After the Darkness: Reflections on the Holocaust

For the first time, Elie Wiesel actually talks about the Holocaust. This is a great summary for those who don't know but should know what happened during this very dark period of humanity. Again, like the rest of Wiesel's work, it is a must-buy.

I believe this book is a wonderful introduction to the history and events leading up to, and including the horrible years of the holocaust. I gave it to my grandaughter who is ten years old. I am a child of a survivor. The book is a valuable part of education of a time that now seems so distant, and when most of the survivors have died. It speaks for them to future generations nd as always, Elie Wiesel is warm, and honest, but never bitter. We are now the witnesses for those who experienced hell.

This is the third book I read by Elie Wiesel, first I read "Night" which is my favorite, second I read "The Forgotten" which I thought was very good too. Now this one, is much shorter but the tetimonials by other Holocaust victims and the photographs makes it an excellent book. The generation of WWII survivors are dying and we need books like these to keep reminding us and future generations of the horrors of the war, so we don't repeat it.

Elie Wiesel is the writer who more than any other made the world aware of the Holocaust. He through the years has been a voice of remembrance for the victims, a voice of integrity and courage, a witness of what is the greatest example of Man's inhumanity to Man known in human history. For the Holocaust was the deliberate effort of Nazi Germany, a people sitting in the center of Europpean civilization to wholly destroy, man, woman and child the entire Jewish people. One third of the Jewish people was murdered in the years 1939-1945, and the greatest share of European Jewry destroyed. Now in this work Elie Wiesel presents a small historical over-view of the Shoah, and accompanies this with testimonies of others who passed through this world of nightmare. It is a short moving volume, another work of invaluable testimony.

While Elie Wiesel's first book, "Night", recounts his experience in the concentration camps, his new anthology, "After the Darkness", gives a wider perspective on the Holocaust. This book serves as both a historical record of this dark period and as a memorial to the 6 million victims of the evil that went unchallenged for far too long.The factual documentation is accented with Survivors' testimonials that were previously unpublished. Full-page photographs add an incredible dimension to the stories that makes them easier to comprehend. There are two photographs that particularly moved me. The first is of a woman hanging from her balcony, desperate to escape the Nazis who wait on the street to capture her. The second photograph is of four women smiling as they peel potatoes just a few feet from a long stretch of corpses. This photo lets me see the utter loss and indifference that Wiesel describes in his book, "Night"."Night" let us see the horrors of the Holocaust through Wiesel's memory. "After the Darkness" shows us how the Holocaust slowly crept up on an innocent and unsuspecting world. The narratives demonstrate the devastation that the Nazi regime had on many different people, and the photographs will remain in our memories to enforce the adage, "Never forget."