Elie Wiesel

Souls on Fire

The Night Trilogy, Book 1

Dawn

The Night Trilogy, Book 2

The Town Beyond the Wall

The Gates of the Forest

Jews of Silence

A Beggar in Jerusalem

Legends of Our Time

The Oath

One Generation After

Messengers of God

A Jew Today

Four Hasidic Masters

The Testament

Five Biblical Portraits

Somewhere A Master

The Golem

The Fifth Son

Against Silence

Twilight

Evil and Exile

The Six Days of Destruction

The Forgotten

From the Kingdom of Memory

A Journey of Faith

Sages and Dreamers

Conversations with Elie Wiesel

In Dialog and Dilemma With Elie Wiesel

Passover Haggadah

Memoirs

All Rivers Run to the Sea

Memoir in Two Voices

Memoirs, 1969

And the Sea is Never Full

The Judges

Wise Men and Their Tales

After the Darkness

The Time of the Uprooted

The story is conveyed through the eyes of a Jewish adolescent who initially resides in Sighet, a town in Hungarian Transylvania, immersing himself in the study of the Torah and Jewish mysticism. His teacher, Moishe the Beadle, is deported and returns months later with a gruesome account of the German secret police's brutal extermination of his transport, a tale dismissed as the ramblings of a madman. The narrative takes a dark turn in the spring of 1944 when the Nazis seize Hungary; the protagonist and other Jewish town-folk are subjected to a series of oppressive regulations, forcing them into cramped ghettos before being crammed into cattle cars for a journey to Auschwitz.

Upon reaching Birkenau, the entrance to Auschwitz, the protagonist and his father are separated from the rest of their family, whom they never see again. The new prisoners undergo "selections," determining who will be killed immediately or sent to laborious tasks. The protagonist and his father narrowly survive the selection, but stumble upon the horrifying sight of babies being incinerated by Nazis. The prisoners endure horrendous cruelty, being stripped, shaved, disinfected, and subsequently marched to Auschwitz's main camp. Eventually, they are sent to Buna, a work camp, where the protagonist is forced into labor. In the face of relentless humiliation, brutal conditions, and constant threat of death, the prisoners find solace in each other, religious practice, and the hope of a Jewish state in Palestine.

After several months at Buna, the protagonist undergoes surgery for a foot injury. However, with advancing Russian forces threatening to liberate Buna, the Nazis decide to evacuate. The prisoners are forced into a death march through a blizzard, running over fifty miles to the Gleiwitz concentration camp. Many succumb to the harsh weather and exhaustion. From Gleiwitz, they are once again loaded onto cattle cars for a deadly voyage to Buchenwald. Of the hundred Jewish prisoners that start the journey, only twelve survive. The protagonist and his father manage to survive through mutual support, but his father eventually dies of dysentery and physical abuse in Buchenwald. The protagonist is left a mere shell of his former self until the liberation of the camp by the American army on April 11, 1945.

Elie Wiesel Books in Order (42 Book Series)