What is the book “Night” About?

Oprah Winfrey has chosen as her book-of-the-month selection Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night.  Night is an account of the Nazi occupation of Elie Wiesel's home town, Sighet, Transylvania, and of his arrest and deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau and Buchenwald.  Elie and his father were separated from his mother and sisters.  He never saw his mother or younger sister again. 

Transported by cattle car to Auschwitz/Birkenau, Elie and his father experienced all the horror of the deportation.  At Auschwitz, they were stripped of their clothing, their heads were shaved, and had numbers tattooed on their arms.  They endured hunger, humiliation, and torture in various slave labor camps, eventually arriving at Buchenwald, in Germany.  Elie's father developed dysentery and died shortly before liberation.

Night was originally published in Yiddish in 1954 under the title Und der Velt hot GeShvig'n (And the World was Silent).  In 1958, it was edited, shortened and published in French under the title La Nuit and subsequently translated into several languages. Night  is the English translation of La Nuit.  Although it initially did not draw a large readership, because few readers were willing to confront the Holocaust, today, it is one of the most widely read books by people all around the world.

The publication of Night marked the beginning of Elie Wiesel's career as a writer, lecturer, and advocate of human rights.  Elie Wiesel's mission is not simply to gain the world's sympathy for victims of oppression or survivors.  It is, in Elie Wiesel's own words, "... to awaken our conscience.  Our indifference to evil makes us partners in the crime.... We know that the unimaginable has happened.  What are we doing now to prevent its happening again?