Elie Wiesel, Night

I have just finished rereading this powerful and haunting narrative of Elie Wiesel's experience as a Jew experiencing the Holocaust and the famed Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. I first encountered this little book in a seminary class on God, Evil, and Suffering, and it was a fitting way to begin that class. For in it, Wiesel thoughtfully reflects on the dept of the depravity he witnessed in years of German maltreatment.

He begins the story with the the waiting and questioning of 1943. His thoughts and that of his community were both on Hitler's progress and prospects, and also on God's existence and benevolence. The year 1944 brought all these things to a head, as the Jews were first placed in a Ghetto and then moved out to concentration camps, both surreal experiences of coming to realize the extremity of their situation. Some hope of humanity remained, either as only wishful thinking or as common-sense expectation that things couldn't be as bad as some thought, but with the arrival at a German concentration camp, with separation by men and women and then by age and ability, with some going to work and others going to the crematories, reality, unexpected and unimaginable as it may have been, began to set in. The horrors daily experienced by Wiesel and his fellow prisoners are still hard to imagine, but that is why they are so important to read.

One episode at Auschwitz stands out as a climax of inhumanity: the hanging of a young boy who had been an assistant to an Oberkampo, a prisoner who was in charge of other prisoners. The boy refused to speak about allegations against his Oberkampo, so the Germans sentenced him to death. Wiesel recounts the lilence throughout the camp as the hild was hung. "Where is God? Where is He?" The question rung out behind Wiesel as he watched the events. Then, as the prisoners were all forced to march by the hanging prisoners, including the yong boy who was still hanging alive in the last momets of life (too light to have his neck break immediately upon hanging). "where is God now?" the question again is asked. It is impossible for questions like that to ring in our minds. Wiesel continues his reflection on these horrors, and upon God. This turned him to anger: "What does Your greatness mean, Lord of the Universe, in the face of all this weakness, this decomposition, and this decay?" (73-74). God becomes the accused, but along with this comes a great void. It is that void that rings throughout the whole work.

While not easy to read, this Holocaust memoir is essential reading. It is important that we remember. We must acknowledge the depths to which our inhumanity can go. We live in a world of suffering and death, and to picture it with rose colored glasses doesn't make it go away. Instead, acknowledging and living in the suffering of others gives us a chance to begin walking along side them. It's also a reminder that easy answers won't suffice. That isn't to say that the void Wiesel speaks of and evidences are the true state of affairs in our world, but that they are important experiences into which God's truth must be spoken.