Elie Wiesel: A Leader for Post-Holocaust Generations

When the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, God chose Moses to plead with Pharaoh. “Let my people go!” was the clarion call. When the Israelites were liberated, Moses led them through their difficult sojourn in the desert. Slaves do not have an identity; it was Moses’ job to enable the Israelites to transition from slavery to freedom, to give them an identity and a sense of community. When the Jews of Europe were destined for annihilation during World War II, a precious few leaders emerged and called for resistance to the Nazi beast. Amongst the best known was the Vilna Ghetto’s Abba Kovner. Kovner cried out: “Jews! Defend yourself with arms. The Germans and Estonians hangmen have come to murder us… We will not stretch our necks for the slaughter. Better to fall in battle than to be led like sheep to the slaughter” (Rich Cohen, The Avengers, 2000, 89).

After American slaves were freed their condition was yet one of misery; in most parts of the country Negro civil rights were non-existent. A century after the Civil War a new black leadership emerged, spearheaded by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, who called upon his community to engage in non-violent protests to achieve their goals. Again, the leader enabled his community to develop a sense of community and a sense of worth.

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When the Jews were liberated from concentration camps at the end of World War II, the world was in shock; they then transitioned into a long period of denial. If Holocaust survivors began, reluctantly, to talk about the humiliation, torture, and starvation they endured, and about the multiple losses they suffered, they were told, “Let bygones be bygones, you are in a free country now. You are in America.”

It took almost two generations for this silence to be broken. Eliezer Wiesel was a major force in the process of breaking the silence. On September 30, 1928 Wiesel was born into a Hasidic family in Sighet Transylvania in Romania. His father owned a grocery store and was an active community leader, while his more pious mother raised four children. From the age of 10 or 11 Wiesel knew that he wanted to be a writer, commentator, and teacher. He was taken with Talmud studies. At that age he even wrote a book of commentaries on the Bible. His early years were influenced by his Hasidic grandfather on his mother’s side and also by a caretaker in the synagogue, who told him about the Messiah and other mysteries in Judaism. The young Elie was attracted to the study of Jewish mysticism. Wiesel’s mother wanted him to study Jewish sacred texts; his father encouraged him to learn modern Jewish literature.

At age 15 all of Elie’s dreams and deep faith in God came to a halt when he spent his first night in the Auschwitz/Birkenau death camp. Questioning God’s role and existence in this nightmarish hell was a daily struggle. Wiesel moved from Auschwitz to a death march, to Buchenwald, finally to liberation, then to France, and ultimately to the United States and to international fame. He died on July 2, 2016.

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After liberation Wiesel, hospitalized for intestinal problems, used the time to write an outline for a book about his experiences during the Holocaust. Hence a “writer self” emerged. He decided not to write the details for another ten years. After learning French he went to the Sorbonne and studied literature, philosophy, and psychology. Wiesel used his language skills to do translations, including for the Irgun Tzva’I Le’umi—Etzel—the activist liberation group in pre-state Palestine. In 1949 Wiesel travelled to Israel as a correspondent for the French paper L’Arche. While he was in Israel, the newspaper Yediot Hachronot recruited him as their Paris correspondent. This job gave him an opportunity to travel around the world, and to be involved with the controversy regarding whether or not Israel should accept reparations from the German government.

Most importantly, in 1954, Wiesel interviewed a Nobel Prize winner in literature, a 70-year-old French devout Catholic, Francois Mauriac. This interview became a “transforming encounter” for Wiesel, who was then a 27-year-old stateless Jewish journalist, as well as for Mauriac, who spoke about his admiration for the Jewish people and about the suffering of Jesus Christ. During the German occupation of France, Mauriac went into hiding because his criticism of Nazism had endangered his life. Mauriac went on to tell Wiesel of an indelible image of the trainloads of Jewish children standing at the Austerlitz station. Wiesel replied, “I am one of them.” Wiesel, who was usually very soft spoken, got angry and said: “Sir, you speak of Christ. Christians love to speak of Him. The passion of Christ, the agony of Christ, the death of Christ. In your religion, that is all you speak of. Well, I want you to know that 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. Can you understand that Sir? We don’t speak about them.” Wiesel walked out and was followed by Mauriac who said, “I think that you are wrong not to speak… listen to the old man that I am: one must speak out – one must speak out.” Mauriac gave Wiesel a new way to think about his shattered faith in God. He explained to Wiesel that suffering is the foundation of faith, not an obstacle to trusting God.

