The sound of a violin in a dark shed

" ... Could one sleep here? Was it not dangerous to allow your vigilance to fail, even for one moment, when at any minute death could pounce on you? I was thinking of this when I heard the sound of a violin. The sound of a violin, in this dark shed, where the dead were heaped on the living. What madman could be playing the violin here, at the brink of his own grave? Or was it really an hallucination? It must have been Juliek. He played a fragment from Beethoven's concerto. I had never heard a sound so pure. In such a silence. How had he managed to free himself? To draw his body from under mine without my being aware of it? It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings - his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again. I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget that concert given to an audience of dying and dead men! To this day, whenever I hear Beethoven played my eyes close and out of the dark rises the sad, pale face of my Polish friend, as he said farewell on his violin to an audience of dying men. I do not know for how long he played. I was overcome by sleep. When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse ..."

-Elie Wiesel, Night