Commentary On Night By Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel in the preface to Night (page 1 paragraph 3) says “ Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind?” This passage illustrates in just a few sentences the horrors that the author witnessed during the Holocaust. The author is saying that he wrote about his experiences to try and regain some of the humanity that he lost during the Holocaust. The author's mind is so plagued by the events that he witnessed that he almost considers madness to be the only way to make sense of the events he witnessed. The memories of Elie Wiesel are so abhorrent, that he tried to contain them

The joy in his eyes was gone. He no longer sang. He no longer mentioned either God or the Kabbalah. He spoke only of what he had seen. But people not only refused to believe his tales, they refused to listen. Some even insinuated that he only wanted their pity, that he was imagining things. Others flatly said that he had gone mad.” (Page 7 paragraph 2). The stories and beliefs of people most often were created as ways of explaining the unexplainable. When Moishe experienced what he did at the hands of the Nazis, he lost all faith in the stories that had previously shielded him from horrors. His God protected him from harm but when he saw what the Nazis were doing he lost all belief in his God and the goodness of humanity. Moishe saw the worst of human nature at the Nazis hands. The joy that is derived from listening to and telling stories even was lost to the horrors of the Holocaust. The Nazis were totally indifferent to the effect they had on the people they harmed. To them Jews were as unsubstantial as blades of grass that are crushed underfoot just as the Nazis killed Jews without

Elie Wiesel is saying through this one sentence that he wrote the book to defeat the Nazis one last time. If Elie was indifferent to his memories of the living nightmare that was the Holocaust, he would be no better than the Nazis. The indifference of the Nazis to their actions is what makes them horrible. When a person kills another person a part of the killer is lost. The Nazis somehow managed however to beat mortality in that sense. They became indifferent to their actions and the consequences of them. If the people who witnessed the Holocaust were to forget they would be no better than the Nazis, they would be as Elie Wiesel says accomplices to the Nazis, they would give the Nazis the true final solution to their problem of erasing Jews from earth. If the Nazis are forgotten they will have won the final battle in their twisted war against the Jews. Elie also says that “ to forget would not only be dangerous, but offensive; to forget would be akin to killing them a second time.” The Nazis killed people once but forgetting them would kill them again and so finish the Nazis