Night Trilogy (Wiesel)

An enduring classic of Holocaust literature, Night offers a personal and unforgettable account of the appalling horrors of Hitler's reign of terror. Through the eyes of 14-year-old Eliezer, we behold the tragic fate of the Jews from the little town of Sighet. Even as they are stuffed into cattle cars bound for Auschwitz, the townspeople refuse to believe rumors of anti-Semitic atrocities. Not until they are marched toward the blazing crematory at the camp's "reception center" does the terrible truth sink in. Narrator George Guidall intensifies the emotional impact as blind hope turns to utter horror. His performance captures the profound agony of young Eliezer as he witnesses the suffering and death of his family and loses all that he holds sacred.

With the coming of dawn is the coming of death for a captured English officer in British-controlled Palestine. Elisha, a young Israeli freedom fighter, is his executioner. Ordered to kill the officer in reprisal for Britain's execution of a Jewish prisoner, Elisha thinks about his past-a sorrowful memory of the nightmare of Nazi death camps. As the only surviving member of his family, he dreamt of a wonderful future in his promised homeland. But instead, he finds himself closer to committing heartless murder with the approach of daylight. Dawn presents a haunting glimpse into the soul of one man and a budding nation.

First published in English under the title The Accident, Elie Wiesel's third novel in his trilogy of Holocaust literature has now adopted Wiesel's original title: Day. In the opening scene, a Holocaust survivor and successful journalist steps off a curb in New York City directly into the pathway of an oncoming cab. As he struggles between life and death, the journalist recalls the effects of the historical tragedy of the Holocaust on himself and his family. Like the memoir Night and the novel Dawn, Wiesel again poses important questions involving the meaning of almost an entire annihilation of a race, loss of faith in the face of mass murder and torture and the aftermath and effects of the Holocaust on individuals and the Jewish people.