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Also by Elie Wiesel
DAWN
THE OSLO ADDRESS
DAY (previously THE ACCIDENT)
TWILIGHT
THE TOWN BEYOND THE WALL
THE SIX DAYS OF DESTRUCTION
THE GATES OF THE FOREST
THE JEWS OF SILENCE
LEGENDS OF OUR TIME
(with Albert Friedlander)
A JOURNEY INTO FAITH
(conversations with John
Cardinal O’Connor)
A BEGGAR IN JERUSALEM
A SONG FOR HOPE (cantata)
ONE GENERATION AFTER
FROM THE KINGDOM OF MEMORY
SOULS ON FIRE
SAGES AND DREAMERS
THE OATH
THE FORGOTTEN
ANI MAAMIN (cantata)
A PASSOVER HAGGADAH (illustrated
ZALMEN, OR THE MADNESS OF GOD
(play)
MESSENGERS OF GOD
A JEW TODAY
FOUR HASIDIC MASTERS
THE TRIAL OF GOD (play)
by Mark Podwal)
ALL RIVERS RUN TO THE SEA
MEMOIR IN TWO VOICES (with
François Mitterand)
KING SOLOMON AND HIS MAGIC
RING (illustrated by Mark
Podwal)
THE TESTAMENT
AND THE SEA IS NEVER FULL
FIVE BIBLICAL PORTRAITS
THE JUDGES
SOMEWHERE A MASTER
CONVERSATIONS WITH ELIE
THE GOLEM (illustrated by Mark
Podwal)
WIESEL (with Richard D.
Heffner)
THE FIFTH SON
WISE MEN AND THEIR TALES
AGAINST SILENCE (edited by Irving
THE TIME OF THE UPROOTED
Abrahamson)
Night
ELIE
WIESEL
T R A N S L A T E D FROM THE F R E N C H BY MARION W I E S E L
H I L L A N D WANG
A DIVISION OF FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX
NEW YORK
Hill and Wang
A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
19 Union Square West, New York 10003
Copyright © 1958 by Les Editions de Minuit
Translation copyright © 2006 by Marion Wiesel
Preface to the New Translation copyright © 2006 by Elie Wiesel
Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech copyright © 1986 by the Nobel Foundation
All rights reserved
Distributed in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
Printed in the United States of America
Published simultaneously in hardcover and paperback by Hill and Wang
First edition of this translation, 2006
Library of Congress Control Number: 2005936797
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-0-374-39997-9
Hardcover ISBN-10:0-374-39997-2
Paperback ISBN-13:9 78-0-3 74-50001-6
Paperback ISBN-10:0-374-50001-0
Designed by Abby Kagan
www.fsgbooks.com
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In memory of
my parents and of my little sister, Tzipora
E.W.
This new translation
in memory of
my grandparents, Abba, Sarah and Nachman,
who also vanished into that night
M.W.
Preface to the New Translation
by Elie Wiesel
I
only one book, this would
be the one. Just as the past lingers in the present, all my writings after Night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear its stamp, and cannot
be understood if one has not read this very first of my works.
Why did I write it?
F IN MY L I F E T I M E I WAS TO WRITE
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?
Was it to leave behind a legacy of words, of memories, to help
prevent history from repeating itself?
Or was it simply to preserve a record of the ordeal I endured as
an adolescent, at an age when one’s knowledge of death and evil
should be limited to what one discovers in literature?
There are those who tell me that I survived in order to write
this text. I am not convinced. I don’t know how I survived; I was
weak, rather shy; I did nothing to save myself. A miracle? Certainly not. If heaven could or would perform a miracle for me,
why not for others more deserving than myself? It was nothing
more than chance. However, having survived, I needed to give
some meaning to my survival. Was it to protect that meaning that
I set to paper an experience in which nothing made any sense?
In retrospect I must confess that I do not know, or no longer
know, what I wanted to achieve with my words. I only know that
without this testimony, my life as a writer—or my life, period—
would not have become what it is: that of a witness who believes
he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from
human memory.
