Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel
Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBEwas a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. He was the author of 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth30 September 1928
CountryUnited States of America
past government criminals
It has become increasingly clear that Hungarian authorities are encouraging the whitewashing of tragic and criminal episodes in Hungary's past, namely the wartime Hungarian governments' involvement in the deportation and murder of hundreds of thousands of its Jewish citizens. I found it outrageous that the Speaker of the Hungarian National Assembly could participate in a ceremony honoring a Hungarian fascist ideologue
tasks turbulent-times jew
The primary task of a Jew in turbulent times is to be Jewish.
pain betrayal people
I don't speak about my pain. My pain is something that doesn't need to be purged. I want to prevent people from suffering. I don't speak about my suffering. Suffering is something personal and discreet. Also, I know it will never leave me. I don't want it to leave me. It would be a betrayal.
understood
My God was never happiness, but to understand and be understood.
secret immortality stills
We still are looking for someone who knows the secret of immortality. Only God is immortal; we are not.
children believe guilt
I don't believe in collective guilt. The children of killers are not killers, but children.
teacher children teaching
My ambition really was, even as a child, to be a writer, a commentator, and a teacher, but a teacher of Talmud.
hands accomplices can-do
Simply because, one hand, there are the haters, The hater has power. All we can do is oppose it, or one becomes an accomplice.
music giving tone
Music does not replace words, it gives tone to the words
enemy promise threat
I learned to trust the threats of enemies before the promises of friends.
helping-others survival helping
Because I survived, I must do everything possible to help others.
past curiosity return
The criminal is not alone when he returns to the scene of the crime; he is joined there by his victim, and both are driven by the same curiosity: to relive that moment which stamped past and future for each.
wall civilization magic
What is being lost is the magic of the word. I am not an image person. Imagery belongs to another civilization: the caveman. Caveman couldn't express himself so he put images on walls.
men soul depth
Man asks and God replies but we don't understand his replies because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die.