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A review by ckrupiej
Day by Elie Wiesel
4.0
Preface
"Many years ago, long after publishing this short narrative, I read somewhere (I think it was a book by Michael Elkins) about the tragedy of children and adolescents who had emerged from hiding in forest and underground shelters at the time of the Liberation, who soon fell ill from exhaustion or malnutrition.
Transported to various hospitals, they baffled doctors with their refusal to be fed, choosing instead to let themselves slip into death.
This was their simple and heartrending way of launching their own accusation at a so-called civilized society that had allowed people to stand idly and betray the very humanity of mankind by remaining indifferent.
The suicides of these children, like the murders of their parents, will never be forgiven."
Day
"I knew that our suffering changes us. But I didn't know that it could also destroy others."
"I tried to put on a smile but, being to cold, I could only manage a grin. That's why I don't like winter: smiles become abstract."
"Yes, God needs man. Condemned to eternal solitude, he made man only to use him as a toy, to amuse himself."
"Suffering brings out the lowest, the most cowardly in man. There is a phase of suffering you reach beyond which you become a brute: beyond it you sell your soul - and worse, the souls of your friends - for a piece of bread, for some warmth, for a moment of oblivion, of sleep."
"Man is not defined by what denies him, but by that which affirms him. This is found within, not across from him or next to him."
"We have the same enemy and it has only one name: Death. Before it we are all equal. In its eyes no life has more weight than another."
"Suffering is given to the living, not the dead," he said looking right through me. "It is man's duty to make it cease, not to increase it. One hour of suffering less is already a victory over fate."
"Many years ago, long after publishing this short narrative, I read somewhere (I think it was a book by Michael Elkins) about the tragedy of children and adolescents who had emerged from hiding in forest and underground shelters at the time of the Liberation, who soon fell ill from exhaustion or malnutrition.
Transported to various hospitals, they baffled doctors with their refusal to be fed, choosing instead to let themselves slip into death.
This was their simple and heartrending way of launching their own accusation at a so-called civilized society that had allowed people to stand idly and betray the very humanity of mankind by remaining indifferent.
The suicides of these children, like the murders of their parents, will never be forgiven."
Day
"I knew that our suffering changes us. But I didn't know that it could also destroy others."
"I tried to put on a smile but, being to cold, I could only manage a grin. That's why I don't like winter: smiles become abstract."
"Yes, God needs man. Condemned to eternal solitude, he made man only to use him as a toy, to amuse himself."
"Suffering brings out the lowest, the most cowardly in man. There is a phase of suffering you reach beyond which you become a brute: beyond it you sell your soul - and worse, the souls of your friends - for a piece of bread, for some warmth, for a moment of oblivion, of sleep."
"Man is not defined by what denies him, but by that which affirms him. This is found within, not across from him or next to him."
"We have the same enemy and it has only one name: Death. Before it we are all equal. In its eyes no life has more weight than another."
"Suffering is given to the living, not the dead," he said looking right through me. "It is man's duty to make it cease, not to increase it. One hour of suffering less is already a victory over fate."