Night is a work by Elie Wiesel (pictured) about his experience with his
father in the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in
1944–1945. In just over 100 pages of a narrative described as
devastating in its simplicity, Weisel writes about the death of God and
his own increasing disgust with humanity, reflected in the inversion of
the father-child relationship as his father declines to a helpless
state and Wiesel becomes his resentful caregiver. He was 16 years old
when Buchenwald was liberated by the U.S. Army in April 1945, too late
for his father who died in the camp after a beating. After some
difficulty finding a publisher, Wiesel's work appeared in Yiddish in
1955 and French in 1958, and in September 1960 was published in English
by Hill and Wang. Fifty years later it is regarded as one of the
bedrocks of Holocaust literature. It is the first book in a
trilogy—Night, Dawn, Day—marking Wiesel's transition from darkness to
light, according to the Jewish tradition of beginning a new day at
nightfall. "In Night," he said, "I wanted to show the end, the finality
of the event. Everything came to an end—man, history, literature,
religion, God. There was nothing left. And yet we begin again with
night."
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_%28book%29>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
394:
Forces of the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I defeated Eugenius,
the usurper of the Western Roman Empire, at the Battle of the Frigidus
near modern-day Vipava, Slovenia.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodosius%C2%A0I>
1955:
An overwhelming Turkish mob attacked ethnic Greeks in Istanbul, killing
over 13 people, wounding over thirty others, and damaging over 5,000
Greek-owned homes and businesses.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_Pogrom>
1963:
The Krulak Mendenhall mission, led by U.S. Marine Corps Major General
Victor Krulak and U.S. Foreign Service Officer Joseph Mendenhall, was
launched by the Kennedy administration to assess the progress of the
Vietnam War.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krulak_Mendenhall_mission>
1970:
Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked
four jet aircraft en route from Europe to New York City, landing two of
them at Dawson's Field in Zerqa, Jordan, and one plane in Beirut,
Lebanon. The fourth hijacking was successfully foiled.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson%27s_Field_hijackings>
2000:
The Millennium Summit, a meeting of world leaders to discuss the role
of the United Nations in the turn of the 21st century, opened.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Summit>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
orbicular (adj):
Circular or spherical in shape; round
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/orbicular>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
I saw a rainbow earlier today
Lately those rainbows be comin' round like everyday
Deep in the
struggle I have found the beauty of me
God is watchin' and the Devil finally let me be
Here in this moment
to myself.
--Macy Gray
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Macy_Gray>