For today, thanks to recently discovered documents, the evidence shows that in the early days of their accession to power, the
Nazis in Germany set out to build a society in which there simply
would be no room for Jews. Toward the end of their reign, their
goal changed: they decided to leave behind a world in ruins in
which Jews would seem never to have existed. That is why everywhere in Russia, in the Ukraine, and in Lithuania, the Einsatzgruppen carried out the Final Solution by turning their machine
guns on more than a million Jews, men, women, and children, and
throwing them into huge mass graves, dug just moments before
by the victims themselves. Special units would then disinter the
corpses and burn them. Thus, for the first time in history, Jews
were not only killed twice but denied burial in a cemetery.
It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices
waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.
in history would be judged
one day, I knew that I must bear witness. I also knew that, while
CONVINCED THAT THIS
PERIOD
I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them.
Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly as language became an obstacle. It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language. But how was one to rehabilitate
and transform words betrayed and perverted by the enemy?
Hunger—thirst—fear—transport—selection—fire—chimney:
these words all have intrinsic meaning, but in those times, they
meant something else. Writing in my mother tongue—at that
point close to extinction—I would pause at every sentence, and
start over and over again. I would conjure up other verbs, other
images, other silent cries. It still was not right. But what exactly
was “it”? “It” was something elusive, darkly shrouded for fear of
being usurped, profaned. All the dictionary had to offer seemed
meager, pale, lifeless. Was there a way to describe the last journey in sealed cattle cars, the last voyage toward the unknown? Or
the discovery of a demented and glacial universe where to be inhuman was human, where disciplined, educated men in uniform
came to kill, and innocent children and weary old men came to
die? Or the countless separations on a single fiery night, the tearing apart of entire families, entire communities? Or, incredibly,
the vanishing of a beautiful, well-behaved little Jewish girl with
golden hair and a sad smile, murdered with her mother the very
night of their arrival? How was one to speak of them without
trembling and a heart broken for all eternity?
Deep down, the witness knew then, as he does now, that
his testimony would not be received. After all, it deals with an
event that sprang from the darkest zone of man. Only those
who experienced Auschwitz know what it was. Others will never
know.
But would they at least understand?
Could men and women who consider it normal to assist the
weak, to heal the sick, to protect small children, and to respect
the wisdom of their elders understand what happened there?
Would they be able to comprehend how, within that cursed universe, the masters tortured the weak and massacred the children,
the sick, and the old?
And yet, having lived through this experience, one could not
keep silent no matter how difficult, if not impossible, it was to
speak.
And so I persevered. And trusted the silence that envelops
and transcends words. Knowing all the while that any one of the
fields of ashes in Birkenau carries more weight than all the testimonies about Birkenau. For, despite all my attempts to articulate
the unspeakable, “it” is still not right.
Is that why my manuscript—written in Yiddish as “And the
World Remained Silent” and translated first into French, then
into English—was rejected by every major publisher, French and
American, despite the tireless efforts of the great Catholic French
writer and Nobel laureate François Mauriac? After months and
months of personal visits, letters, and telephone calls, he finally
succeeded in getting it into print.
Though I made numerous cuts, the original Yiddish version
still was long. Jérôme Lindon, the legendary head of the small but
prestigious Éditions de Minuit, edited and further cut the French
version. I accepted his decision because I worried that some
things might be superfluous. Substance alone mattered. I was
more afraid of having said too much than too little.
Example: in the Yiddish version, the narrative opens with
these cynical musings:
In the beginning there was faith—which is childish; trust—which
is vain; and illusion—which is dangerous.
We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illu-
sion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark
from the Shekhinah’s flame; that every one of us carries in his
eyes and in his soul a reflection of God’s image.
That was the source if not the cause of all our ordeals.
Other passages from the original Yiddish text had more on the
death of my father and on the Liberation. Why not include those
in this new translation? Too personal, too private, perhaps; they
need to remain between the lines. And y e t …
I remember that night, the most horrendous of my life:
…Eliezer, my son, come h e r e … I want to tell you
s o m e t h i n g … Only to y o u … C o m e , don’t leave me alone…Eliezer…”
I heard his voice, grasped the meaning of his words and the
tragic dimension of the moment, yet I did not move.
