Elie Wiesel

created by Pogue

(person) by Maayan (2.2 y) (print) ? (I like it!) 1 C! Wed Oct 17 2001 at 15:43:34

Elie Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928, in Sighet, Romania. He was the son of observant Jewish parents, and spent his youth pursuing a Hasidic Jewish education.

As described in his semi-autobiographic and most famous novel, Night, Elie Wiesel was 15 in 1944, when Nazi Germany invaded his town. All of the Jewish inhabitants were shipped to concentration camps. Although Wiesel managed to stay with his father, they were separated from his mother and youngest sister, whom he never saw again. Over the course of the war, Wiesel was a prisoner in three concentration camps—Buna, Buchenwald and Gleiwitz. Near the end of the war, Wiesel's father died. In 1945, Buchenwald was liberated by Allied troops.

After the end of World War II, Wiesel studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, and worked for a time as a journalist. Although Wiesel decided early in his career to be a novelist, he was unable for many years to put his Holocaust experiences down on paper. Instead, he wrote briefly under the pen name Elisha Carmeli.

In 1956, Elie Wiesel was finally convinced by his friend, the writer François Mauriac, to write about his experiences. His first work was entitled And the World Remained Silent and was originally published in Yiddish. This story evolved to form the trilogy of Night, Dawn, and The Accident, which were published successively in 1956, 1958, and 1960, respectively.

In 1969, Wiesel married Marion Erster Rose, with whom he has a son, Elisha. Marion is also a Holocaust survivor and helped to translate many of Wiesel's books into English.

In addition to writing many novels, Elie Wiesel has been a professor at several universities, including Yale University and Boston Unviersity. He was appointed the chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council by President Jimmy Carter in 1978. Wiesel has devoted a great deal of his time to lecturing on behalf of Jews and other minorities who are or have been persecuted.

In 1986, Elie Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Bibliography (from xroads.virginia.edu)

All Rivers Run to the Sea, 1995.
The Accident, 1962.
Ani Maamin (cantata),1973.
A Beggar in Jerusalem, 1970.
Dawn, 1961.
Dimensions of the Holocaust, 1977.
Evil and Exile, 1990.
The Fifth Son, 1985.
Five Biblical Portraits, 1978.
The Forgotten, 1992.
Four Hasidic Masters and their Stuggle Against Melancholy, 1978.
From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences, 1990.
The Gates of the Forest, 1966.
The Golem, 1983.
A Jew Today, 1978.
The Jews of Silence, 1966.
A Journey into Faith, 1990.
Legends of Our Time, 1968.
Messengers of God, 1976.
Night, 1956.
The Oath, 1973.
One Generation After, 1970.
Sages and Dreamers, 1991.
Somewhere a Master, 1982.
Souls on Fire, 1973.
The Testament, 1981.
The Town Beyond the Wall, 1964.
The Trial of God (play), 1979.
Twilight, 1988.

If you have written a summary of one of these books, please send me a /msg so I can hardlink it.

(person) by Posmella (21 s) (print) ? (I like it!) 6 C!s Sat Jul 12 2003 at 3:10:34

Eliezer Wiesel

1928-

Nobel Prize Winner - Peace (1986)

"Let us remember, let us remember the heroes of Warsaw, the martyrs of Treblinka, the children of Auschwitz. They fought alone, they suffered alone, they lived alone, but they did not die alone, for something in all of us died with them."

Early Life:

Eliezer (Elie) Wiesel was born to Jewish parents in Sighet, Romania, on September 30, 1928. His parents, who owned a grocery store in the township, were well respected within the community, and Wiesel had three other siblings: his sisters Hilda, Bea (both older) and Tsiporah. At age three, Wiesel began his education at a Jewish school where he learnt Hebrew (although he spoke German, Romanian and Hungarian in public) and began to study the major religious texts. His grandfather (mother's side) was a hasid of note in the area, and inspired Wiesel to take his studies further. Against his father's wishes, Wiesel found himself a master of the Talmud, known simply as Moché the Beadle (a synagogue caretaker), and began to explore the mysteries of Judaism. "My childhood was a childhood blessed with love and hope and faith and prayer," he once said in an interview.

