When a Christian boy disappears in a fictional Eastern European town in the 1920s, the local Jews are quickly accused of ritual murder. There is tension in the air. A pogrom threatens to erupt. Suddenly, an extraordinary man - Moshe the dreamer, a madman and mystic - steps forward and u0026 confesses to a crime he didn't commit, in a vain attempt to save his people from certain death. The community gathers to hear his last words - a plea for silence - and u0026 everyone present takes an oath: whoever survives the impending tragedy must never speak of the town's last days and u0026 nights of terror. For fifty years the sole survivor keeps his oath - until he meets a man whose life depends on hearing the story, and u0026 one man's loyalty to the dead confronts head-on another's reason to go on living. One of Wiesel's strongest early novels, this timeless parable about the Jews and u0026 their enemies, about hate, family, friendship and u0026 silence, is as powerful, haunting and u0026 significant as it was when first published.