It had been his last wish to have me next to him in his agony,
at the moment when his soul was tearing itself from his lacerated
body—yet I did not let him have his wish.
I was afraid.
Afraid of the blows.
That was why I remained deaf to his cries.
Instead of sacrificing my miserable life and rushing to his
side, taking his hand, reassuring him, showing him that he was
not abandoned, that I was near him, that I felt his sorrow, instead
of all that, I remained flat on my back, asking God to make my
father stop calling my name, to make him stop crying. So afraid
was I to incur the wrath of the SS.
In fact, my father was no longer conscious.
Yet his plaintive, harrowing voice went on piercing the silence and calling me, nobody but me.
“Well?” The SS had flown into a rage and was striking my
father on the head: “Be quiet, old man! Be quiet!”
My father no longer felt the club’s blows; I did. And yet I did
not react. I let the SS beat my father, I left him alone in the
clutches of death. Worse: I was angry with him for having been
noisy, for having cried, for provoking the wrath of the SS.
“Eliezer! Eliezer! Come, don’t leave me a l o n e … ”
His voice had reached me from so far away, from so close. But
I had not moved.
I shall never forgive myself.
Nor shall I ever forgive the world for having pushed me
against the wall, for having turned me into a stranger, for having
awakened in me the basest, most primitive instincts.
His last word had been my name. A summons. And I had not
responded.
In the Yiddish version, the narrative does not end with the image in the mirror, but with a gloomy meditation on the present:
And now, scarcely ten years after Buchenwald, I realize that the
world forgets quickly. Today, Germany is a sovereign state. The
German Army has been resuscitated. Use Koch, the notorious
sadistic monster of Buchenwald, was allowed to have children
and live happily ever a f t e r … W a r criminals stroll through the
streets of Hamburg and Munich. The past seems to have been
erased, relegated to oblivion.
Today, there are anti-Semites in Germany, France, and even
the United States who tell the world that the “story” of six million assassinated Jews is nothing but a hoax, and many people,
not knowing any better, may well believe them, if not today then
tomorrow or the day a f t e r …
I am not so naive as to believe that this slim volume will
change the course of history or shake the conscience of the
world.
Books no longer have the power they once did.
Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.
would be entitled to ask: Why this new translation,
since the earlier one has been around for forty-five years? If it is
not faithful or not good enough, why did I wait so long to replace
it with one better and closer to the original?
T H E READER
In response, I would say only that back then, I was an unknown writer who was just getting started. My English was far
from good. When my British publisher told me that he had found
a translator, I was pleased. I later read the translation and it
seemed all right. I never reread it. Since then, many of my other
works have been translated by Marion, my wife, who knows my
voice and how to transmit it better than anyone else. I am fortunate: when Farrar, Straus and Giroux asked her to prepare a new
translation, she accepted. I am convinced that the readers will appreciate her work. In fact, as a result of her rigorous editing, I was
able to correct and revise a number of important details.
And so, as I reread this text written so long ago, I am glad that
I did not wait any longer. And yet, I still wonder: Have I used the
right words? I speak of my first night over there. The discovery of
the reality inside the barbed wire. The warnings of a “veteran”
inmate, counseling my father and myself to lie about our ages: my
father was to make himself younger, and I older. The selection.
The march toward the chimneys looming in the distance under
an indifferent sky. The infants thrown into fiery d i t c h e s … I did
not say that they were alive, but that was what I thought. But then
I convinced myself: no, they were dead, otherwise I surely would
have lost my mind. And yet fellow inmates also saw them; they
were alive when they were thrown into the flames. Historians,
among them Telford Taylor, confirmed it. And yet somehow I did
not lose my mind.
this introduction, I believe it important to
emphasize how strongly I feel that books, just like people, have a
destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.
BEFORE CONCLUDING
Earlier, I described the difficulties encountered by Night before its publication in French, forty-seven years ago. Despite
overwhelmingly favorable reviews, the book sold poorly. The subject was considered morbid and interested no one. If a rabbi happened to mention the book in his sermon, there were always
people ready to complain that it was senseless to “burden our
children with the tragedies of the Jewish past.”