This peaceful life changed in 1940, when Hungary annexed the area. Although life did not change much for Elie, by 1942 the Hungarian government ruled that all Jews who could not prove their Hungarian citizenship would be deported. Moché was one such of these, and the only person to survive the trip, which comprised a train trip to Poland, the digging of mass graves and systematic slaughter. Pretending to be dead, Moché returned to Sighet with his story, but was ridiculed and shunted aside. The warning that he provided about the proposed treatment of Hungarian Jews was ignored, a fact mourned by Wiesel in his literary works. Also in his books, Wiesel comments upon the normality of life during this time. He celebrated his bar mitzvah and continued his studies, now focusing on the kabbalah. In his quest to learn more of the kabbalah, he also studied astrology, parapsychology, hypnotism and magic. His old, and now discredited, teacher was replaced with a Sighet kabbalist. His mother began to think of finding a suitable match for Hilda. Wiesel became interested in the Zionist movement, although his father refused to move to Palestine. Life continued, as usual, until 1944.

It was this year that the Nazi German occupation of Sighet began, and the Jewish members of the community were forced into wearing a yellow Star of David on their clothes. In a moment of irony in his major work Night, Wiesel recollects that his father said: "The yellow star? Oh well, what of it? You don't die of it..." to which the older Eliezer replies "Poor father! Of what then did you die?" Such irony appears frequently in his literary works, the multiple ignored warnings featuring prominently, and this has been the focus of Wiesel's life's work - to speak out about injustice when others remain silent: "...to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all..."

The Holocaust:

Jewish stores in Sighet were closed, restrictions and curfews put in place. A pair of ghettos were created by the occupying Nazi troops, and the Jews (Wiesel comments, again from Night) thought themselves well-off, living in a separate Jewish community. By May of 1944, the deportations had begun. The Wiesel family declined the invitation of their Christian maid, Maria, to go and live in the mountains with her, and were hence deported with the rest of the Sighet Jews. The four day cattle car trip the Sighet Jews endured was "the death of my adolescence". The group arrived at Birkenau (the Auschwitz reception centre) and the males of the Wiesel family were immediately split from the females. Eliezer's mother, Sarah, and his little sister, Tsiporah, were marched off to the gas chambers, and he heard nothing from his older sisters until he was living in France after the war had concluded. Left with his father, Shlomo (also spelt Chlomo), Eliezer lied about his age (telling the SS officer that he was 18 instead of 15) and became known as A-7713. The pair became camp labourers, and were later moved to the camp of Buna.

At Buna, Eliezer and Shlomo endured more mental, physical and to some extent, spiritual and moral torture. Working in an electronics factory, the pair survived eight months of Buna at times simply by will-power, continuing to look out for each other. One of the most vivid recollections of Buna that Wiesel has placed into text was the hanging of a young pipel, a boy accused of sabotage by SS Officers. The prisoners of the camp were forced to watch the hanging for the half hour that it took the boy to die, and at the end, Wiesel says that God is hanging on the gallows... but this does not indicate that he no longer has his faith. Contrary to this, Wiesel still believes in God, but says that he no longer believes in a merciful God. How else, he questions, would such camps be allowed to exist?

In the Winter of 1944-5, Wiesel's right foot swelled up, and was operated upon in the Buna hospital. In another recollected moment of irony, Wiesel tells in Night the words of a neighbouring invalid's words: "I've got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. he's the only one who's kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people." At this time, the Russian forces are drawing closer to the camp, and predictions are made that any Jewish prisoners not able to evacuated the camp will be summarily shot. With this warning in mind, Eliezer left the hospital before having finished the healing process, and joined the camp exodus - 10 days of running in snow without food or rest. Later, he discovered that when the camp had been liberated by the Russian forces, all the prisoners were released.

Crammed into cattle cars again, the prisoners headed to Buchenwald. Of the 20 000 people who left Buna, only 6 000 survived the journey, a dramatic description being given by Wiesel himself in Night: "A hundred of us had got into the wagon. A dozen of us got out - among them, my father and I." Tragically, the suicidal dash through winter had been too much for Shlomo, who died of a combination of dysentery, exhaustion, abuse and starvation a few weeks after their arrival. In a horrifying moment, Eliezer recollects "I awoke on January 29 at dawn. In my father's place lay another invalid. They must have taken him to the crematory. He may still have been breathing."