The “writer self” and the “survivor self” got validation from a vital sector of the external world. Wiesel took a year to write his experiences in Yiddish, publishing And the World Was Silent (1956) in Argentina. Wiesel went on to cover the United Nations in New York, and decided to settle there in 1955. Shortly after, in July 1956 while crossing the street, Wiesel was hit by a taxi, and had a ten-hour operation. For Wiesel another “transforming encounter” was with the surgeon who operated on him. Wiesel had asked the surgeon if he believed in God. The surgeon said that he did except when he was in the operating room. He continued, “There I only count on myself.” The surgeon asked Wiesel,

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“Why don’t you care about the living?”

While confined to a wheelchair, Wiesel wrote for four hours a day about his experiences during the Holocaust and continued writing many articles for the Forverts (Forward) Yiddish newspaper. The French edition of La Nuit (Night) was published in 1958 with an introduction by Mauriac and the English edition came out in 1960 after being rejected by many publishers, who said no one would be interested in reading about these experiences. Wiesel’s childhood dream led to more than 50 books, including a cantata, plays, fiction, non-fiction books, and a memoir. His books sparked the fire of Holocaust literature. Wiesel’s writing began to become a voice of conscience for the living with the publication of The Jews of Silence (1966), inspiring the Soviet Jewry movement.

Wiesel’s voice of moral conscience was not limited to the Jews. To mention but a few, he spoke out for justice for the Cambodians, against apartheid in South Africa and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and in support of oppressed people in Biafra, Vietnam, Rwanda, and Darfur. He was not afraid to speak truthfully to power. In 1985, when President Reagan bestowed on him the Congressional Gold Medal, Wiesel used the opportunity to dissuade Reagan from going to the Bitburg cemetery to honor German war dead, including the Waffen SS. He said, “Your place is with the victims of the SS.” During the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, April 22, 1993, Wiesel told President Clinton that the US must do something about ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. On another occasion when Wiesel spoke at the White House about “The Perils of Indifference,” he did not hesitate to ask President Clinton why the US was not involved in Rwanda. He said: “I know one thing. We could have prevented a massacre, why didn’t we?”

In 1986, Wiesel’s voice was recognized by the Nobel Prize committee as “a messenger to mankind, a human being dedicated to humanity” and for his “practical work for the cause of peace.” Wiesel accepted the Peace Prize award on behalf of all Holocaust survivors.

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Aside from writing, Wiesel’s other dream was to be a teacher of Talmud. He continued to be a student of Talmud his whole life, but he was a trailblazer in teaching about the Holocaust, first at City College (New York), then at Boston University. Students who were children of Holocaust survivors learned about their parents’ silence. The hundreds of lectures he gave worldwide enabled this polymath to be a teacher to thousands.

Wiesel’s message of how to invent hope in a world that offers none, how to gain faith after a generation that “has seen it shamed and humiliated,” and how to build on ruins, struck a deep chord with the survivor generation that needed a leader to tell them to remember the past, but not to despair in the present, and instead rebuild on top of the ashes. Not to forget meant not only all those who were murdered, but to incorporate into one’s life the rich Jewish religion, culture, texts, music and languages that were destroyed. Wiesel taught that it is not enough to remember the pain and suffering; one must transform those feelings into a search for meaning. Hence, Elie Wiesel, as a leader for the post-Holocaust generations, serves not only as a spiritual guide to a generation ambivalent about God, but also as a role model for transforming survivor guilt into a constructive and meaningful existence.

It is too soon to know what the legacy of Elie Wiesel will be, except to note that he has a continuing impact on Holocaust and genocide courses taught on college campuses and in high-schools. Night is on many, perhaps most, of these curricula. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will continue to be visited and to transform people. Holocaust commemorations will continue for the foreseeable future. As is the case with Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel will be a role model leader of people who are the victims of racism and genocide.

But most importantly, Elie Wiesel has had an everlasting impact on the survivor generation and the post-Holocaust generations. A group that has been victimized needs validation for their suffering. Wiesel’s writings and speaking to fellow survivors, Jewish communities, churches, mosques, and heads of state worldwide all incrementally led to the exploration of the racism that led to the genocide of Jews in World War II.

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Additionally, Wiesel’s writing and voice ultimately transformed the Holocaust survivors from a group that was initially shunned by the Jewish community to a community who are sought after to speak and teach for films and oral histories.

For many, Wiesel’s death is a stark reminder that the Holocaust survivor generation is dying out. His death is a wake-up call for the second-generation to tell the story and not let the story die with them.

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