Community Participation #3
Our final week of the retrospective includes more messages from those impacted by the work of Elie Wiesel, including words from Mayor Marty Walsh and former President Barack Obama.
#1 Professor Stephen Esposito, Associate Professor of Classical Studies and First Semester Core Curriculum Coordinator at Boston University. “Some 60 years ago, Elie Wiesel, at the age of 28, wrote the following 115 words, which were to become the most renowned and powerful passage in all of Holocaust literature. “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that butchered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” (Night, p. 34, trans. Marion Wiesel, 2006) That haunting seven-fold refrain, “Never shall I forget…” was to become the motto of Prof. Wiesel’s life. And so in honor of the dead and the living Elie bore witness. More than anyone in the past generation Wiesel spoke truth to power, and he did so with astonishing results — from Auschwitz and Buchenwald to the Soviet Jews, from the Cambodian Boat People to the victims of violence in Dafur, Rwanda, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Argentina. I met Prof. Wiesel some 22 years ago and over time we became friends. For over a decade he invited me to teach in his classes and together we studied numerous Greek tragedies that he loved – Antigone, Oedipus, Prometheus Bound. Team-teaching with Elie Wiesel was by far the greatest privilege and joy of my B.U. career. Those classes together also turned out to be the most intellectually stimulating experiences of my life. For over 20 years Prof. Wiesel lectured to students in Boston University’s Core Curriculum –on Genesis, on Exodus, on Job. And then, of course, he held court to thousands of listeners in those remarkable presentations every Fall in the Metcalf Auditorium. Students were always at the center of his world. He loved to question students and to be questioned by them. Somehow I felt especially at home with Professor Wiesel when he invited me to speak to his students about my own specialty, Greek tragedy. Those plays often focus on themes that permeated Wiesel’s life: memory and mystery, suffering and solitude, friendship and ferocity.. In his presence I often felt as if I were being transported to the sacred center of the world, to a place where fierce Nobility and benevolent Blessing stood side by side. The students, too, felt it, especially in those last years—their teacher’s voice ever softer and more oracular, the wisdom of eight decades carved into his face ever more deeply, the wizened eyebrows highlighting the sunken eyes that had seen the unseeable—and survived. Like the ancient figure of Oedipus, whom Sophocles wrote so beautifully about 2,500 years ago, Professor Wiesel spent his life daring to pry open the clenched fist of the past, daring to reveal the wrath, the rage and somehow, through his relentless questioning, to summon forth redemption. Thank you, Elie, for the fierce courage in the face of despair, for the never-ending fight to find the words to tell THE story. Thank you for not surrendering, for remembering your sister, your mother, your father, and your people. Thank you for carrying the torch so bravely, for holding such a steadfast beacon to the smoke-filled darkness of night, for helping us to keep our souls on fire, for teaching us what our children and our children’s children must not forget.”
#2 Mayor Marty Walsh of Boston. “Early in his life, Elie Wiesel experienced the worst of humanity. But through his perseverance, he showed the resilience of the human spirit. I remember reading his powerful memoir, Night, when I was a young student in Boston. Today, I am still moved by his strength and compassion. Elie was a man who dedicated his life to improving the lives of oppressed people all over the world. Between his time spent teaching about the horrors of the Holocaust as a professor at Boston University, and his work campaigning for victims of oppression in places like South Africa, Nicaragua and Sudan, Elie remained steadfast in his commitment to the human rights and freedoms deserved by everyone. I’m proud that Boston was the welcoming home of this great man. As a City and nation founded by immigrants, Boston must continue its work to embody the ideals of compassion and stewardship so well represented in the work of Elie. We continue to strive to match the ideals and virtues modeled by Elie, and I am grateful for he brought, and what he taught, to Boston.”
#3 An excerpt from former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power’s foreword to the commemorative edition of Elie Wiesel’s Night to be published this month by Hill and Wang. “Arguably no single work did so much to lift the silence that had enveloped survivors, and bring what happened in the ‘Kingdom of Night’ out into the light, for all to see. And yet. Injustice was still rampant. Genocide denial against the Armenians, the horrors of his lifetime — Pol Pot, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Syria in his later years. He lived to see more and more people bear witness to unspeakable atrocities, but he also saw that indifference remained too widespread. Amid all the pain and disappointment of Elie’s remarkable life, how is it that the darkness did not envelop him, or shield him from the sun? How is it that the light in Elie Wiesel’s gaze was every bit as defining as his life’s experiences? ‘What is abnormal,’ Elie once told Oprah Winfrey, ‘is that I am normal. I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life — that is what is abnormal.’ Elie raged against indifference to injustice, to be sure, but he also savored the gifts of life with ferocious zeal. ‘We know that every moment is a moment of grace,’ he once said, ‘every hour is an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them.’ Maybe it was because Elie had such a strong sense of purpose on his journey—to help those who could still be helped. A duty to his neighbor. To the stranger, the stranger that he once was. He called it his 11th commandment: ‘Thou shalt not stand idly by…. You must speak up. You must defend. You must tell the victims,… ‘“You are not alone, somebody cares.’” ….As our nation goes through difficult days, Night is a book that is firmly ingrained in that small canon of literature that kids and young adults read when they are growing up in America. Alongside Atticus Finch and Scout, one of the narrators that will have an early shot at shaping our children’s moral universe is 16-year-old Elie. So, while the void is enormous — above all, for Marion, Elisha, and the rest of the family — and the void is enormous for our world, I too am filled with profound joy knowing that my 7-year-old boy and my 4-year-old girl — like Elie’s grandkids, and their children after them — will wade into big questions for the first time with Elie Wiesel as their guide. That they will be less alone for having Elie with them. That Night will be one of the works that lay the scaffolding for their moral architecture. All because Elie Wiesel was optimistic enough to keep going — and to find the strength to shine his light on us all.”
#4 Professor Abigail Gillman, Associate Professor of German and Hebrew, and last year’s Interim Director of the EWCJS. “What I miss now are the ‘Three Encounters with Elie Wiesel,’ the trio of lectures that I attended at the 92nd Street Y in New York City long before hearing them in Metcalf Hall. What we experienced on those evenings was not studying, but learning: the restless ‘turn it and turn it’ described in the Mishnah. Each lecture wove together scholarship, wisdom, memory. Professor Wiesel managed to present the Torah and the Talmud as Great Books with universal relevance. His words drew us into the Jewish textual universe as to a place he had actually visited, whether through anamnesis, or by the power of his imagination; the insights we left with were psychological, ethical, humanistic. I miss listening to his voice—the musicality, the familiar cadences; the parentheses, humble thank-you’s to his students and to the police officers; the never-ending questions and what ifs; the irrepressible joie de vivre. The good news is that the lectures were recorded. The video recordings can be found on both the 92nd St. Y and the BU Howard Gotlieb Center websites, for anyone to study—and to learn from.”
