Night
By Elie Wiesel
It is 1944. The Jews of Sighet, Hungary are rounded up and driven into Nazi concentration camps. For the next terrible year, young Elie Wiesel experiences the loss of everything he loves — home, friends, family — in an agonizing journey through Birkenau, Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald. The greatest tragedy of our time, told through the eyes of a 15-year old boy.
Night is a terrifying account of the Nazi death-camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family, his innocence, and his god. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.
Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant , and what its legacy is and will be. (Scholastic)
Lesson - Exploring Night as Literature: Bearing Witness to History
Context:
- Ghettos & Camps: Overview
- Ghettos (Article from the USHMM)
- Nazi Camps (Article from the USHMM)
Other recommended texts for 9th-12th grade:
See what's in our High School Holocaust Teaching Trunk! Holocaust Trunks are free to borrow.