Books again.

On Friday I read a book called Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosney and today I read a book called Night by Elie Wiesel. Both are books about the Holocaust.

I usually read about three or four books a year about WWII and this year I've already read three. The first told of the sacrifice of a family in America, the second was a story of a young French Jew who was evacuated to a concentration camp and Night is the true account of Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor.

I wasn't planning on reading Night but my friend let me borrow it last night and so I decided to give it a try and couldn't put it down. Although these books deal with much sorrow and heavy subject matter, I also find a lot of beauty in them. Elie describes a meeting with a young Jewish reporter who was also interned at a concentration camp. This young man talked about how he no longer believed in God, that part of his soul had died and God died along with it. Elie writes:

"And I who believe that God is love, what answer was there to give my young interlocutor whose dark eyes still held the reflection of the angelic sadness that had appeared one day on the face of a hanged child? What did I say to him? Did I speak to him of that other Jew, this crucified brother who perhaps resembled him and whose cross conquered the world? Did I explain to him that what had been a stumbling block for his faith had become a cornerstone for mine? And that the connection between the cross and human suffering remains in my view, the key to the unfathomable mystery in which the faith of his childhood was lost? ....The Jewish nation has been resurrected from among it's thousands of dead. It is they who have given it new life...All is grace. If the Almighty is the Almighty, the last word for each of us belongs to Him. That is what I should have said to the Jewish child. But all I could do was embrace him and weep."

A little off subject. I watched the movie Devil last week with Adam and the last line of the movie really struck me. I thought about it as I read these two books and thought about the evil that exists in the hearts of men. I keep thinking of the last line from the movie Devil: "After my mother would finish her story, she would always comfort us. "Don't worry," she'd say. "If the Devil is real, then God must be real, too."

I will be finishing The House of Riverton this week and hopefully getting at least a bigger dent in Les Miserables--boy I'm reading real bright books =)