Encroaching Night

Never should anyone forget ... -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
One of my purchases in Washington D.C. was the powerful and compelling novella Night, by concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel. I bought it at the Holocaust museum, and it is an excellent read for anyone. At 105 pages, and with large print it can be read in one sitting – although the import of its words might take much longer to distill and digest.

Night chronicles the Wiesel family (Elie, his parents and 3 sisters) and their horrific internment in German concentration camps. The Wiesel family and all the Jews of Sighet, Transylvania were deported to camps in late 1944, as the war was actually approaching its end. The timing availed the Wiesel’s nothing – Eric’s parents and youngest sister perished. I carried away from my reading some general impressions and ideas – ideas that extend to current events and social phenomena by the way.

The Jews of Sighet could not believe that a religious group was being singled out for persecution – they were in denial. In early 1944, a synagogue custodian had escaped an internment train and told the townspeople what was happening in the camps; they just wrote him off as a madman. Then Hungary turned the government reigns over to Germany, and German officers settled into Sighet’s guest houses and hotels. The townspeople were told they had to be moved to a new encampment; they rationalized that the move was a protective one, to keep Sighet’s Jews from the dangerous battlefront. They also speculated that Germany just needed their tradesmen for special war efforts – nothing sinister at hand.

They couldn’t have been more tragically mistaken. Within weeks, the Germans had corralled the Jews into a ghetto, then packed them in a cattle car train off to Aushwitz. At the front gate, Germans did “selection” to separate slave labor (the physically robust) from the others. The others – slight women, children, infants, the elderly, the disabled and the ill were immediately gassed. Elie’s mother and baby sister were killed the very day they arrived at Auschwitz. I was impressed that competent “block workers” as they were called were actually allowed to have Hebrew services, and they were fed pretty well at least at the outset – before Russian tanks rolled near. The “select” really were needed for back-breaking labor in the war effort. Also interesting is that the Nazis targeted homosexuals – noteworthy because some of the camp administrators were closeted homosexuals and they would shield young boys from punishment or death for nefarious sexual purposes. (Although in retrospect, one might willingly endure rape as an alternative to gassing).

Toward the end of the war, food rations became scant for SS soldiers and even more so for prisoners. The prisoners had to be moved (marched by foot, in the snow, under SS armed watch) to new encampments. Food was so scarce that fathers, sons and lifetime friends would fight to bitter death over a loaf of bread. Elie couldn’t believe how the circumstances transformed men into animals. Elie, age 15, had the fortune to be encamped with his 50 year old father. However, the cold and starvation took a serious toll on his father and he died only weeks before the camp was freed. Wiesel feels guilt and remorse to this day, that he had resentments – that he was having to carry his dying father and that it might call attention to them both.

When the Russians were about to prevail, the SS could see the handwriting on the wall. The SS officers called all the block denizens to the front of the camp – usually done for roll call or formal announcements. Only this time, resistance fighters had knowledge that the troops were going to simply kill the remaining prisoners. Mow them all down with guns – they were no longer “of use” as slave labor. The prisoners remained in their blocks. It’s heartening to know that even this late in game, even after 6 million deaths, the victims had the moxie to fight back. The resistance fighters had somehow obtained guns and started shooting at the SS troops. The beleaguered SS troops were now fighting Russians and resistance fighters – they had to run.

I’ve already read much about the Holocaust, although I never read such a firsthand account as this. Wiesel had trouble getting the book published in 1955 – publishers at the time thought the topic was too dark and troubling. It’s to Wiesel’s everlasting credit that he persevered and told the story of an evil night that encroached, a night that nobody quite could believe even after it passed.

In closing, here is Elie’s poetic testament to what happened in that critical time:

“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.”

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