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Journal Entry 2 by SKingList on Sunday, June 03, 2007
 This is the relatively new edition, newly translated by Elie's wife Marion and with new forewards. Whether it was new or old didn't matter as I'm one of the few people I know never to have read this book. It surprises me because I've had an interest in the Holocaust for some time. After purchasing this, I read it in one seating at the Galleria in Krakow while waiting for my train back to Prague.
Some thoughts:
p viii. "I know only that without this testimony, my life as a writer--or my life, period-would not have become what it is: that of a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.".
That was crucial in the days of the first writing of this story, but even more so now that survivors such as Elie are beginning to die off. Without their words, and the work of those who seek to preserve those words, there is the danger of forgetting. I don't understand how it could possibly be forgotten, but there are people alive today who say it never happened and as time passes, any memory recedes. Writing such as this, simple yet powerful helps to keep the memory alive. It's like Santayana's Quote, which is on display at Auschwitz.
px: "Knowing all the while that any one of the fields of ashes at Birkenau carries more weight than all the testimonies about Birkenau."
1000% agreed. There's nothing like 'being there' and that's part of why I related to this book reading it when I did. I "was there" but at the same time, I wasn't. No one that didn't live through the horrors at Auschwitz, Buna, Buchenwald, Dachau, etc. can even begin to imagine, but we can learn. As I walked through Birkenau, I felt as if I was walking on the bodies of the dead. It hit me far more than Auschwitz did.
p xv: "For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences. For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time. ... The witness has forced himself to testify. For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want his past to become their future."
There's so much I want to say about that, so many places I want to go, but I can't. The sad thing is, we've let it happen again: Bosnia, Darfur to name just two. Rwanda. But yet it's different. Of course it's different, in a time that we should have known and done better, but we've let them down. Did they die in vain? Elie and his neighbours thought they were safe, much as we all think we're safe today. But are we?
p xx: When Elie is quoted as quoting another at the camp re: God's place at the camps. What hit me at Birkenau was a camp building with a cross. What was a place of God doing in such an un Godly location. I don't know how any survivors kept their faith, I don't. It's amazing that Moishe was able to survive and return but to what end? Did he save any lives? What became of Moishe the Beadle?
p12. "The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion."
but would you rather know for certain what was coming and not be able to do anything about it?
p27: "But we were pulling into a station. Someone near a window read to us: 'Auschwitz.' Nobody had ever heard that name."
and now, no one will ever forget it. There is the discussion that people today who live in Ozwiecim live there, that Auschwitz was the camp. And in some ways, they are separate. Many people do not know the Polish name of the town, and that helps them. I cannot imagine living in the shadow of such horror.
p28: The horrible mind's eye of Mrs. Schachter comes true. "In front of us, those flames, In the air, the smell of burning flesh. It must have been around midnight. We had arrived. In Birkenau.
In hell...
But yet the Sighet Jews knew nothing of the horrors in 1944. Knew nothing other than Mrs. Schachter's 'visions' but even if they had known, who would have believed it?
And to think they were 'saved' by one step or two. What would the world have known differently without Mr. Wiesel's recount, one of the most memorable and readable.
p. 40 "But no sooner had we taken a few more steps than we saw the barbed wire of another camp. This one had an iron gate with the overhead inscription: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. Work makes you free. Auschwitz.
As I said, it is the symbol of Auschwitz. Until yesterday, I didn't know that it was used at a number of other camps. Auschwitz has a photo of the Dachau gate.
Somehow, Wiesel (and this I believe is how he had success) managed to get the point across and feel his pain without dragging it out. Night is 'only' 120 pages, yet it has the power through its words of 1200.
I've read other survivor accounts, Primo Levi's come to mind first, but they weren't as clear or as loud. I think this is become Elie's translator, his wife Marion, knows his voice.
I'll probably add more, I'm still digesting.
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Night (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
