Elie Wiesel
In 2008 Wiesel gave the convocation speech at Appalachian State University. The money paid for his appearance covered costs of travel and the rest went to his various charitable institutions.
In early 2006, Wiesel traveled to Auschwitz with Oprah Winfrey, a visit which was broadcast as part of The Oprah Winfrey Show on May 24, 2006.[7] Wiesel said that this would most likely be his last trip there.
In September 2006, he appeared before the UN Security Council with actor George Clooney to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.
On November 30, 2006 Wiesel received an honorary knighthood in London in recognition of his work toward raising Holocaust education in the United Kingdom.[8]
On February 1, 2007, Wiesel was attacked in a San Francisco hotel. Twenty-two year old Eric Hunt confessed on an antisemitic website to the attack, saying he had tried to drag Wiesel out of the hotel elevator in order to "bring [him] to my hotel room where he would truthfully answer my questions regarding the fact that his non-fiction Holocaust memoir, Night, is almost entirely fictitious."[9] On February 17, 2007, Hunt was arrested in Montgomery Township, New Jersey. He faces charges that include attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, elder abuse, stalking, battery and the commission of a hate crime.[10]
On April 25, 2007, Wiesel was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters degree from the University of Vermont.
During the early 2007 selection process for the Kadima candidate for President of Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly offered Wiesel the nomination (and, as the ruling-party candidate and an apolitical figure, likely the Presidency), but Wiesel "was not very interested".[11] Shimon Peres was chosen as the Kadima candidate (and later President) instead.
On April 9, 2008, Wiesel was presented with an Honorary Degree, Doctor of Letters at the City College of New York.
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Criticism
Wiesel has been criticized for exhibiting uncritical moral support for the state of Israel, and for the manner in which he defends this position. Christopher Hitchens has condemned him as a "contemptible poseur and windbag".[12] Hitchens suggests that Wiesel was associated with the militant Zionist organization Irgun in the 1940s, an organization that "employed extreme violence against Arab civilians".[12] Hitchens also has attacked Wiesel for failing to condemn promptly the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Hitchens suggests that Wiesel refrained from condemning the massacre because he was reluctant to criticize Israel.[12]
Noam Chomsky also criticized Wiesel's response to the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Chomsky suggests that Wiesel attempted to excuse Israeli responsibility in the massacre by emphasizing "after all the Israeli soldiers did not kill"; Chomsky suggests that Wiesel's real concern in regards to the Sabra and Shatila massacre is that it reflects badly on Israel.[13] Chomsky notes that Israeli troops participated in much killing in their own right, suggesting that Wiesel views Israel as "basically exempt from criticism".[13]
In a radio interview, controversial scholar Norman Finkelstein accused Wiesel of cheapening the moral coinage of the Nazi Holocaust by asserting its uniqueness while profiting from public fascination with it:
Elie Wiesel is always wheeled out, and with his long face and anguished heart and cinematic eyes, he always says: "Oh, do not compare." I beg your pardon, I think you should compare. Otherwise, if you don't want to compare, what's the point of it? What are you going to learn from it? ... He says the only thing we can do before the Nazi Holocaust is silence. Well if silence is the only answer, why are you charging $25,000 a lecture? And what are you going to learn from silence? I mean, this is sheer nonsense.[14]
Finkelstein's book The Holocaust Industry has a section criticizing the "uniqueness doctrine" attributed to Wiesel and to the "Holocaust Industry" as a whole.
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Books
ISBNs may be of reissues or reprints. Most are paperback.
