Elie Wiesel's autobiographical account of his deportation as a fifteen-year-old from the Hungarian town of Sighet to Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944, the death of his father days before liberation, and the spiritual annihilation that runs alongside the physical one — including the famous passage in which the boy watching a child hang on the gallows hears the answer to 'Where is God now?' as 'Here He is — He is hanging here on this gallows.' Originally written in Yiddish (Un di velt hot geshvign, 1956), then radically condensed and rewritten in French as La Nuit (1958).
The book most associated with Wiesel's 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, Night has sold over ten million copies in the United States alone and is required reading in secondary-school Holocaust curricula across much of the Western world. The 2006 retranslation by Marion Wiesel is the version most readers now encounter. Holocaust historians — Ruth Franklin, Naomi Seidman — have written substantially about the differences between the Yiddish original's anger and the more restrained French version, but the book's standing as primary survivor testimony is independent of those textual debates.
Here He is — He is hanging here on this gallows.
p. 64 · The hanging of the child — the thematic centre of the book
First lines
They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname. He was the jack-of-all-trades in a Hasidic house of prayer, a shtibl. The Jews of Sighet—the little town in Transylvania where I spent my childhood—were fond of him.
Reception
Among the central canonical texts of Holocaust literature — over 10 million copies sold across translations, required reading in secondary-school Holocaust curricula across the United States and Europe, and the book most associated with Wiesel's 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. Marion Wiesel's 2006 retranslation is the version most current readers know. Holocaust historians (Ruth Franklin, Naomi Seidman) have written substantively about the differences between the Yiddish original and the French version — particularly the muting of the original's anger and its more theological register. The book's standing as primary survivor testimony is independent of those textual debates.
Frequently asked
What is Night by Elie Wiesel about?
Night is Elie Wiesel's autobiographical memoir of his deportation as a fifteen-year-old to Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944, the death of his father days before liberation, and the spiritual crisis — the destruction of faith — that runs alongside the physical ordeal.
Is Night based on a true story?
Yes. Night is a memoir drawn directly from Wiesel's experience as a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. It was originally written in Yiddish in 1956 as Un di velt hot geshvign, then rewritten in French as La Nuit (1958), and translated into English by Stella Rodway (1960) and later by Marion Wiesel (2006).
What is the significance of the gallows scene in Night?
When a child is hanged alongside two men, the child's light weight keeps him alive and suffering for over thirty minutes. Someone in the crowd asks 'Where is God now?' and Wiesel hears a voice within him answer: 'Here He is — He is hanging here on this gallows.' The scene is the thematic centre of the book's treatment of faith under extremity.