History Exposed In Elie Wiesel's Night

One of the main reasons for learning about history is to understand how to prevent horrible tragedies from re-occurring. This idea is very prevalent in Elie Wiesel’s novel, Night. Night is the Holocaust memoir of a young boy, who was forced to leave his home and everything he knows, simply because of the theology he believed in. He is taken to multiple concentration camps throughout his perils including Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and he miraculously makes it out alive. Wiesel begins the book with a foreword describing the difficult process of publishing his book and also his motivation for writing the memoir. When talking about his reasoning for writing and publishing his memoir, he says, “He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that

To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time” (Wiesel xv). He feels obligated to share his story with the world so that he can honor the people who lost their lives during this horrible time of prejudice. Wiesel makes an interesting and significant point about the Holocaust here. It is not only important for people to learn about the Holocaust so that they can mourn and honor the people who died, but it is also a crucial part of the prevention of future generations performing genocides or other forms of prejudice.

This quote truly describes one of the most important underlying themes of the book, to continue the legacy and education of the Holocaust. In the first sentence of the quote, I really like that Wiesel very consciously chooses the word “deprive”. This implies that sharing knowledge about the Holocaust to younger generations is not only important, it is a