Night (book)

Night, or La Nuit, first published in France in 1958, is an autobiographical novella by Elie Wiesel based on his experience, as a young Jew, of being deported from the village of Sighet in Transylvania to the German death camp at Auschwitz, and later to the concentration camp at Buchenwald.

Writing Night

From Buchenwald, he was sent to the Oeuvre au Secours aux Enfants (Children's Rescue Service) with 400 other orphans, first to Belgium, then to Normandy, where he learned that his mother and baby sister Tzipora had died in the gas chambers, but that his two older sisters, Hilda and Beatrice, had survived.

Related Topics:
Belgium - Normandy

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In 1948, at the age of 19, he was sent to Israel as a war correspondent by the French newspaper L'arche, then from 1948-51, he studied philosophy and literature at the Sorbonne, listening to lectures by Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Buber. To supplement his $16 a week stipend, he taught Hebrew and translated for the militant Yiddish weekly Zion in Kamf, which eased him into a career in journalism. After the Sorbonne, he became chief foreign correspondent of the Tel Aviv newspaper Yedioth Ahronot, and it was in this capacity, in 1955, that he met the French novelist and Nobel laureate Francoise Mauriac. Wiesel was afraid of writing his story:

Related Topics:
1948 - Israel - Philosophy - Sorbonne - Jean-Paul Sartre - Martin Buber - Hebrew - Journalism - Tel Aviv - 1955 - Nobel laureate

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You can be a silent witness, which means silence itself can become a way of communication. There is so much in silence. There is an archeology of silence. There is a geography of silence. There is a theology of silence. There is a history of silence. Silence is universal and you can work within it, and its own context, and make that silence into a testimony. Job, after he lost his children and everything, his fortune and his health, Job, for seven days and seven nights he was silent, and his three friends who came to visit him were also silent. That must have been a powerful silence, a brilliant silence. You see, silence itself can be testimony and I was waiting for ten years, really, but my intention simply was to be sure that the words I would use are the proper words. I was afraid of language. http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/wie0int-2

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For ten years, Wiesel kept his story to himself, refusing even to discuss it. With no faith in God, and none in humanity, he considered suicide. His outlook was summed up in Night by one of his neighbors in the barracks at Auschwitz: I've got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He's the only one who's kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people. (p.77)

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In 1955, he decide to interview Pierre Mendes-France, the French prime minister, for a newspaper story, and had heard that Francois Mauriac was a friend of his; so on May 14, 1955, he went to ask Mauriac if he would arrange a meeting between Wiesel and Mendes-France.

Related Topics:
1955 - Pierre Mendes-France - May 14

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The problem was that was in love with Jesus. He was the most decent person I ever met in that field — as a writer, as a Catholic writer. Honest, sense of integrity, and he was in love with Jesus. He spoke only of Jesus.

Related Topics:
Jesus - Catholic

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Whatever I would ask — Jesus. Finally, I said, "What about Mendès-France?" He said that Mendès-France, like Jesus, was suffering ...

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When he said Jesus again I couldn't take it, and for the only time in my life I was discourteous, which I regret to this day. I said, "Mr. Mauriac," we called him Maître, "ten years or so ago, I have seen children, hundreds of Jewish children, who suffered more than Jesus did on his cross and we do not speak about it." I felt all of a sudden so embarrassed. I closed my notebook and went to the elevator. He ran after me. He pulled me back; he sat down in his chair, and I in mine, and he began weeping. I have rarely seen an old man weep like that, and I felt like such an idiot ... And then, at the end, without saying anything, he simply said, "You know, maybe you should talk about it." http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/wie0int-3

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Wiesel handed in a 900-page manuscript in Yiddish called Un di Velt Hot Geshvign (And the World was Silent). No one would publish it, either in France or in the U.S.; even when approached by Mauriac, publishers said that it was too morbid, and no one would read it. "Nobody wants to hear these stories," they told him. http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/wie0int-3 It was eventually published in the original Yiddish in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at nearly 300 pages; then in 1958, a small French publisher, Les Editions de Minuit, agreed to release a 127-page French translation retitled La Nuit, dedicated to Shlomo, Sarah, and Tzipora. Despite being published in two countries already, the same difficulty was encountered finding an American publisher, until in 1960, another tiny publisher, Hill & Wang, agreed to pay Wiesel a $100 pro-forma advance. Published in the U.S. in September 1960, it sold only 1,046 copies in the next 18 months.

Related Topics:
Yiddish - Buenos Aires - Argentina - 1958 - 1960

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Nobody wanted to read it. It doesn't matter. I am not here to sell, I'm here to write. http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/wie0int-3

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Forty five years later, Night has become one of the bedrocks of Holocaust literature, alongside Primo Levi's If This is a Man, and Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl. Wiesel has since published another 40 books, and in 1986 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Commission called him a "messenger to mankind" for his story of "total humiliation and ... the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler's death camps." Wiesel now lives in the United States with his wife Marion, and teaches at Boston University.

Related Topics:
Holocaust - Primo Levi - Anne Frank - 1986 - Nobel Peace Prize - Boston University

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Night, my first narrative, was an autobiographical story, a kind of testimony of one witness speaking of his own life, his own death. All kinds of options were available: suicide, madness, killing, political action, hate, friendship. I note all of these options: faith, rejection of faith, blasphemy, atheism, denial, rejection of man, despair and in each book I explore one aspect. In Dawn I explore the political action; in The Accident, suicide; in The Town Beyond the Wall, madness; in The Gates of the Forest, faith and friendship; in A Beggar in Jerusalem, history, the return. All the stories are one story except that I build them in concentric circles. The center is the same and is in Night, (Cargas, 1992, p.73).

Related Topics:
Suicide - Madness - Hate - Faith - Blasphemy - Atheism

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