A few participants read and reviewed Night by Elie Wiesel for the WWII reading challenge. Here are excerpts; feel free to click the links to read the complete reviews.
Joanna from It’s All About Me said:
One of the things that struck me is that even in times of war human beings don’t really entertain then thought that something bad could happen to them. The Jews in the village where the author lived had heard rumors about the atrocities going on in the camps and about persecution everywhere. They even had actual evidence because of one their own had been taken away and had escaped and come back to warn everyone. And yet they still believed that the war would end just in time or that the Germans would never get that far or that they would somehow be more merciful in their village. Amazing thing, the human mind.
Sandy from You’ve GOTTA Read This! said:
This is a very short book – only 120 pages – but took me days to read. I had to put it down often. The prose is direct and factual, and lacks any in-depth character development. Despite this, I’m left with echoes of a young Polish boy who played his beloved violin to his death. Of hundreds of cries and moans of distress from the train cars, “a death rattle of an entire convoy with the end approaching”. Of a commandant telling young Elie not to worry about his dying father, that it is “every man for himself” and there is “no such thing as a father, a brother or a friend”.
Sumthinblue from Bookmarked! said:
Despite the brevity of the book (less than a hundred pages, in short chapters), the few hours I read it felt like eternity because it elicited so many emotions in me — disbelief at the horror that was unfolding in the novel and double disbelief that it actually happened in this world, incredulity at the capability of humans to cause the suffering of fellow humans, compassion for the victims, and admiration for the fortitude and faith of those who survived (and even those who didn’t).
**Attention participants: Remember to email us a link to your reviews, and we’ll post them here so we can see what everyone is reading!**
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War Through the Generations 
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