Night

When I was around eight, my family went to a World War II exhibit that was being held in Payson, Utah.  I don’t remember a whole lot about that night.  I remember being in awe that the whole world had been at war—twice, no less—and there were a lot of photographs and artifacts.  Most of these things are so blurry I can’t attest to anything I learned about the military aspect of it.

What I remember best is my family splitting off and I went with my grandma to see a documentary of Anne Frank.  I don’t remember a word the film said about Anne Frank and her family, but I came away that night amazed at this family that hid so long but finally became victims of the great and terrible Holocaust.

More than that, I fell in love that night.  I joked the other day that Anne Frank was my first crush, but really, I looked at her as the model of the big sister I never had but would have loved.  Learning how devoted she was to her diary, I think that may have been the moment I decided that I was going to be a writer.

I am embarrassed beyond belief that I have still never read her book.  Yet I’m still not in a great rush.  This is a story I’m saving for a special occasion.

Despite this obvious failing on my part, the Holocaust continues to fascinate and overwhelm me.  In a time and period when so little is held sacred in our modern culture, the world still holds this particular subject with reverence.  The few I’ve met who don’t earned quite a deal of contempt unless they quickly apologized.

We approach stories from survivors with the same respect.  Their words and stories are sacred to us.  We stand amazed at their sufferings and sorrows, the cruel brutality and genocide inflicted upon them.  The victims’ names are not all remembered, but their sorrows are never forgotten.

There are not many open enough to share their sufferings with the world, but the snatches we get are incredible.  I’ve read Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning twice, and what is stunning is how this man managed to live with hope and love even in that most awful of all circumstances.

I just finished Night by Elie Wiesel, and his message is very different but just as powerful and resonant.  He was around age 15 the year he lived in the concentration camps, and instead of finding purpose in suffering, his story is about how the Holocaust broke him.

He explores this in the two most important relationships he held during that time: his relationship to God and the other to his father.

In his youth, Wiesel was devout, eager to learn the mysteries of heaven.  During his stay in the camps, he rebelled against everything he’d been taught in his heart.  As he says, it wasn’t that he doubted God’s existence, but he could no longer love the Being who created him and let His chosen people be murdered body and spirit by their enemies.

The scene that drove it home is when the Day of Atonement arrives.  I’ve been studying the Old Testament a lot the past few months, and one thing that becomes clear when looking at Israelite holidays is that the Day of Atonement was the most sacred holiday they participate in all year.

Fasting is an important religious observance of this day.  As Wiesel saw it, he fasted every single day and when the Day of Atonement came around, he emphatically ate his bread.  I got the sense that he was saying, “God has ignored me, so I will ignore him.”

From what I’ve read since this book, Wiesel still holds this view.  He has declared himself an agnostic and at his age, I doubt he’s about to change his mind there.

The relationship with his father is a little more complicated.  It’s clear that he loved his father and refused to ever be separated from him.  He threw himself in danger several times to stay with his father.

Yet there were times when he allowed himself to be angry.  Even as he made a vow to never abandon his father, he knew how much of a relief it would be not to look after the old man.  When Wiesel’s father finally died, all the young boy felt was free.

Wiesel has written many books over the years, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, and is still living a long and full life.  At the end of the day, though, Night may be what he is best remembered for, and that’s appropriate.  I feel that his story and all the stories of the Holocaust should remain alive through our generation and the other generations that will succeed us.  It’s not only important that we learn the lessons these stories can tell us, what’s critical is that these stories are remembered at all, because they are part of who we are as people.

It’s also the best way that we can honor them.