Dawn

Dawn by Elie Wiesel

Included in the Night Trilogy, Dawn is the story of a young man swept into a group of resistance fighters who are battling Great Britain for the right of the Jewish people to form an independant state in their homeland. Elisha, the young man, is faced with the task of executing a captured British soldier, one whom the Jewish Resistance fighters had hoped to use as a bargaining tool against the execution of one of their own, David Ben Moshe. Elisha is feeling confused about the task at hand; he isn't quite sure if he can or should go through with the execution, all the while dealing with recurring memories of his recent past living in a German concentration camp, sadly losing his family during that experience.

I wasn't overly impressed with this novel. I can appreciate the idea behind the plot - Elie Wiesel, in his preface to the novel, explained that although the situation is different from that which he experienced during World War II, he wanted to explore the doubts and memories that he had from time to time following his release from the concentration camps; for example: what would have happened if instead of being sent to France following his release from the camps, he was sent to the Holy Land? What would have happened if his stay in the concentration camps was more than one year? How much more would any of that have changed him as a man? So although I wasn't entertained by the story, as mentioned above, I can appreicate that this was the author's way of his exploring his own mind and misgivings following the horrors he suffered during the War.