Elie Wiesel, Survivor, Author and Humanitarian

Sept. 30, 1928 to July 2, 2016

Today’s blog was going to be about a fantastic book one of my book clubs just read about World War II in France. But before I could write that one, I read that Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel just died at age 87. I was quite young during that war, and the only thing I remember about it was going to cowboy movies and in the newsreels before the movies started, there would be scenes of American pilots shooting the Nazi planes out of the sky, and as the enemy planes plummeted to earth with flames and smoke behind them, the audience cheered. I don’t remember cheering, but I’m sure I did even though the whole war didn’t seem real to me. I know now we were on rations for different kinds of food, but I wasn’t aware of that at the time.

It was in college when I first went as an older student to Kent State’s Trumbull branch, that I became more aware of the horrors of that war. It was when I took a literature class and read Night by Elie Wiesel. I was sickened by the horrors of the concentration camps and the cruelty of the guards, soldiers and others treatment not only of the Jews, but the gypsies, and others they thought inferior.  Of course, it was more the Jews than the others because Hitler had preached his own hatred of the Jews to those who followed him.

My professor, Dr. Gloria Young and another professor whose name I don’t remember from Youngstown State University put together a week long event on the Holocaust with interviews of survivors. Their stories were so touching and sad.

Elie Wiesel was a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Holocaust survivor, and Nobel Laureate. He was the author of 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including his book Night based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. He was a teenager when he entered the camp and was tattooed with the number A-7713. He was freed in 1945, but only after his mother, father, and one sister had all died in Nazi camps. Two other sisters survived.

After he was liberated from Buchenwald in April 1945, Wiesel spent a few years in a French orphanage, and then landed in Paris. He studied literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne and then became a journalist for the French newspaper L’Arche and Israel’s Yediot Ahronot. In 1956, Wiesel traveled on a journalistic assignment to New York to cover the United Nations. While there he was struck by a car and confined to a wheelchair for a year. He became a lifetime New Yorker, continuing in journalism writing for the Yiddish-language newspaper, The Forward.

He became a U.S. citizen in 1963. Six years later he married Marion Rose, a fellow Holocaust survivor who translated some of his books into English. They had a son, Shlomo.

Wiesel was also a professor of the humanities at Boston University, which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. He was involved with Jewish causes, and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. In his political activities he also campaigned for victims of oppression in places like South Africa and Nicaragua and genocide in Sudan. He publicly condemned the Armenian genocide of a century ago and remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime. He had been described as “the most important Jew in America” by the Los Angeles Times.

 

I''m not sure which award this was from all he won.

Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, at which time the Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a “messenger to mankind,” stating that through his struggle to come to terms with “his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler’s death camps”, as well as his “practical work in the cause of peace”, Wiesel had delivered a message “of peace, atonement and human dignity” to humanity.

When he accepted the Peace Prize he said, “Whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation, take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Night was his first book, and so bleak that publishers doubted it would appeal to readers. In a 2002 interview with The Chicago Tribune, Wiesel recalled “The English translation came out in 1960, and the first printing was 3000 copies. And it took three years to sell them. Now, I get 100 letters a month from children about the book, and there are many, many million copies in print.”

Over the years he was very active giving speeches, writing essays and books including two sequels to Night. The tragedy of his early life instead of turning him into a recluse or a bitter person, obviously made him the man he became. In 1978, he was chosen by President Carter to head the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and plan an American memorial museum to Holocaust victims.

In 1985, when he received a Congressional Gold Medal from President Ronald Reagan, he asked the president not to make a planned trip to a cemetery in Germany that contained graves of Adolf Hitler’s personal guards. Reagan visited the cemetery.

President Barack Obama said of Wiesel Saturday: “As a writer, a speaker, an activist, and a thinker, he was one of those people who changed the world more as a citizen of the world than those who hold office or traditional positions of power. His life, and the power of his example, urges us to be better.”

Over the years my book clubs have chosen many books that dealt with World War II and/or the Holocaust. Most were good, but sad and depressing like The Girl in the Red Coat by Ligochi, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak and others, but I was planning on writing about The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, so I am going to finish this blog with a little about it.

Not only was it chosen by my Red Read Robin book club which we discussed this past Thursday, but also by my Third Thursday book club which will be discussing it the coming third Thursday of July.

I found the book fascinating and interesting with a tear shed here and there, and everyone in my book club had high praise for it and most want to read more books by this author, and she has written a lot. All of us admitted to the fact that we weren’t looking forward to reading another WWII book, but all of us were happy we did. Rather than my writing about it, here is some praise for the book from the back cover:

“In this epic novel, set in France in World War II, two sisters who live in a small village find themselves estranged when they disagree about the imminent threat of occupation. Separated by principles and temperament, each must find her own way forward as she faces moral questions and life-or-death choices. Haunting, action-packed and compelling.” Christian Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train.

“A beautifully written and richly evocative examination of life, love, the ravages of war, and the different ways people react to unthinkable situations – not to mention the terrible and mounting toll of keeping secrets. This powerhouse of a story is equally packed with action and emotion, and is sure to be another major hit. I loved it.” – Sarah Gruen New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants.

There were three more comments on the back of the book, too, but I didn’t want to take up more space.

Note: Most of the information on Elie Wiesel came from Wikipedia and a newspaper memorial in my local newspaper written by Verena Dobnik with The Associated Press.

How much do you know about the Holocaust, WW II and Elie Weisel