NotSoSilentMan,
I've read Night, after a friend recommended it, and was of course moved. However, for me, it wasn't the most moving memoirs of a concentration camp survivor (but I realize that this is a very personal thing: what touches me most might not be the same thing that touches you most, and it's perfectly alright). What all survivors' account have in common though is that you know beforehand that the author survived, and that he/she witnessed death, brutality and horror on a scale none of us can imagine. Therefore, important recurring questions are (1) how the person manages to resume living a more or less normal life afterwards without losing faith in humanity (2) how the person views the perpetrators of those atrocities (Who do they blame? Who can they forgive? etc) (3) how the person needs to be bear witness in order to honor the dead, and to prevent exterminations/genocides from happening again.
But this movie is not about survival in a camp, since it focuses on a small group of Jewish people who are hiding in order to avoid being deported to a death camp (only a small camp is shown for a brief moment in the movie, for reasons I can't explain without including spoilers). Therefore, there's less "first-hand brutality" (so to speak), and the 3 questions above aren't addressed; but of course that's relative, since almost everything is less brutal than a first-hand account of surviving an extermination camp.
There's plenty of misery though since they're living/surviving/hiding/loving and even hating one another in rat-infected sewers. But there's also quite a bit of humor. And the focus is on the interactions between all those people who have very little in common, including the non-Jewish person who helps them. So I'd say there's a LOT more suspense and less sheer hopeless despair, since you're wondering the entire time who's going to make it and who might get caught (here again, I want to avoid spoilers).
And yes, imo this movie's extremely moving, since it's based on a true story, since the actors are phenomenal, since there are several young children involved, and since it's very easy to bond with all the characters even though they are far from perfect and act quite foolishly more than once.
Bottom line: comparing Night with this movie is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, but I highly recommend you watch this movie!
Hope this answers your question.
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