I’m doing something a little unconventional this week, but let’s go with it.
Here goes, confession: I’ve read Night before. More than once.
But this crazy week, I really needed 1) a short book (check, got it) and 2) a whole lot of perspective (admittedly…less).
Right after I started volunteering at the Holocaust Museum, I was walking through one of their interactive exhibits where they showed you pictures and asked you to react to them. I don’t remember the other ones, but the one that stuck out at me and pops into my head from time to time was a black and white picture of a group of people in their late teens/early 20s, a mix of men and women, arms draped around each other, laughing and smiling. They look like any other group of friends you might encounter at any point in a day.
But they were, as it happens, Nazis.
Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of all of the awful aspects of the Holocaust is just that idea: all of these atrocities against humans were committed by other humans. They had families and interests and weekend plans and favorite foods and pets and friends and hobbies and chores. That’s the hardest part to reconcile.
It’s easy to remember them as monsters. It’s harder to think of them as just people.
Maybe because I saw that exhibit, or maybe because I’m heading back to Israel within the next couple of weeks, which was the impetus to start volunteering at the Holocaust Museum, or maybe it’s just because I’m older than I was when I read it before, but I couldn’t get that idea out of my head the entire time I read Night. In the past, I’ve focused on how awful the conditions and situations were for Elie Wiesel, as you are meant to do- it’s so inhumane and so painfully terrible. But this time, I couldn’t stop trying to dissect the actions of the perpetrators. Wiesel’s story is immensely compelling, and that doesn’t go away, but it was interesting to read it with another idea in mind.
So with that, yes, I cheated a bit and read a book I’ve read before. I could say that because it’s a new translation, it counts as a new book, but I think it’s a better lesson in the changing impact of books as you experience more of life.
Maybe it’ll be Night for you, but try to find a book you read a bunch when you were younger and see how you feel about it now. Maybe what you notice will surprise you…
You’ll like this if: you want a really honest, really brutal inside look at the atrocities of the Holocaust. Like seemingly so many other books I’ve read for this project, it’s hard to think about it in terms of “liking” this book. But it’s an important book, and a quick one to read.
Happy reading!
carlyreads 