Elie Wiesel (September 30, 1928–July 2, 2016 ) - An eternal beacon for humanity

Elie Wiesel a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, a Nobel laureate, and the most powerful witness for the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, was born and grew up  in the small town of Sighet in Transylvania, where people of different languages and religions had lived side by side for centuries, sometimes peacefully, sometimes in bitter conflict. The region was long claimed by both Hungary and Romania. In the 20th century, it changed hands repeatedly, a hostage to the fortunes of war. Although the village changed hands from Romania to Hungary, the Wiesel family believed they were safe from the persecutions suffered by Jews in Germany and Poland.

The secure world of Wiesel’s childhood ended abruptly with the arrival of the Nazis in Sighet in 1944. The Jewish inhabitants of the village were deported en masse to concentration camps in Poland. The 15-year-old boy was separated from his mother and sister immediately on arrival in Auschwitz. He never saw them again. He managed to remain with his father for the next year as they were worked almost to death, starved, beaten, and shuttled from camp to camp on foot, or in open cattle cars, in driving snow, without food, proper shoes, or clothing. In the last months of the war, Wiesel’s father succumbed to dysentery, starvation, exhaustion and exposure. 

After the war he found asylum in France, where he learned for the first time  that his two older sisters had surived the war. Wiesel  mastered the French language and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, He became a professional journalist writing for newspapers in both France and Israel.For ten years, he observed a self-imposed vow of silence and wrote nothing about his wartime experience. In 1955, at the urging of the Catholic writer Francois Mauriac, he set down his memories in Yiddish, in a  900-page work entitled Un die welt hot geshvign (And the world kept silent).  It was published in French in 1958 as “La Nuit” and two years later in English as “Night.”

Wiesel’s text was stark and often painfully simple: “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.”
The book sparked discussion of the Holocaust, an event that had been the topic of relatively few books up to that point. If nothing else, it made its readers ask one unavoidable question: Why?
To Wiesel, the role of the artist was to remember and to recreate, not to imagine, since reality was far more shocking than anything that could be imagined.
Wiesel himself said: “I wanted to show the end, the finality of the event. Everything came to an end — history, literature, religion, God. There was nothing left. And yet we begin again with ‘Night.’”

In 1956 while in New York reporting  on the United Nations, Elie Wiesel was struck by a taxi cab. His injuries confined him to a wheelchair for almost a year. Unable to renew the French document which had allowed him to travel as a “stateless” person, Wiesel applied successfully for American citizenship. Once he recovered, he remained in New York and became a feature writer for the Yiddish-language newspaper, The Jewish Daily Forward (Der forverts). Wiesel went on to author  over 60 books, most of them memoirs and novels, but also essays and plays. Most of Wiesel’s novels, essays, and plays explore the subject that haunted him, the events that he described as “history’s worst crime.”

As these and other books brought Wiesel to the attention of readers and critics, he became a spokesman for human rights wherever they were threatened, and used his fame to plead for justice for oppressed peoples, speaking out on behalf of the victims of genocide and oppression all over the world, defending the cause of Soviet Jews, Nicaragua’s Miskito Indians, Argentina’s Desaparecidos, Cambodian refugees, the Kurds,, of apartheid in South Africa, and victims of war, famine and genocide from Rwanda, Biafra, Bosnia, Kosovo to Darfur.

In 1976, Elie Wiesel was named Andrew Mellon Professor of Humanities at Boston University. He also taught at the City University of New York and was a visiting scholar at Yale University. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed Elie Wiesel Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Wiesel was a driving force behind the establishment of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. His words, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness,” are engraved in stone at the entrance to the museum. In 1985 he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, and in 1986, the Nobel Prize for Peace, In his Nobel citation, Wiesel was described as a messenger to mankind. “His message is one of peace, atonement, and human dignity,” the citation reads. “His belief that the forces fighting evil in the world can be victorious is a hard-won belief.” Wiesel lived up to that moniker with exquisite eloquence on December 10 that year, exactly ninety years after Alfred Nobel died, as he took the stage at Norway’s Oslo City Hall and delivered a spectacular speech on justice, oppression, and our individual responsibility in our shared freedom.  “Sometimes we must interfere,” Wiesel said in his Nobel acceptance speech. “When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that must—at that moment—become the center of the universe.”

You can listen and read the full acceptance speech here https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1986/wiesel/facts/ 
Elie Wiesel and his wife, Marion Wiesel, (the former Marion Erster Rose), a Holocaust survivor; established the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity soon after he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. The foundation’s mission, rooted in the memory of the Holocaust, is to combat indifference, intolerance, and injustice through international dialogue and youth-focused programs that promote acceptance, understanding, and equality. The international conferences of the Elie Wiesel Foundation, which focus on themes of peace, education, health, the environment, and terrorism, bring together Nobel laureates and world leaders to discuss social problems and develop suggestions for change.

His advocacy against genocide left him vulnerable to criticism from extremists and once to physical assault. In 2007, he was attacked in a San Francisco hotel elevator by a Holocaust denier named Eric Hunt, who had followed Wiesel across the country. Wiesel was not injured. Although he became known to millions for his human rights activism, he by no means abandoned the art of fiction. His later novels included A Mad Desire to Dance (2009) and The Sonderberg Case (2010), a tale set in contemporary New York City, with a cast of characters including Holocaust survivors, Germans, American emigrants to Israel and New York literati. Wiesel and his wife, made their home in New York City. He died at home in Manhattan, at the age of 87.

As a writer, a peace activist, and always most important to him, a teacher, Wiesel embodied, perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, the words “bearing witness.” He dedicated his life advocating for peace, humanity, truth, and helping other survivors emerge stronger after the devastation they experienced,  and he not only shaped how the world remembers the Holocaust, but how the memory of atrocity can help prevent future tragedies. Defining someone’s suffering as an interruption removes their value and denies their humanity. Wiesel warned of the lure of this indifferent mindset. He explained that the temptation of inaction and apathy allows us to focus solely on our own desires and goals. Empathy and engagement with people is what makes us human and Wiesel showed us that by embracing indifference we would betray our humanity. 

In a time when the world seems like a darker place, it is important to remember those who speak up for justice, hope and humanity. Elie Wiesel, was one of them. Not only was he an influential voice reminding humanity of the damage it can inflict on itself, Wiesel also stood for action. For hope, courage, determination and the power of individuals to stand against injustice and violence, and to build a better future. He  has inspired generations to social action. He celebrated the power of law to change people's lives when he accepted the 2012 William O. Douglas Award. "This is what we must do -- not to sleep well when people suffer anywhere in the world," Professor Wiesel told the audience of more than 1,000. "Not to sleep well when someone's persecuted. Not to sleep well when people are hungry all over here or there. Not to sleep well when there are people sick and nobody is there to help them. Not to sleep well when anyone somewhere needs you. You don't sleep well. And for this... we are very grateful to you."

  Here are few more of his most powerful messages, still as relevant as ever, standing as an eternal beacon for humanity.

 "We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

 
"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."

  “No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.”

 "One person of integrity can make a difference."

 "Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world."

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

" Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another."

  “No human being is illegal.”