Had there been no war, I think I would have remained somewhere in my little town in the Carpathians.
“Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel is a messenger to mankind,” the Nobel citation said. “His message is one of peace, atonement and human dignity. His belief that the forces fighting evil in the world can be victorious is a hard-won belief.”
Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz Survivor and Nobel Prize Winner, Is Dead New York Times
Residents of Cleveland, Ohio, remember Elie Wiesel as a big-hearted author who wanted to teach and support them like neighbors.
Back in 1966, Wiesel himself remembersfriends from his youth. “Today,” he says, “I know that the advice of our wise men — ‘acquire for yourself a friend’ — is ironic. There is nothing with which to acquire them. Nothing any more. Our generation suffers a poverty of dreams.”
Frances Coleman read Elie Wiesel’s Night within the past week, saying it is thebest and hardest book she’s ever read.
In the sense that Wiesel’s evocative “deposition,” as he later termed it, shook me to my soul, then “Night” is the best book I’ve ever read; and in the sense that it reminds readers how utterly base we humans can be, it is the most punishing. Reading “Night” at night is punishing, too, because after you finish reading, you are left to lie awake in the dark, wondering if you could have survived such an ordeal.
….To help us achieve wisdom, healing and consolation, we turn to Elie Wiesel. It has been said that the true goodness of a person is written in the heart, a text readable only by God. But if a person’s goodness on earth is to be measured by words added to deeds, then Elie Wiesel, by all accountings, is a man of immeasurable goodness Elie Wiesel to MEdia Dragons never stop the search for meaning
So what is it about terrorism that it has gained such respectability? Now, surely you remember when you were students. You studied the history of Eastern Europe, or Europe in general. There were times when terrorism was romantic. There were called nihilists. They were called revolutionaries. They had ideals. It began, I’d say in Russia in the late 19th century, the earlier 20th century. They wanted to get rid of the czar. And there’s a story, which always enchants me because of its humanity.
At one point, they decided to kill the governor of St. Petersburg (Russia). And everything was ready. They followed him around. They knew exactly what he would do on that Sunday, every minute. And on every corner there was a girl or the boy with a gun or grenade. On Sunday he would go to church in his carriage, except that Sunday he decided to take his children with him. And they couldn’t do it. These tough revolutionaries who were ready to die, to go to Siberia…they couldn’t kill children.
Today, that’s not it. Terrorists today kill mainly children, because they are the symbol of our innocence and the symbol of our future. So what is it about a society that produced such terrorists?
It transforms an ontological event into soap-opera. . . . We see long, endless processions of Jews marching toward Babi Yar. . . . We see the naked bodies covered with “blood” — and it is all make-believe. . . . People will tell me that . . . similar techniques are being used for war movies and historical re-creations. But the Holocaust is unique; not just another event. This series treats the Holocaust as if it were just another event. . . . Auschwitz cannot be explained nor can it be visualized. . . . The Holocaust transcends history. . . . The dead are in possession of a secret that we, the living, are neither worthy of nor capable of recovering. . . . The Holocaust [is] the ultimate event, the ultimate mystery, never to be comprehended or transmitted. Only those who were there know what it was; the others will never know. My Resistance to Elie Wiesel Jacobin