I finally read the nonfiction book that has been on my radar for years. Quite randomly, actually. I wanted a really quick one evening, and since this was the shortest book on my shelves at that point, I picked it up.

Let’s dive right in!

(Found on Goodreads)

Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor’s perspective, Night is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust. A compelling consideration of the darkest side of human nature and the enduring power of hope, it remains one of the most important works of the twentieth century.

How one little book can contain such atrocities, I don’t know.

How those atrocities actually end up being truth, is even more unbelievable. And yet we must believe it, because this is our past.

There’s a reason why so many people say this is a must read for everybody. Yes, it’s horrid to read. It tells such a devastating story, but it’s one we have to understand. It’s our history. And if we forget about it, it’s likely to happen again. We’ll have learned nothing.

Elie Wiesel explains how it is perfectly – how we, as readers living in this day and age – can never know what it was like. We can only read and understand. We’ll never know that level of fear, hunger, distrust, confusion. We’ll never know what it’s like to live in a world of war, with entire races being wiped out at extraordinary speeds for seemingly no reason other than racist hatred. But we can read books like this, and do our best to keep their stories alive. We can remember them, and learn from them, and do our best to not let it happen again.

How such a short book can encompass so much blows my mind. You get that desperate sense of needing to survive. You get the sense of time passing, with every day being it’s own battle. And yet it’s not exaggerated. It’s not dramatised. It just explains, simply, what happened. And that’s all I really need from a nonfiction book like this.

Rated 4/5 stars

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Share your thoughts!

Have you read this book? What did you think?

If you haven’t, do you plan to?

Are there any books similar to this you’d recommend?

Let me know in the comments!

Until next time…

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