Since then, much has changed. Night has been received in
ways that I never expected. Today, students in high schools and
colleges in the United States and elsewhere read it as part of their
curriculum.
How to explain this phenomenon? First of all, there has been
a powerful change in the public’s attitude. In the fifties and
sixties, adults born before or during World War II showed
a careless and patronizing indifference toward what is so inadequately called the Holocaust. That is no longer true.
Back then, few publishers had the courage to publish books
on that subject.
Today, such works are on most book lists. The same is true in
academia. Back then, few schools offered courses on the subject.
Today, many do. And, strangely, those courses are particularly
popular. The topic of Auschwitz has become part of mainstream
culture. There are films, plays, novels, international conferences,
exhibitions, annual ceremonies with the participation of the na-
tion’s officialdom. The most striking example is that of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.;
it has received more than twenty-two million visitors since its
inauguration in 1993.
This may be because the public knows that the number of
survivors is shrinking daily, and is fascinated by the idea of sharing memories that will soon be lost. For in the end, it is all about
memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.
For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to
bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective
memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to
forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.
if I know “the response to Auschwitz”; I
answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don’t even know
if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response. What I do know is
that there is “response” in responsibility. When we speak of this
era of evil and darkness, so close and yet so distant, “responsibility” is the key word.
SOMETIMES I AM ASKED
The witness has forced himself to testify. For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not
want his past to become their future.
E.W.
Foreword
by François Mauriac
F
OREIGN JOURNALISTS frequently come to see me. I am
wary of them, torn as I am between my desire to speak to
them freely and the fear of putting weapons into the
hands of interviewers whose attitude toward France I do not
know. During these encounters, I tend to be on my guard.
That particular morning, the young Jew who came to interview me on behalf of a Tel Aviv daily won me over from the first
moment. Our conversation very quickly became more personal.
Soon I was sharing with him memories from the time of the Occupation. It is not always the events that have touched us personally
that affect us the most. I confided to my young visitor that nothing I had witnessed during that dark period had marked me as
deeply as the image of cattle cars filled with Jewish children at
the Austerlitz train s t a t i o n … Y e t I did not even see them with
my own eyes. It was my wife who described them to me, still under the shock of the horror she had felt. At that time we knew
nothing about the Nazis’ extermination methods. And who could
have imagined such things! But these lambs torn from their
mothers, that was an outrage far beyond anything we would have
thought possible. I believe that on that day, I first became aware
of the mystery of the iniquity whose exposure marked the end of
an era and the beginning of another. The dream conceived by
Western man in the eighteenth century, whose dawn he thought
he had glimpsed in 1789, and which until August 2, 1914, had become stronger with the advent of the Enlightenment and scientific discoveries—that dream finally vanished for me before those
trainloads of small children. And yet I was still thousands of miles
away from imagining that these children were destined to feed
the gas chambers and crematoria.
This, then, was what I probably told this journalist. And when
I said, with a sigh, “I have thought of these children so many
times!” he told me, “I was one of them.” He was one of them!
He had seen his mother, a beloved little sister, and most of his
family, except his father and two other sisters, disappear in a
furnace fueled by living creatures. As for his father, the boy had
to witness his martyrdom day after day and, finally, his agony
and death. And what a death! The circumstances of it are narrated
in this book, and I shall allow readers—who should be as numerous as those reading The Diary of Anne Frank—to discover them
for themselves as well as by what miracle the child himself
escaped.
I maintain therefore that this personal record, coming as it
does after so many others and describing an abomination such as
we might have thought no longer had any secrets for us, is different, distinct, and unique nevertheless. The fate of the Jews of the
small town in Transylvania called Sighet; their blindness as they
confronted a destiny from which they would have still had time
to flee; the inconceivable passivity with which they surrendered
to it, deaf to the warnings and pleas of a witness who, having escaped the massacre, relates to them what he has seen with his
own eyes, but they refuse to believe him and call him a mad-
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