night
::: night, by nobel peace prize winner elie wiesel, is a heartrending, horrific account of professor wiesel's memories of his tortuous captivity -- beginning in 1944 -- in the nazi concentration camps of auschwitz and buchenwald...
...wiesel's account is raw, unforgettable passages filling this 112 page volume (newly translated by marion wiesel), such as wiesel's thoughts on his first night in a concentration camp (page 34):
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp,
that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children
whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.
...in the depths of his despair, mr. wiesel -- a devout mystic jew prior to captivity -- cursed and forsook God...at the end of his first summer at auschwitz, the jewish prisoners were allowed to observe rosh hashanah...reacting to his fellow captives' desire to worship, wiesel writes:
"What are You, my God? I thought angrily. How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people's wounded minds, their ailing bodies?" (p. 66)
...reading night in conjunction with 1 peter gave me pause to reflect on suffering servanthood of Jesus Christ...whereas wiesel forsook God in the midst of his suffering, Christ was the one who was forsaken by God, suffering in the fullness of his humanity to the point of death (phil. 2:8) to redeem and restore humanity whose fallen nature was demonstrated horrifically in the holocaust, as 1 peter 2:21-24 reminds us:
For to this you have been called,
because Christ also suffered for you,
leaving you an example,
so that you might follow in his steps.
He committed no sin,
neither was deceit found in his mouth.
When he was reviled, he did not revile in return;
when he suffered, he did not threaten,
but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,
that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
By his wounds you have been healed.
...wiesel's account is raw, unforgettable passages filling this 112 page volume (newly translated by marion wiesel), such as wiesel's thoughts on his first night in a concentration camp (page 34):
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp,
that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children
whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.
...in the depths of his despair, mr. wiesel -- a devout mystic jew prior to captivity -- cursed and forsook God...at the end of his first summer at auschwitz, the jewish prisoners were allowed to observe rosh hashanah...reacting to his fellow captives' desire to worship, wiesel writes:
"What are You, my God? I thought angrily. How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people's wounded minds, their ailing bodies?" (p. 66)
...reading night in conjunction with 1 peter gave me pause to reflect on suffering servanthood of Jesus Christ...whereas wiesel forsook God in the midst of his suffering, Christ was the one who was forsaken by God, suffering in the fullness of his humanity to the point of death (phil. 2:8) to redeem and restore humanity whose fallen nature was demonstrated horrifically in the holocaust, as 1 peter 2:21-24 reminds us:
For to this you have been called,
because Christ also suffered for you,
leaving you an example,
so that you might follow in his steps.
He committed no sin,
neither was deceit found in his mouth.
When he was reviled, he did not revile in return;
when he suffered, he did not threaten,
but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,
that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
By his wounds you have been healed.
:::
posted by B & C at
1:51 PM
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