Background
Wiesel, Elle was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania.
Wiesel, Elle was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania.
Hasidic and general until deportation to Auschwitz and Buchenwald from the age of fifteen. 1946-1947, Talmud (Code of Jewish Law) with Rabbi Mordechai Shushani (Levinas’s teacher) Paris. 1948-1951, French Literature, Philosophy and Pyschology.
Sorbonne and University of Paris.
On liberation from Buchenwald, Wiesel was sent to France with other child survivors. And he worked as camp counsellor, choir director, tutor and translator. 1949, Foreign Correspondent, Yedi'ot Acharonot.
1957, journalist, Jewish Daily Forward. Journalist for Israeli, French and American newspapers. DLitt, 1967, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York.
1975, Marquette University. 1987, University of Paris. 1964, Prize for Universalité de la Langue Française.
LHD, 1968, Hebrew Union College. 1973, Yeshiva University. 1974. Boston University.
1980, Brandeis University. PhD(honorary), Universities of Bar Ilan. 1973; Haifa. 1986; and Ben Gurion, the Negev, 1988.
Various honorary LLDs and HHDs. Dr, Humane Letters; Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies, City College, New York, 1972-1976. Professor of Religious Studies, and then Philosophy, Boston. since 1976.
Visiting Scholar, Human Sciences. Yale University, 1982-1983 and many others. Chair, US President’s Commission on Holocaust, 1979.
Chair. US Holocaust Memorial Council, 1980: on various educational and humanitarian boards. Fellow, Jewish Academy Arts and Sciences. Various literary prizes, France.
Books translated into many languages, including Dutch, Japanese and Norwegian. Distinguished Foreign-Born American Award and other awards in Israel, France, Norway, USA, Italy and Brazil. Nobel Peace Prize. Oslo 1986.
Artists and Writers for Peace in the Middle East Award, 1987. Elie Wiesel Chair in Holocaust Studies and Elie Wiesel Award for Holocaust Research, Haifa University, 1987. Ellis Island Medal of Honor, 1992.
First Primo Levi Award, 1992. Légion d’Honneur, France. US Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement at nationally televised White House ceremony.
1985; 1995, helped organize joint 50th anniversary commemoration by the worldwide Jewish community and the Polish government at Auschwitz concentration camp.
Main publications:
(1956) Un di Veit Hot Geshvign [And the World Remained Silent] Buenos Aires, (French translation. La Nuit, Minuit, 1958, 1973, 1975
English translation, Night, trans S. Rodway, New York: Hill & Wang. 1960, 1972
Avon. 1970
London: Fontana/Collins, 1972
Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. 1981).
(1960) L’Aube, Paris: Seuil (English translation. Dawn, trans. F. Renaye, New York: Hill & Wang, 1961, 1970, 1972
Toronto: Bantam Books, 1982). (1961 ) Le Jour, Paris: Seuil (English translation, Day, 1961
all three as The Night Trilogy, or Night, Day, The Accident, New York: Hall & Wang. 1972,1985, 1987
London: Robson. 1974
Night, Dawn, Day, New York: Aronson, Bnai Brith, 1985. 1987).
( 1966) Les Juifs du Silence. Paris: Seuil ( English translation. The Jews of Silence, New York: Holt. Rinehart & Winston, 1966
London: Vallentine Mitchell. 1968, 1973
New York: Schocken, 1987). (1966) Le Chant des Morts [The Song of the Dead], Paris: Seuil (English translation. Legends of our Time, trans. S. Donadio, New York: Holt. Rinehart & Winston, 1968
Schocken. 1982).
(1966) Le Mendiant de Jérusalem, Paris: Seuil, 1966, (English translation. A Beggar in Jerusalem, trans.
L. Edelman and E. Wiesel. New York: Schocken, 1970
1985).
(1970) One Generation After, trans. L. Edelman and E. Wiesel, New York: Random House. 1970
Avon,
1972
Schocken, 1982
Bibliophile Library, 1986 (original in French, Entre Deux Soleils).
