, all occupants would be killed. The doors were then nailed
shut, blocking any remaining chance of escape.
On the third day of their journey, one of Wiesel’s
neighbors, Mrs. Schächter, cried out in feverish madness that she had seen
a fire. Her child clutching her side tried to calm her, as did most of the
other passengers, who were just as hungry, thirsty, and sleep deprived.
Wiesel recounts how worn down every passenger was, to the point that it
felt like “...madness had infected all of us.” Mrs. Schächter would not
stop yelling and screaming, and so the other passengers bound and gagged
her so they would not have to listen to her screams.
Despite this temporary reprieve, she broke free and began
crying out, in what was now the middle of the night. When she was again
bound and gagged, she was also beaten. Wiesel recounted that “She received
several blows to the head, blows that could have been lethal.” This
beating, delivered by her neighbors and fellow Jews, silenced her until the
end of the fourth day. Though she began to wail again, no one was up to the
task of silencing her once more.
Through this grim early episode in his story, Wiesel
highlights that suffering creates distress. But more significantly, that
distress often is a force that leads to the corruption of the sufferer.
Evil begets further evil. Fear, anger, and disgust are visceral emotional
experiences which, over time, foment further disorder. The torment the
whole car experienced led some to further oppress one of their own, even to
the point of severe physical harm. This is an important point about the way
that suffering and torment exhaust us, and create opportunities for further
evil.
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2. What breaks a
person is often not overt violence, but simpler acts of force.
Much of the torment the prisoners suffered was as
debilitating psychologically as it was physically. Wiesel recounts an
episode soon after his arrival in Auschwitz. After his first night,
Wiesel’s unit was commanded at 5 o’clock in the morning, while they were
naked, to run further into the camp. Following their arrival at a new
building, they were disinfected and sent hurriedly to the hot showers
before being rushed outside to go on to a third building. When they
arrived, clothes were thrown to them at random. Wiesel recounted after this
haphazard initiation into camp life that they were no longer men.
This sequence of events, like some kind of disturbing sport,
led Wiesel to feel not just that they were being humiliated, but that they
had been stripped of their humanity. Being left naked overnight without any
provisions was terrible enough, but being forced to run without any clear
purpose was disorienting. While they were given access to basic hygiene and
clothing, it was never on their own terms, but on those of their
oppressors. Unable to stop moving any longer than it took for the quick
shower, Wiesel and the others could only follow the demands of their
captors.
The lack of agency available to Wiesel was impressed upon
him in a new way. Prior to this, he had merely been contained without
orders, but in the camp he was forced into tasks that were not of his will.
Being a puppet in the hands of the Nazis deprived Wiesel of his sense of
personhood, even when he was not enduring physical violence. This is a
pernicious feature of the torment Wiesel experienced. He was hollowed out,
often unable to exercise his own will because he became a tool in the
possession of his captors.
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3. Even in times
of despair and oppression, people cling to the little goods they get.
Though Wiesel’s experience during these years was dark and
agonizing, Wiesel notes in various places the little joys and pleasures
that would come during his time as a prisoner. These goods seemed to be
moments of rehumanization, where Wiesel felt like a person again.
One such moment emerged when Wiesel was moved into a new
block overseen by a Polish man. This man gave Wiesel “human words” during
his captivity. Despite the brutality of the institution the Jews were kept
in, the Polish man encouraged them to take heart, have faith, and hope for
the day of liberation. After this, he reminded them that they were all
brothers here, and would survive with each other, not alone. To back up his
own words, he encouraged his charges to converse with him if they had
concerns before urging them to sleep.
The next morning was met with a brief reprieve. Instead of
waking to renewed violence and torment, Wiesel encountered the brotherhood
of this barrack. He and the other new prisoners were taken care of by the
inmates, who gave them coffee and new clothing to start their day. He even
recounts that friends gathered together in conversation for a short time
before their work began. Overall, this was a moment of relative peace in
the face of towering evil.
Though this was but a minor episode in the entirety of
Wiesel’s imprisonment, it reflects the way good creeps up even in places of
evil, despair, and death. That he noted this goodness, despite its seeming
insignificance in the face of horrific evil, highlights the poignancy
surrounding this early day in the camp. It allowed him to be more like
himself than he had been since he arrived.
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4. In the face of
suffering and agony, Wiesel gave up his faith in God.
Months into his captivity, Wiesel heard a worship service on
the eve of Rosh Hashanah. As he heard people chanting blessings upon God,
he recoiled in disgust. Wiesel accused God for all the suffering he had
experienced and witnessed. God was responsible for the death all around
him, for the suffering he saw imprinted on his father, for the agony that
was living in this place.
In this place of anger and sorrow, Wiesel was unable to pray
for anything, not even himself. He felt himself alone, in a world without
God or man, completely unmoored by his suffering. Wiesel turned his back on
his faith, though not only because of his suffering. Frustrated with God,
he began to conceive the Almighty he once knew as a farce, a being
incapable of sovereignty, weaker than man. God seemed unable to stop man’s
atrocities, and thus man seemed stronger than God.
Though this gave Wiesel strength in the moment, the crushing
weight of man’s weakness came back upon him. First, he felt lonely, like an
outsider to his fellow Jews, unable to truly partake in the service.
