Elie Wiesel

Read this amazing book at Tina's place, Night by Elie Wiesel. It's an 'Oprah Book club' book and it's really something. Guaranteed to make you hate the Nazis, its about Elie's life at Hitler's death camps. Reading the book will make you wonder about God, just like Elie did... how could a God sit back and watch so many people being tortured.... parents seeing their babies being used as target practice, children watching their parents being beaten to death, everybody lying in constant fear of the chimneys, the smell of burnt flesh.... goes beyond me. Here are a few excerpts from the book...
Never shall I forget that night,
the first night in camp,
which has turned my life into one long night,
seven times cursed and seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the little faces of the children,
whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me,
for all eternity, of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.
Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.

"'Men to the left! Women to the right!'"
"Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight short, simple words. Yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother."
(He learned years later that his mother and Tzipora (his youngest sister) had been sent straight to the gas chamber)

"'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.'"

During the first night in Auschwitz, he and his father wait in line to be thrown into a firepit. He watches a lorry draw up beside the pit and deliver its load of children into the fire.

God is not lost to Eliezer entirely. Later, during the hanging of a child, which the camp is forced to watch, he hears someone in the crowd ask: Where is God? Where is he? Not heavy enough for the weight of his body to break his neck, the boy dies slowly and in agony, "struggling between life and death." Wiesel files past him, sees his tongue still pink and his eyes still clear, and weeps. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: Where is God now?And I heard a voice within me answer him: ... Here He is – He is hanging here on this gallows

Blessed be God's name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because He kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him "Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces? ... But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man.
On January 28 1945, just a few weeks after the two were marched to Buchenwald and only months before the camp was liberated by the Americans, Wiesel's father died of dysentery starvation and exhaustion, after being beaten by a guard. The last word his father spoke was “Eliezer”, his son's name.

Elie Wiesel's statement, "...to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all..." stands as a succinct summary of his views on life and serves as the driving force of his work. Wiesel is the author of 36 works dealing with Judaism, the Holocaust, and the moral responsibility of all people to fight hatred, racism and genocide.