Critique of "night"

"When Evil Closed In" is a review of Elie Wiesel's "Night", written by Gertrude Samuels from the New York Time's. On November 13, 1960, two months after the book was copyrighted.

Samuels writes about Wiesel's current jobs. He is " a United Nation Correspondent for Israel's newspapers and the NY Jewish Daily Forward." She then writes how he lost his parents, baby sister, and god. Wiesel was very religious and his experience through the camps took God out of his life. Samuels describes his arrival at Auschwitz and he "heard the words, men to the left! Women to the right!" This was a first instance where he questioned his faith. By the end of his stay at the camps, when his father died, he lost his faith completely. Samuels finishes her review by telling us that "Night" is written in French and English, and should be written in German.

The audience Samuels was targeting was the general population. She assumes that we know about the Holocaust and the concentration camps. Her intentions are to briefly summarize "Night" and emphasize how disheartening and tragic his story is. This review was presented in a manner that is very clear and easy to understand. This review is very relevant to Wiesel's book it is written only two months after the book was released. This book is not up to date with our current time. Many young people today unfortunately do not know about the Holocaust's history and the tragic crimes that were committed against many races. The source Samuels used was the book "Night" itself. Her perspective is that Wiesel's story is very tragic and tells a real life account of what happened during the Holocaust.

All in all this was a very well written review that touched upon the most important topics of the book but did not give away to much. The only problem with the review was she did not specify her opinion in whether it was a good book or not.