Book 10/15, "Off the Shelf" Challenge

Yesterday I was looking at my book shelves and my husband came up to me and asked me what I was doing.  I told him that I was trying to figure out which book I should read next for my "Off the Shelf" Challenge, since I only have 4 months left to finish and I still needed to read 6 more books.  I told him that I wanted it to be kind of small, because I have a lot of other books that I want to read soon.  He randomly grabbed a book from the shelf and held it out.  It was small (120 pages), and it happened to be a book that qualifies for the challenge.

It was Night, by Elie Wiesel.  I grimaced and said, "But that's just depressing."  Handing it to me, my husband said, "Oh, just get it over with."  So I did.  I started it last night and finished it today, which isn't something that happens very often with me.  I have gotten faster with my reading in the past few years, but it still takes me a few days to read even the smallest of books, or even the quickest-paced, most engulfing reads (like Glow). 


For those of you who don't know, Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he, along with his family, was forced into concentration camps during the Holocaust.  Night is his first-hand account of all that he went through during that time.  Not the happiest of stories.  I knew that it was a true story going in, thus the "But that's just depressing" comment above.  But since I read so much fiction, I realized once I was a few pages into this book that I was treating it like it was fiction.  My subconscious was taking in these characters, scenes, and events and making me think that they were part of a fictional tale.  I knew it was a true story, but I flew through it, almost pretending that it wasn't true.  


I'm not sure if I'm articulating this well.  Let me just say that, while this book is not explicitly graphic, there are a lot of horrendous (and I mean horrendous) events mentioned throughout.  Some of which dealt with small children.  Actually, the first horrible event that is told in this story has to do with atrocious things happening to small children.  And my brain just kind of clicked, tricking myself into temporarily pretending that this was all a tale of fiction.  Occasionally something would happen and I would stop and think, "Whoa, that person was actually real.  And he actually did and said that."  But my mind would kind of shake away the thought and go back into novel-mode.


I'm sure my psychologist friends would say this was a kind of coping mechanism or something.  Something to keep me from thinking too hard about such a depressing subject.  I agree.  That's totally what happened.  I couldn't think too deeply about these things that he described, because I would unravel and then I wouldn't have been able to finish this wonderful book.


Now, here, I want to clarify something.  The fact that I couldn't think too hard about the events in this book in no way means that I think that this book was fiction.  I know it was what actually happened to the author.  I know that all of these horrible things (and countless others) actually happened to millions of people.  I think the people who deny the Holocaust or say that it was a hoax have got to be the most ignorant people in the entire world.  And obviously, it goes without saying that Hitler, and the Nazis, were some of the most evil, messed-up people in the entire history of the human race.


I also want to say that, although I am not Jewish and I do not have any direct link to people who were killed or persecuted during the Holocaust, the way I read this book was in no way trying to belittle what happened to them.  I will never know their pain, but I feel for them as strongly as anyone else.  I also do not wish to go against Mr. Wiesel's impetus for writing this book:  so that we don't forget, and so that it never happens again.  The fact that I couldn't think too deeply about the events in this book as I read it does not mean that I will forget what happened, or that I will ever tolerate anything similar.  The Holocaust goes against everything that I stand for as a person.  


And even though I couldn't bring myself to think about the events in the book too deeply, I always knew that it was a true story, and that it was a story that needed to be told, and one that I needed to read.  One that everyone needs to read.