Elie Wiesel's autobiographical account of his life through the period of the Holocaust, Night, is a terrifying account of the horrors of that period through the eyes of a child who sees his family killed and whose own spirit is sorely tested even these many years later as he looks back on these events. The book is powerful and affecting, and it also serves as a very strong portrayal of the entire era of which the Holocaust is a part. This book presents the real effects of history, not the changes in leadership and the movements of armies but the changes in the lives of real individuals who become the victims of other people's hatreds an ambitions. The book can also be seen as an exploration of personal identity and an attempt for one man to come to grips with the fact that he has survived while so many did not.
The book first appeared in 1958 in France, and it was neither the first book on the Holocaust to reach the French public nor the first book written by a very young person on the subject:
But La Nuit was altogether different, as was immediately apparent to anyone who read it. It did not dwell on physical details and horror alone. It was primarily the story of one family's fate, the relationship between a son and his father, and the impact of a devastating historical event upon the soul of a young person (Stern 138).
The boy is faced with a situation no young person should have to face, and his ordeal comes precisely at the ag when he is discovering who he is in relation to his family and to the world. Yet this is a world that has been turned upside down, a world where the young man is suddenly uncertain not only of his own relationship to that world but is also uncertain about the relationship of his entire people to the rest of the world. He questions everything that in the past has provided some sense of stability--the community, the family, and God as well. Yet, as all the verities seem to be deserting him,...