Night - Elie Wiesel

I just finished this book. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Night by Elie Wiesel is a truly historical novel. It is a short read but jammed with the first hand recounting of Elie's childhood in Auschwitz, the concentration camp. The story of Auschwitz is one that continues to have significance in our understanding of genocide and the meaning of human rights.

Elie is a true testament of the soul of a human being and the ability to use words to remind the world to value the life of man. When he accepted the Nobel Prize for this work he said some truly resounding things. If you want to read the whole speech do so here, but here are the passages that I found most compelling:

"...now the boy is turning to me. 'Tell me,' he asks, 'what have you done with my future, what have you done with your life?' And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.
And then I explain to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endured suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment- become the center of the universe.

...There is so much to be done, there is so much that can be done. One person - a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, a Martin Luther King Jr. - one person of integrity can make a difference, a difference of life and death...

...Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately."

Words have meaning. I say this over and over again in conversation. As a graduate of Communications Studies I could give you all kinds of reason that words mean more than their construction. We need read works such as this to truly grasp the power that words have. Every chance you have and every thing that you say or write has the power to make a difference. It is an unbelievable power to have and for those of us that can use it without fear of persecution, it is our duty to use it to help those that don't.
Speak up.

A Long Way Gone - Ishmael Beah

I read a great book over my holidays and forgot to write a little review about it. One of the best accounts of the tragedy in Sierra Leon and the use of child solidiers, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a boy solider by Ishmael Beah, Beah recounted his time during the war and his recovery from the experience that he endured.

The book jacket has this to say:

This is how wars are fought now: by children, traumatized, hopped-up on drugs, and wielding AK-47s. The UN estimates that there are 300,000 child soldiers fighting in fifty conflicts worldwide. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.
What does ware look like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists and novelists, but few who have endured this hell have told their tales. In A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah, now twenty-six years old, tells a gripping story: At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. At sixteen, he was rehabilitated by UNICEF, learning how to forgive himself, to regain his humanity and, finally, to heal.
This is an extraordinary and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

If you have any interest in understanding the effects that wars have on the young then A Long Way Gone should be included in your reading list. I personally was gripped by the story and am in awe of someone who is able to recount it for all to read. It takes an extremely strong person to share such a disparaging story in all its details.

Give this book a read. If I was a critic I would give it a 5 out of 5.