Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
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Night By Elie Wiesel
Oprah said this book should be required reading for mankind. I can't ignore a recommendation like that.
The book is Elie Wiesel's story of being rounded up and held in the Nazi death camps with his father after the rest of his family was murdered. This is, obviously, not an easy read, although it is a brief one. You could read the book tonight. It's only a hundred pages long - but what profound power is packed into those pages. The author remembers, "'Men to the left! Women to the right!' Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple words. Yet that was the moment when I left my mother."
The author said when accepting his Nobel Prize, "We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. . . Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe."
This book reminded me so much of that Academy Award winning movie of a few years ago - Life is Beautiful - the experience of inhumanity in the camps made so much more real, and therefore painful, by the presence of father and son together. Of course I recommend it. Elie Wiesel's bestseller is Night. On the Book Beat for KSL Newsradio, I'm Amanda Dickson.
