The Long Night
A True Story
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
he Night lasted five years and eight days.
Before the Night began, Ernst Bornstein was a precocious eighteen-year-old¬ who had an ordinary family with three siblings, two parents, and a large circle of friends and relatives. But in the autumn of 1939, decades of anti-Semitic propaganda turned into full-fledged violence. Bornstein’s family was subsequently sent to Auschwitz where his parents and siblings were gassed to death.
The Long Night is Bornstein’s firsthand account of what he witnessed in seven concentration camps. Written with remarkable insight and raw emotion, The Long Night paints a portrait of human psychology in the darkest of times. Bornstein tells the stories of those who did all they could do to withstand physical and psychological torture, starvation, and sickness, and openly describes those who were forced to inflict suffering on others. The narrative is simple, yet profound; unbridled, honest, and dignified.
The Long Night was written shortly after the war when the author’s memories were fresh and emotions ran strong. Originally published in German in 1967 as Die Lange Nacht, this is the first English translation of this work.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Even readers who believe that they have read enough recollections of Holocaust survivors are likely to be moved by Bornstein's unbelievable story of survival. At the age of 19, he was sent to a concentration camp, and within four years, he had spent time at 12 different ones. The narrative begins when the title's "long night" does: in 1939, as Bornstein and his family flee their Polish village just as the Germans begin the invasion of Poland. He manages to escape selection for the labor camps for a while, but eventually his luck runs out and he and his father are sent to the Grunheide Forced Labor Camp. To the small extent possible, Bornstein's father shares his food and does whatever he can to ease Bornstein's torment, sacrifices that make their eventual separation all the more poignant. Those deprivations are but a grim prologue to Bornstein's later experiences, which reach their nadir when he is assigned to transport corpses to the crematorium. Bornstein's simple writing style, in this fine translation from Lopian and Arnold, makes his testimony of man's inhumanity to man all the more powerful.
