don't know how to rate this because it is so horrifying...I read it twice for school and both times it was utterly devastating and terrifying. It is an incredibly important book that everyone should read. But no one, I repeat, NO ONE, should ever have to read this alone. ( )

I am struggling to review this book as I am quite conflicted. I didn't find it terribly impactful, yet to critic it almost feels sacrilege given its subject matter.

I appreciate what a horrific time and memory this must be for the author, and I give a lot of grace to the fact that it is his 15-year-old perspective written when he was quite some years older. That being said, for all the conversation (read hype) surrounding Night, I expected so much more; that is on me.

As someone who has delved quite deep into this part of history, I feel there are far more detailed, perhaps even accurately portrayed writings available that will leave the reader with a better understanding of the suffering that occurred during the Holocaust. That being said, this book has its place, it just isn't the homerun read that it has been made out to be -- feels watered down.

In learning more about the book and its apparent numerous renditions, that is likely what has occurred, the 800 original score has been whittled down through each language translation. It now is just over 100 pages for us English readers. Too bad, really, as I think we could have taken away much more and the effect could have been far more powerful had the pages remained.

As with all books on the Holocaust, this book deserves to be read, it may strike that cord necessary for the reader to see people and the world differently so that they stand up as needed to those being wrongly persecuted. ( )

Eliezer was 15 years old when he, his sister and his parents were taken prisoner by the Nazis and deported from their home in Sighet, Transylvania, for the crime of being Jewish. Upon arrival to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, Eliezer and his father were separated from Eliezer’s mother and sister, never to see them again. To survive the most inhumane conditions imaginable and to avoid immediate death, Eliezer and his father desperately tried to keep up their strength, thereby demonstrating to the Nazis their usefulness in their ability to work. Each day brought new horrors, torture, starvation, exposure, exhaustion, and illness. Constantly, death hovered over them and the other prisoners. Their challenge: how to avoid the physical and emotional damage that hastened that almost certain death.

The author does a stunning job of presenting the difficult subject of the Holocaust. He follows a father and son as they move from a religiously-observant life in Transylvania to the agonizingly slow and painful experience of deportation and imprisonment in a series of concentration camps. To make this story more acceptable, the author makes it neither long nor frightfully graphic. It presents in clear detail the movements and emotions of one young man caught in an unreal world and how he suffers in his attempt to survive. What causes the greatest sadness and horror to the reader is the slow realization of the degree to which man can inflict physical and emotional pain on another human being with little or no remorse. It is a difficult lesson but one which needs to be taught, understood, and remembered by all people. Elie Wiesel begins this terrible education with Night. ( )

This is an excellent, dark, very troubling, and - if you read the forward and especially the author's acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize - inspiring book.

It is a fast read about a Jewish teenager taken from his home in 1944 to Nazi prison camps. It echoes the dire need to avoid complacency and do something, no matter what or how little, to help those in need. To not ignore the warnings that something is not quite right.

A few days after finishing the book I read an excerpt of a letter to the U.S. Congress from Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese human-rights lawyer. He said, "May the light of freedom shine upon China, let evil have no place to hide, and may the mistreated no longer be in pain." He has been lost in the Chinese prison system since writing that letter in 2007.

Seems that in some places, there has only been slight progress since 1944. ( )

A book of profound importance. Not just a book, but an understanding and an experience. A work of historical significance and value. A narrative that will stay with you years after you turn the last page. Simply masterful. ( )