Following his father's death, Wiesel was relocated to a children's block, where he lived in a trance-like state amongst 600 other children, his only driving force being food. By April 5-6 (date discrepancy), the prisoners were no longer fed, and were being systematically murdered once more at a rate of approximately 10 000 people per day. The reason for this was that the front was drawing nearer, and the camp was quickly being liquidated. In an abrupt twist of fate, on April 10-11 (another date discrepancy), the 20 000 surviving prisoners' resistance movement rose up against the SS Guards. Between 10am and 12 noon, fighting broke out over the camp, and finally the SS guards fled the camp. By 6pm, Buchenwald was liberated by American forces. The slow degradation of the prisoners from people to animals is a theme running through Wiesel's Holocaust works, and this is once more illustrated by a passage speaking of his new emancipation: "Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves on to the provisions. We thought only of that. Not of revenge, not of our families. Nothing but bread." We then learn about his situation at the end of the war: "One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes has never left me."

Europe:

Now freed from the concentration camps, Wiesel promised himself to wait ten years before publishing his story, as he was not ready to share it yet. Released from hospital (where he was placed with food poisoning), he joined in with a group of 400 orphans who were being relocated to France. Keeping with a promise he made in the camps, he attempted to emigrate to Palestine immediately, but was not allowed to do so. The Children's Rescue Society (a Jewish organisation) found him various French foster families, and in 1947, Wiesel began to study again, this time with a French tutor. It was in the same year that he had a stroke of luck - entirely by accident, his sister Hilda saw his photograph in a newspaper, and the pair were reunited. Some months later, also, he was reunited with his other older sister, Bea, in Antwerp.

He renewed his studies with vigour, although he questioned his faith more than he had when he was a strongly-believing child. In France, also, he met a Jewish scholar who would deeply effect his studies. Known simply as Shushani, this insightful man became a mentor to Wiesel, and he (like Moché the Beadle had, many years before) taught his student to question. By the following year (after a number of preparatory schools), 1948, he was a student of the Sorbonne, and his studies comprised literature, philosophy and psychology. His university years, although not as bad as those of his war, were not enjoyable. He was both poor (he taught Hebrew, translated and worked as a choirmaster for an income) and depressed, to the point where he contemplated suicide. He also became involved with the Irgun (a militant Jewish organisation in Israel/Palestine), working as a translator for the group's newspaper by translating documents between Yiddish and Hebrew. This experience led to his next appointment as a reporter.

In 1949, within his new job, Wiesel realised his dream of travelling to Israel. As a correspondent for the French newspaper L'Arche, he then changed jobs to become the Parisian correspondent for Yediot Achronot, an Israeli newspaper. He spent a large portion of the 1950s in travel worldwide, and was also involved in whether or not Israel should accept West German reparation payments. Still at work as a reporter, Wiesel met the man who would change his life. In 1954, he was sent to interview a devout French Catholic author named François Mauriac who spoke mainly on the topic of Christianity. Finally, Wiesel could stand hearing about the suffering of Jesus no longer, saying "...ten years ago, not very far from here, I knew Jewish children every one of whom suffered a thousand times more, six million times more than Christ on the cross. And we don't speak about them." Having said this, Wiesel made a hasty exit from the room, but was followed by the writer who convinced Wiesel to begin publishing his experiences.

Writing and the United States of America:

The first book that Wiesel drafted, and what would become both his most famous and influential piece, was an 862 page manuscript entitled And the World Was Silent which was sent to an Argentinian publisher. The final manuscript was a mere 245 page book which would be published in French in 1958 and titled La Nuit (Night). Published in the United States of America in 1960, Night was the story of his life from childhood until the end of the Holocaust, and follows the loss of his faith in God, and the income goes to an Israeli yeshiva that Wiesel established to commemorate his father. I cannot more strongly recommend this as an important autobiography to read. The following passage, from Night is one of the most influential passages of any modern book and the point of his crusade against injustice:

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."

