"Dawn" (Night #2) by Elie Wiesel

96 pages

Elisha is a young Holocaust survivor and an Israeli freedom fighter in British-controlled Palestine. John Dawson is the captured English officer who is to be murdered at dawn in retribution for the British execution of an Israeli. Elisha is the one ordered to perform the execution of Dawson. This novel provides an hour-by-hour narrative of the night before the execution, while Elisha struggles with his anger about the past with his guilt about the present.

This novel is very short but also very powerful. It clearly demonstrates the effect that living through something as horrific as the Holocaust has on a human being. It also raises the question: what is the difference between retribution and murder? As Elisha shows, something changes in a person when they kill someone, no matter how justified the murder may seem to be.