This post contains spoilers.
I finished this book yesterday on the train, but it remains on my mind - it is one that I regret not reading in Book Club, because I feel myself longing to discuss it.. "Day After Night" is an historical fiction novel about a group of women who survived the Holocaust and who are interned at Atlit, a camp for illegal immigrants near Haifa in what was then known as Palestine. These women have traveled from Europe under harsh conditions to begin a new life, but that life is once again put off. The summary on the back of the book said the book was about four women: Leonie, Shayndel, Tedi and Zorah. However, there were many more interesting characters in the story, but those were the women whose points of view we saw the story.
All of the women survived the Holocaust, but only Zorah had been in a concentration camp. I guess I knew that there were other experiences of WWII for a Jewish European, but the concentration camp has always stood out as the most disgusting, dehumanizing experience imaginable. Not a whole lot is said about Zorah's time in the camp (I don't believe which camp was specified) but we knew it was awful. However, Leonie's story was actually the one that had the most visceral impact on me when I found out what it was. Leonie was taken as a prostitute in France to service the Nazi soldiers. The madame made it so her girls couldn't run away. There was a scene where Leonie was thinking about her past and felt compelled to stab herself with a pin so she would feel the pain.
Shayndel was a partisan, a part of the Jewish resistance during the war and had grown up with Zionist leanings. She managed to survive and make it to Palestine and the kibbutz life she dreamed of after she helped lead the breakout from Atlit. Tedi was a blonde who spent most of the war in hiding. The concentration camps are the best know scenario from the time, but Diamant made it clear that they were not the only horrors.
The novel opens and the women are not yet friends - over the course of the story, they warm to each other and eventually become the friends that you see in the picture on the cover of the book. The title, which I see as a play on Eli Weisel's Night, which was about the Holocaust is talking about the dawn of life after.
