In the spring of 1944, it was difficult to imagine the horrendous acts of terror that would be committed on innocent people and the depth of Nazi evil. For Jews from a devout community with Orthodox beliefs and spiritual lifestyles, faith in God and faith in humanity would be shaken to the core when horrific and inhumane acts of torture and suffering were experienced by those in concentration camps . Since the creation of the world, Jews have often associated darkness (or night) with the absence of God. As a result, Elie Wiesel struggled with this as unimaginable atrocities occurred in his life. Although he is a survivor, he has been haunted by guilt, questioned his faith, and developed a lack of faith in humanity due to the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel titled his book about the Holocaust, “Night,” because the darkness symbolized the evil death camps and a permanent darkness over the souls of those who survived. Auschwitz marked the first of several concentration camps. Wiesel was exposed to that darkness and evil personified. . It was on his first night there, that he saw a furnace full of children on fire. He was shocked and horrified by the inhumanity of the Nazis. It was then that he realized that he and the other prisoners were not in a labor camp but in an extermination camp. Dark, black smoke from the burning furnaces filled the air and sky, making the atmosphere difficult for sunlight to penetrate, and there was a permeating smell of burnt human flesh. Darkness and gloom hung over the camp like a permanent night. Men and boys were separated by their ability to work, the strong lived and the weak died. In these extermination camps, prisoners were physically beaten and abused, starved, and treated as inhumane. The acts of violence and horror that we have... in the middle of the paper... ink that this could not happen again. The underlying lesson of the story was "Never forget" so that future generations would look back on the Holocaust and feel the pain and suffering for the millions of innocent people who lost their lives in the death camps and for those who lived to tell it. . If we allow ourselves to forget, we open ourselves to evil and darkness may creep into our souls. Bibliography Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Bantam Books, 1982. Print. Permanent Darkness Daniel Adelstein 5/20/14 Ms. Splendor