- Un di velt hot geshvign (Tsentral-Farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentine, 1956) ISBN 0-374-52140-9; includes the following 3 books:
- Night (Hill and Wang 1958; 2006) ISBN 0-553-27253-5
- Dawn (Hill and Wang 1961; 2006) ISBN 0-553-22536-7
- Day, previously titled "The Accident" (Hill and Wang 1962; 2006) ISBN 0-553-58170-8
- The Town Beyond the Wall (Atheneum 1964)
- The Gates of the Forest (Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1966)
- The Jews of Silence (Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1966) ISBN 0-935613-01-3
- Legends of our Time (Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1968)
- A Beggar in Jerusalem (Random House 1970)
- One Generation After (Random House 1970)
- Souls on Fire (Random House 1972) ISBN 0-671-44171-X
- Night Trilogy (Hill and Wang 1972)
- The Oath (Random House 1973) ISBN 0-935613-11-0
- Ani Maamin (Random House 1973)
- Zalmen, or the Madness of God (Random House 1974)
- Messengers of God (Random House 1976) ISBN 0-671-54134-X
- A Jew Today (Random House 1978) ISBN 0-935613-15-3
- Four Hasidic Masters (University of Notre Dame Press 1978)
- Images from the Bible (The Overlook Press 1980)
- The Trial of God (Random House 1979)
- The Testament (Summit 1981)
- Five Biblical Portraits (University of Notre Dame Press 1981)
- Somewhere a Master (Summit 1982)
- The Golem (illustrated by Mark Podwal) (Summit 1983) ISBN 0-671-49624-7
- The Fifth Son (Summit 1985)
- Against Silence (Holocaust Library 1985)
- Twilight (Summit 1988)
- The Six Days of Destruction (co-author Albert Friedlander, illustrated by Mark Podwal) (Paulist Press 1988)
- A Journey of Faith (Donald I. Fine 1990)
- From the Kingdom of Memory (Summit 1990)
- Evil and Exile (University of Notre Dame Press 1990)
- Sages and Dreamers (Summit 1991)
- The Forgotten (Summit 1992) ISBN 0-8052-1019-9
- A Passover Haggadah (illustrated by Mark Podwal) (Simon and Schuster 1993) ISBN 0-671-73541-1
- All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs, Vol. I, 1928-1969 (Knopf 1995) ISBN 0-8052-1028-8
- Memoir in Two Voices, with François Mitterrand (Arcade 1996)
- And the Sea is Never Full: Memoirs Vol. II, 1969 (Knopf 1999) ISBN 0-8052-1029-6
- King Solomon and his Magic Ring (illustrated by Mark Podwal) (Greenwillow 1999)
- Conversations with Elie Wiesel (Schocken 2001)
- The Judges (Knopf 2002)
- Wise Men and Their Tales (Schocken 2003) ISBN 0-8052-4173-6
- The Time of the Uprooted (Knopf 2005)
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See also
- The Boys of Buchenwald – A documentary about the orphanage in which he stayed after the Holocaust
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Notes
- ^ Elie Wiesel from Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ 1986 Nobel Peace Prize Press Release
- ^ see the film "Elie Wiesel Goes Home" by Judit Elek, narrated by William Hurt ISBN #1-930545-63-0
- ^ Elie Wiesel: On the Atrocities in Sudan
- ^ Independent Florida Alligator article March 23, 2001
- ^ Elie Wiesel Returns to his Home in Sighet, Romania, Embassy of Romania in the United States, 23 July 2002.
- ^ Press Release ~ Oprah.com
- ^ "Wiesel Receives Honorary Knighthood" ~ TotallyJewish.com
- ^ "Suspect named in Wiesel attack", MSNBC, February 16, 2007.
- ^ "N.J. man arrested in attack on Wiesel", Yahoo! News, February 17, 2007.
- ^ Olmert backs Peres as next president Jerusalem Post, 18 October 2006
- ^ a b c Wiesel Words. The Nation. February 19, 2001
- ^ a b Noam Chomsky, "Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians", Pluto Press, London, 1999, p.386/7
- ^ WILL Radio Interview, University of Illinois, October 4, 2004. Passage begins: 17:45
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References
- Berenbaum, Michael: The Vision of the Void. Theological Reflections on the Works of Elie Wiesel, Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press, 1979 ISBN 0-8195-6189-4 PA
- Fonseca, Isabel: Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, London, Vintage, 1996
- Elie Wiesel: First Person Singular PBS special on Elie Wiesel
- Text and audio of Elie Wiesel's famous speech on "The Perils of Indifference"
- 1988 Audio Interview with Elie Wiesel by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, RealAudio at Wired for Books.
- Christopher Hitchens criticizes Elie Wiesel in the Nation Magazine
- "8 Questions for Elie Wiesel", JEWSWEEK article briefly discussing Wiesel's view regarding the moral necessity of the Iraq War.
- Fine, Ellen S. Legacy of Night: The Literary Universe of Elie Wiesel. State University of New York Press, 1982. ISBN 0-87395-590-0 (paperback)
- Wiesel, Elie. All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs. New York: Knopf, 1995.
- Wiesel, Elie. And the Sea is Never Full: Memoirs 1969-. New York: Schocken, 1999.
- New York Times - The Conversation with Elie Wiesel
- "Elie Wiesel on his Beliefs" ~ Toronto Star
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External links
- Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Elie Wiesel from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Text and Audio of Wiesel's "Perils of Indifference" Speech
- Ubben Lecture at DePauw University
- Video of Ethics After the Holocaust speech
- Author attacked in S.F. hotel
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wiesel, Elie |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wiesel, Eliezer |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | American-Jewish political activist, professor, and novelist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 9, 1928 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sighet, Maramures County, Romania |
| DATE OF DEATH | |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
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