Moreover, when he ran to his father toward the end of the service, he saw a
hollow shell of the man who raised him. Defeat was the only thing Wiesel
saw when he looked at his father’s face.
Instead of working out his doubts and processing his
emotional turmoil through scripture reading or conversation with those
around him, Wiesel angrily walked away from his faith. Though he returned
to it later in life, during his time in Auschwitz he was choked by his
suffering and he cut himself off from his faith community.
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5. Wiesel
experienced the terrifying guilt of being unable to help the condemned.
Much like Wiesel was unable to use his own agency and make
his own choices, he was unable to intervene in the lives of others to save
or help them. Though he suffered this himself, he witnessed the way it
hemmed in those around him as well. He recalls the way that his block
leader tried to keep his fellow prisoners from the gas chamber, to no
avail.
After the SS came through for a selection (this was how they
decided who to kill), Wiesel’s block-leader comforted everyone, telling
them that none of them was going to the gas chambers. One of Wiesel’s
neighbors, however, questioned their leader, because his name had been
written down by the SS. Their leader became angry, confirmed that nothing
would happen, and claimed that they should stop worrying. Some days passed,
and their leader called an assembly, where he listed ten names who would be
remaining in camp for the day, not going out to work. The realization came
quickly to everyone. Those who were called protested their fate, clung to
the leader, and begged him to let them work.
They cited his promises, begging him to hold true to his
word. But their leader was just the messenger of the SS at this point, and
had no power. He did his best to comfort them. He tried to convince them
that they need not worry, because them staying in camp didn’t necessarily
mean they were bound for the gas chamber. He finally realized that nothing
he could say would help and then locked himself in his room away from
everyone.
Wiesel never explained the circumstances surrounding their
leader having the position he did. What is clear is that whatever authority
he did have was, like all other prisoners, liable to evaporate at the
convenience of the SS. Though he worked to protect his charges, this was
never in his power. In the corrupting influence of evil, the oppressed
often found themselves used as a tool in the machine of this Nazi
institution. In the case of the leader, he was forced to bear the guilt of
lives that he was never given proper authority to protect. This guilt
became another force of torment and suffering the prisoners were forced to
bear as they continued on and their comrades did not.
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6. In the midst of
ugliness, fear, and death, Wiesel nonetheless experienced beauty.
On one occasion, after being forced to walk through a
blinding snowstorm, Wiesel was trampled by a mass of prisoners all flooding
their new barracks. Wiesel fell on the ground, and then was crushed
underneath others who died, were dying, or simply had no more strength to
move for the night. Despite his best efforts, Wiesel was too burdened to
move himself out of the pile, and lay there. Trapped underneath someone in
a pile of bodies both living and dead, Wiesel heard the cry of someone
underneath him, gasping for air. It turned out to be a Polish inmate named
Juliek who had been with Wiesel since his first days in Auschwitz. Unable
to help Juliek, Wiesel managed to shift over to give himself some air.
After it was too dark to see, still mostly trapped amongst
the bodies of inmates, Wiesel heard the sound of a violin piercing the air.
Shocked at the absurdity of a musical performance amongst the dead and
dying, Wiesel strained his attention to discern the music. It was Juliek,
who had carried his violin with him through the storm, into this new
barrack. Wiesel records that he played something by Beethoven.
It was unclear just how Juliek escaped the pile or had the
space to play his violin, but Wiesel was transfixed. It seemed to him that
Juliek was pouring what little life he had left into the music. The
beautiful music of Juliek’s violin filled Wiesel’s heart, and made an
undying mark on his memory. Every time he heard that Beethoven concerto
afterwards, Wiesel could only see Juliek’s face.
When Wiesel woke up, Juliek was hunched over dead in front
of him, his violin trampled after his sonorous final concert. Though it was
a moment of profound sorrow, the beauty of that music cutting through the
silence of the barrack impressed itself upon Wiesel, and became a moment of
somber tranquility.
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7. Sufferers are
burdened with the responsibility of being witnesses against evil.
Reflecting on his experience some 40 years later while
accepting the Nobel Peace prize, Wiesel articulated the sense of purpose
that his experience impressed upon him. After those many months of
suffering, torment, and trial, Wiesel remarks that he owes it to his past,
as well as that of many others, to keep the memory alive. His suffering, at
least in one sense, had meaning in making him a witness to evil so that he
may advocate all the more wholeheartedly for what is good.
This is the core mission of Elie Wiesel’s life and
characterizes all of his work. He wages a war on the “Kingdom of Night”
which crushed so many people in its jaws. After his liberation, Elie took
up the challenge by working to make sure no one would forget, none would be
ignorant. Forgetting the tragedies of our past makes us guilty, accomplices
of a dark future.
Instead of ignoring evil, which allows anger to take root
and violence to fester, Wiesel claims we must bear our shared
responsibility as members of the human race to remember. We must remember
the rights of all those around us, fight for them, defend them, and oppose
the evil without as well as that within. Overlooking evil aids oppression.
Neutrality lets it promulgate unhindered. Retaliatory violence only
strengthens its fire. Only by recognizing the responsibility laid upon us
to be witnesses against the Kingdom of Night may we move forward together.
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Endnotes
These insights are
just an introduction. If you're ready to dive deeper, pick up a copy of Night here. And since we get a commission on
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