Night

pp. 31, 42

p. 31: At Auschwitz, the young Wiesel sees babies thrown into a ditch that is alive with flame. Children in the flames. A larger ditch for adults. “Around us everyone was weeping. Someone began to recite the kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I do not know if it has ever happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have ever recited the prayer for the dead when it was for themselves” who were soon to be dead. “May [God’s] name be blessed and magnified . . . whispered my father. For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless his name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent.” P. 42: “I had ceased to pray. How I sympathized with Job! I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted his absolute justice.”