The mid-1950s saw Wiesel moving to the USA still in his capacity as the foreign correspondent of Yediot Achronot, and this period in his life saw him make the decision to stop attending a synagogue except on special occasions, to protest what he viewed as divine injustice. In New York, also, in 1956, Wiesel was struck by a taxi as he crossed the road and endured a ten hour operation, after which he focused more on his literature (and finalised Night), saying that he was writing for those who could not speak. The taxi incident left him in an interesting situation, as he was still classed as a stateless person, and was unable to return to France. However, he eventually received his first passport (U.S.), and settled in New York. Years later, his friend François Mitterand became the French President, and offered Wiesel French nationality, which he declined, claiming that when he had needed a passport, the United States of America had come to his aid. Night's sequels, Dawn and The Accident soon followed, and from then on, Wiesel was a prolific writer (for a full listing of his books, see the node above, but also note that a second part of his memoirs And the Sea is Never Full has been published). A 1965 visit to the Soviet Union saw him write about the Jews there (The Jews of Silence), and the Six-Day War inspired A Beggar in Jerusalem. This book looked at the Jewish reaction about Israel, and won him the Prix Medicis. In 1969, Wiesel married an Austrian named Marion Erster Rose (who would become the translator of his books), and the pair had a son whom they named in honour of Eliezer's father: Shlomo Elisha. Wiesel continued to write over the next three decades, writing books that accuse God of indifference and even hostility (although he never stopped believing in God as the caretaker of the Jewish people), and further memoirs of his life (1995 and 1999 respectively). One of my sources for this node commented that "Today, Wiesel thinks in Yiddish, writes in French, and, with his wife Marion and his son Elisha, lives his life in English." During this period, he also became a spokesperson against ignored injustice.

Social Impact and Contribution; Awards and the Nobel Prize:

Wiesel's international contribution is significant, in that he did not speak out against only anti-Semitism. The 1970s saw him protesting apartheid, the 1980s delivering food to Cambodia. His reasons for doing so are explained by his reply to the awarding of his Nobel Prize, saying that the world knew of the concentration camps, but took no action. "That is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation."

His outspoken stance against injustice has been acknowledged and celebrated around the world. Between 1972-8, Wiesel was a Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the City University of New York, then went to Boston University to be the Mellon Chair of Humanities (a position he still holds). It was in the same year that U.S. President Jimmy Carter asked Wiesel to front the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council (this appointment lasted for six years). Between 1982-3, he was the Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University In 1985, Wiesel was the recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement, and three years later, he established a humanitarian foundation that bore his name: the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. This foundation works to explore conflicts caused by hatred and different ethnicities (and also is a non-profit teaching organisation), and is a colloquium of scholars worldwide. Following his awarding of the Nobel Prize, Wiesel also held a new type of conference, a meeting of all Nobel recipients to discuss worldwide issues. He has also been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and is a Member (Grand-Croix) of the French Legion of Honour.

In the 1990s, Wiesel was still carrying on his personal mission against injustice, lobbying the United States government about the ethnic cleansing taking place in Bosnia. His work, over the years to open eyes and minds against injustice has been him be awarded numerous awards, and approximately seventy-five honorary doctorates from various establishments. He was also chosen to speak, in 1993, at the dedication of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, D.C.). His immortal words are engraved over the museum's entrance: "For the dead and the living, we must bear witness." This museum was the result of the Holocaust Memorial Council, which also recommended to Congress that a memorial day be established (this was passed). Wiesel's grounds for establishing the museum are that he wishes to deny the Nazis victory, honour the wishes of the victims of the Holocaust (they wished their story to be told), and to also educate so that such a horrific event does not occur again. The museum focuses mainly on the Jewish genocide, as Wiesel believes that although not all Holocaust victims were Jewish, all Jews were victims of the Holocaust.

More recently, in 1995, he spoke powerfully at the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a speech which included:

"Close your eyes and listen. Listen to the silent screams of terrified mothers, the prayers of anguished old men and women. Listen to the tears of children, Jewish children, a beautiful little girl among them, with golden hair, whose vulnerable tenderness has never left me. Look and listen as they quietly walk towards dark flames so gigantic that the planet itself seemed in danger." (This speech is under copyright, and for the link, please refer to 'Recommended Further Reading".)

