NIGHT by Elie Wiesel (1955, 133 pages: a memoir)

Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel is best-known for this stunning memoir about his life as a prisoner in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and about the times leading up to this incarceration.

Here is the scene upon 16-year-old Elie Wiesel’s arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as he, his parents, and his younger sister exit the stinking train-car:

In a fraction of a second I could see my mother, my sisters, move to the right. Tzipora [Wiesel’s sister] was holding Mother’s hand. I saw them walking farther and farther away; Mother was stroking my sister’s blond hair, as if to protect her. And I walked on with my father, with the men [to the left]. I didn’t know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever.

And just a few moments later…

Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes … Children thrown into the flames.

Night is more than an accounting of what happened: The book is also poetry as it communicates the events that killed Elie Wiesel even though he would survive the Holocaust:

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.

Never shall I forget that smoke.

Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.

Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.