NIGHT - Elie Wiesel: Discover a Father & Son Bond Amidst Holocaust

Never had I interested in an autobiography book especially the one that lingered around the Holocaust. We all know that that was one of the most unforgivable tragedies in human history, right 76 years ago, after the liberation from the Red Army, that condemned event ended. This book is different and after reading a few pages of the book, I came to understand why this book won the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. I am nothing like an academic nor a historian, just a mother with an extraordinary son, but the way Wiesel exposed his experience was breathtaking, all written in a descriptive yet clear and concise 109 pages book, makes me excited to retell the story to my dear son.

If this was a movie we might understand why we were easily drowned in it, but this is a book and I did not expect myself to be engulfed deep in all the words. At first, I thought I would not finish the whole book as it was not my type of book. It turned out I craved to know more and was thrilled to discover the next and next paragraph. Through his understandable words the book successfully created my own black-and-white movie inside my mind, and I could easily picture every scene even though I never watch any holocaust movie even though i am a movie goers. 

Despite all of that hostile and frantic scene, I see a strong father and son relationship not only between Eliezer and his father but some other mentioned characters. Yes, those parts melt my heart the most, the affection of a father could definitely give strength to his son and what happened to Eliezer proves it. As stated in a theory by Dr Kory Floyd in his Affection Exchange Theory 

“…conceives of affectionate communication as an adaptive behavior that contributes to human superordinate motivations for viability (survival) and fertility (procreation).” 

This theory includes four basic postulates which one of them is 

“Affectionate communication increases survival chances because it contributes to the development and maintenance of human pair bonds, exposing each person to his or her associated resources such as food and shelter.” 

Even though Eliezer only gets a very limited amount of food but his father strengthens him, he even prefers to share his food when his father no longer gets one, because of the strength that he got from the affection given by his father.

This book is like a reminder to me that In this rushing world, where most fathers are busy with their work, they need to realize that their presence is important to their children. oftentimes bond between father - children is neglected or taken for granted when actually it is not. To all father in the world in the meantime, I believe you don’t need holocaust to remind you how precious your child or family is.

I fell in love with how smooth Weslie described the situation, as I read the book word by word, most of the time, my heart pounded, faster and faster, like I was the one who’s going to get burned, trapped in the middle of a Nazi Concentration camp, witnessing the chimney ashes fueled by human and smelling the scuzzy burned flesh and shouted to run for 42 kilometers amidst the icy-snowy road. I was terrified, I was trembling, I even took an intense breath from one paragraph to another and when I reached the end of each paragraph, I lost my breath, as in some parts, tears streamed down my face.