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JULY 7, 2016 | The Jewish Home JULY 14, 2016 | The Jewish Home
serting their homes, the years of their childhood, cringing like beaten dogs.” In Night, his most famous of books, his memoir, he recounted his journey in the cattle cars which ended at the depths of hell: Auschwitz. The family had never heard of Auschwitz but they saw the smokestacks that filled the air with the stench of burning flesh, how babies were burned in a pit, and how a sadistic Dr. Josef Mengele decided, with a wave of a baton, who would live and who would die. Elie’s mother and sister Tzipora were sent to the right, his mother gently smoothing her daughter’s hair. “I did not know that in that place, at that moment, I was parting from my mother and Tzipora forever,” he wrote. “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,” Elie wrote. “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 G-d 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 G-d himself. Never.”
The Jewish Home | OCTOBER 29, 2015
Feature The Week In News
Receiving honey cake from the Lubavitch Rebbe
Survival in Auschwitz turned humans into creatures subhuman. Their primary thought was survival, their next piece of bread, their next bowl of soup, ducking the constant beatings. He recalled in his memoir how he was turned into an unfeeling being – watching his father being beaten with an iron bar and not running to help. Eventually, Elie was forced to run through the snow from Buna to
Elie Wiesel at the Sighet ‘soap monument,’ where Nazi soap was buried according to halacha
On April 11, 1945, after eating nothing for six days, Wiesel was among those liberated by the United States Third Army. He was 16.
E
lie eventually was taken to France, branded with A7713 on his arm, where he learned French and became a journalist. But the person who is now known for his written work was surprisingly si-
were smothered by evil? In 1955, at the age of 27, Elie finally put his memories to paper. Night was published in Yiddish and was later rewritten for a world audience. The book itself took a journey. Initially written as an 800 page story, it was trimmed to 300 pages for an edition released in Argentina, cut again to 200 pages in French and then published in the 1960s in the United States, at just over 100 pages. At first,
“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”
Buchenwald, where he watched his father die from illness and starvation. He guiltily recalled that he had wished to have been relieved of the burden of sustaining him. “I had no more tears,” he said after his father’s body was taken away. He could no longer cry.
lent during the ten years after the Holocaust. He was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to find the right words to describe the evil that was rampant, an evil so pervasive and so profound, during those few years. For how can ink drying on paper be witness to the six million souls that
the book barely sold; only 1,046 copies were bought in the first 18 months. “The Holocaust was not something people wanted to know about in those days,” Wiesel told Time magazine in 1985. But with the trial of Adolf Eichmann the world was once again witness to Hitler’s evil min-
ions and Night became a bestseller. In 2008, The New York Times estimated that 10 million copies of Night had been sold. Once Night was published, it seemed as if a fountain of memories, suffering and poetry was released. A few years later, Dawn was published, a novel about a young survivor living in Jerusalem who joined the Irgun and is faced with the task of executing a British soldier at daybreak. He struggles and faces his inner turmoil as the sun begins to rise. Day completed the trilogy of Wiesel’s thoughts and experiences during and after the Holocaust. Over the years, Elie penned over 60 works in his poetic, crisp prose. His books centered on the theme of survival. He asked questions, begging the reader to ponder the queries, but often did not give answers. He highlighted the struggle of a Soviet Jew faced with oppression, of one facing open-heart surgery, those facing horror. Each work brought a character to life, a character facing a daunting, harrowing struggle. He showed the reader that we too can be survivors. Jerusalem was in his heart and mind. He was an ardent defender of the State of Israel, but the holy city captured his soul. Menachem Z. Rosensaft, whose parents were friends with Wiesel, wrote that Elie loved “both the actual city and the ethereal, incorporeal concept of the place to which Jews yearned to return for almost two thousand years; the orig-
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