Previous
Foreshadowing
Genre
Explanation and Analysis:
Night by Elie Wiesel is an autobiographical memoir written between 1955 and 1958, many years after the end of the Holocaust. Though the memoir was conceived in an unpublished Yiddish manuscript, it was translated into French for its official publication in 1958. In 1960, an English translation was published in New York.
The memoir is both a memorial to and an interpretation of Eliezer’s Holocaust experiences at several different Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Poland. Written about ten years after the liberation of Buchenwald by American forces, the story is told from the perspective of an older Eliezer, reflecting on his thoughts and experiences as a teenager. The story begins when Eliezer is a teenager living in Sighet, Hungary, in 1944. Because information was generally elusive and difficult to come by, the Jews in Sighet could not predict that Hitler’s “Final Solution” would reach them, let alone affect them. The plot then follows Eliezer and his family as they endure the increasingly harsh mandates of the Hungarian police and the Gestapo. Eliezer and his father manage to stay together and alive for almost a year, moving between the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps. Night ends shortly after the liberation of Buchenwald, upon which Eliezer sees his reflection as a corpse. The aftermath of his Holocaust experience is tinted with this metaphor.
Since its publication, Night—the first book in Eliezer’s trilogy—has become a primary piece of literature in the Holocaust canon.