(1972) Souls on Fire, trans. Marion Wiesel, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
New York: Summit, 1984
Northvale, NJ: Aronson, 1993 (original in French, Célébration Hassidique).
(1979) A Jew Today, trans. Marion Wiesel, New York: Vintage.
(1979) The Trial of God: New York: Random House
Schocken, 1986.
(1983) The Golem. New York: Summit.
(1988) (with A. H. Friedlander) The Six Days of Destruction, Oxford: Pergamon. and Mahwah, NJ.
(1990) (with P. de Saint-Cheron) Evil and Exile, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Secondary literature:
Berenbaum, M. (1979) The Vision of the Void: Theological Reflections on the Works of Elie Wiesel, Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press. Berger, A. L. (1993) ‘Elie Wiesel’, in Interpreters of Judaism in the Late Twentieth Century, ed. S. T. Katz, Washington, DC: Bnai Brith, pp. 369-91 (includes bibliography).
Brown, R. Me. (1983) Elie Wiesel: Messenger to All Humanity
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989
revised 1990.
Engel. V. (1989) Fou de Dieu ou Dieu des Fous, Brussels: de Boeck.
Fine, E. S. (1982) Legacy of Night: The Literary Universe of Elie Wiesel, Albany: SUNY Press. Friedman, M. S. ( 1987) Abraham Joshua Hescheland Elie Wiesel, You Are My Witness, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
Frost, C. J. (1985) Religious Melancholy or Psychological Depression?, Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Rittner, C. (1990) Elie Wiesel: Between Memory and Hope, New York: New York University Press. Walker, G. B. (1988) Elie Wiesel: A Challenge to Theology, Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Wiesel is most famous for his existential philosophy of the Holocaust, written in novel form. Only his first novel, written in Yiddish, describes his own experiences. He has discussed the role played by Christianity in the Holocaust, the continual Holocaust denial and the increasing rise of anti-semitism, especially in the wake of the ‘democratization’ of eastern Europe. He is rare in being regarded as a member of both the Jewish mystical, and the French existential, traditions. He has become almost an icon in some European countries, and has, more than any other thinker, influenced post-Holocaust theology and philosophy. Wiesel has challenged Orthodox Judaism by declaring the Holocaust to be a more significant occurrence in Jewish and world history even than God’s revelation to the Jews at Mount Sinai. He particularly emphasizes the role of silence in the Holocaust and accuses God of breaking His covenant with the Jewish people. Basing himself on the Lurianic Kabbalah of the sixteenth century Galilean town of Sfat, Wiesel construes evil as contained within the divine. It is up to humanity to assist God in repairing the world, a concept known as tikkun. Wiesel rebukes Richard Rubenstein for asserting that God is dead, and points out that this is not the view taken by Holocaust survivors. Like the biblical Job, Wiesel believes in God but is sceptical of divine justice. He nevertheless asserts that the survival of Judaism transcends even the need for a just deity. Wiesel regards his writing as a dialogue with himself, with the reader and with God. He says that since the Holocaust it is impossible for there to be art for art’s sake. Everything must be written with the Holocaust as its background. He stresses the importance of memory as a device for transformation and for preventing another Holocaust. Despite speaking on behalf of other victims of atrocities, such as the Tibetans, the Burmese and the Bosnians, Wiesel constantly reiterates the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Wiesel’s ideas have powerfully influenced Jewish and Christian post-Holocaust theology and other philosopher-rabbis, for example, Irving Greenberg and Emil Fackenheim. Ironically, by stressing the Jewish rather than universal aspects of the Holocaust, Wiesel has only helped the ecumenical movement, as much by his character as his writings. He is regarded by many non-Jews as the world’s chief spokesman for the Holocaust and even for the Jewish people, as was recognized when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. More recently he acted as mediator between the Jewish community and the Polish government regarding the format for commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Holocaust in Poland, 1995.