Wiesel was recognised for his work in 1986 with the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Peace, one of the world's most distinguished honours. The following are extracts from both the Nobel Committee and Eliezer Wiesel's acceptance speech, detailing both thoughts and reasons for this award (again, both are under copyright, but links are provided below):

"From the abyss of the death camps he has come as a messenger to mankind -- not with a message of hate and revenge, but with one of brotherhood and atonement. He has become a powerful spokesman for the view of mankind and the unlimited humanity which is, at all times, the basis of a lasting peace.... We know that the unimaginable has happened. What are we doing now to prevent it happening again? Do not forget, do not sink into a new blind indifference, but involve yourselves in truth and justice, in human dignity, freedom, and atonement. That is this Peace Prize laureate's message to us... The man raises himself up. The spirit conquers. The answer to the riddle of the night is not hate based on what has happened, but a believing and hopeful rebirth into future events. This is what he calls The Refound Song which appears in his credo, his Ani Maamin: I believe in God -- in spite of God! I believe in Mankind -- in spite of Mankind! I believe in the Future -- in spite of the Past!" - Nobel Committee's speech in 1986 at the awards ceremony.

"...I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must -- at that moment -- become the center of the universe.... Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately." - Eliezer Wiesel's acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Today, Eliezer Wiesel still lives in New York city, and is recognised worldwide as a teacher, writer and visionary of high repute. He is a survivor of the death camps, a family man, a worker, and an advocate for peace.

Sources:

Night and All Rivers Run to the Sea - Eliezer Wiesel
http://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/life/index.html (and other, related pages)
http://gtrplaya33.f2o.org/emily/archives/000032.html
http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/639_34.html
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/HOLO/ELIEBIO.HTM
http://store.yahoo.com/jewish146/eliewiesel.html

Reccommended Further Reading:

Literary Works - As many as possible, although Night would be my strongest reccommendation.
Auschwitz Anniversary Speech - http://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/life/auschwitz.html
Nobel Prize speeches - http://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/nobel/index.html (and also click on the links down the side for others)
To get a sense of him as a man, read the Bold Type interview - http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/1299/wiesel/interview.html

printable version
chaos

night	Chinks don't fuck	Dear God: how about that whole holocaust thing?	Everything Quests: Favourite Authors
Nobel Prize in Peace	God Made Man Because He Loves Stories	Everything Quests: The Nobel Prize winners	golem
Dora	Buchenwald	Autobiographical	Names for the Holocaust
Suffering and knowledge in ancient texts	Treblinka	George Washington	silence = death
President Jimmy Carter's Nobel Lecture	Václav Havel	Testament	The Accident
Holocaust Museum and Center at the Bronx High School of Science	Abdul Rashid Dostum	FINALLY, a New Orleans gathering: music, mayhem, beer snobs, and Bourbon Street	March of the Living

Y'know, if you log in, you can write something here, or contact authors directly on the site. Create a New User if you don't already have an account.

Login
Password

remember me
password reminder
register

Everything2 Help

cooled by panamaus

After stirring Everything, these nodes rose to the top:
Tamal
Noah Webster
Premature infant
love conquers all *
Picking your nose
Rapper's Delight
Russian Rock'n'Roll
Eva Perón
Thermopylae
Lumiere Brothers
Amateur Astronomy
The Contents Of Lincoln's Pockets
Brian Wilson

SubSane
Making Love to a 9-Foot Woman	(person)
Ouzo
Thoughts	(idea)
antigravpussy
I fall silent, listening. The breadcrumbs are talking about us	(person)
calgon
Buffalo Bill by the pool	(poetry)
gate
Anarchy is Order	(idea)
ushdfgakjasgh
Scribeling	(thing)
XWiz
Trism	(review)
artman2003
Briefcase Full of Souls - Part I	(fiction)
Dreamvirus
Alan Ladd	(person)
waverider37
Harold Holt	(person)
The Debutante
Until death do us part	(fiction)
Ysardo
a brother to a sister	(personal)
antigravpussy
your warm whispers	(personal)
Clarke
Multiculturalism	(idea)
aneurin
Earl of Landaff	(person)

This affordable entertainment brought to you by The Everything Development Company