For many years after the Second World War, Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel couldn’t bring himself to speak or write about the horrors he endured during the Holocaust.
Then, while working as a young journalist in Paris, in 1954, he broke his silence when interviewing the revered French resistance fighter – François Mauriac – the latter of whom, so impassioned he was by Elie’s untold tale of loss and survival, implored him to “go forth, speak out”, and tell his story to the world.
(The man who implored Elie to “go forth, speak out”, and tell his story to the world – the revered French resistance fighter and Nobel Prize-winning novelist François Mauriac. Born into a devout Catholic family in Bordeaux, in 1885, François lost his father when he was just 18 months old, leaving him one of five children to be raised by his struggling yet devoted mother. Upon graduating from the École Nationale des Chartes in Paris, he put his bachelor's and post-graduate degrees in Literature to good use by becoming a writer, authoring a collection of poems and essays, which, after they caught the attention of the Académie Française – the French Academy for matters pertaining to the French language – he was chosen to serve as an official member. When Germany invaded and conquered his country in the summer of 1940, he was the only one among his colleagues at the Académie who went on to publish powerful texts of resistance against both the German-occupation authorities, and Marshall Philippe Petain’s collaborationist Vichy regime. Awarded the “Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur” in 1958 by then-French President – General Charles de Gaulle – François passed away a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1970, aged 84.)
Elie’s life story began in the Romanian shtetl of Sighet, where, on September 30th, 1928, he was born into an Orthodox Jewish family, devoted to the sacred teachings of the Torah and the Talmud.
As a descendant of prominent Hasidic Rabbis, he was raised to follow in the footsteps of his forefathers, only then for his rabbinical future to be shattered when German forces invaded in the spring of 1944.
(A pre-Second World War illustration of Sighet, Romania. Once home to more than 13,000 Jews, today, fewer than 20 remain.)
Shortly thereafter, he, his beloved parents, and three sisters were ordered to assemble with thousands of others at a nearby train station, from where, they were crammed into cattle cars, and transported to a place completely unbeknownst to them…
Upon their arrival at Auschwitz, they were met by SS guards, Ukrainian "Trawnikimänner", and, as Elie later recalled, "one impeccably dressed monocled man", who, "with an imperious wave of his riding crop, decided who was to live, and who was to die..."
(The “impeccably dressed monocled man” – SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Mengele. Further to obtaining doctorates in medicine and anthropology, Mengele joined Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party, after which, he enlisted with the German Wehrmacht’s elite “Gebirgsjäger” mountain infantry. Deployed to France during the invasion of 1940, he then volunteered for the Waffen-SS, whose soldiers he fought alongside as a battalion medical officer in the Soviet Union. Seriously wounded in the spring of 1942, he applied for and was given a position at Auschwitz in 1943. There, he garnered his sadistic reputation as the “Angel of Death”, not only for his role in coordinating selections for the gas chambers, but also, for the horrific medical experiments he conducted on human beings. At the war’s end, he fled to South America, where he evaded justice until 1979, when, while swimming off the coast of Bertioga in Brazil, divine judgment in the form of a lethal stroke finally caught up with him. According to his estranged son – Rolf – his father died “a wholly unrepentant Nazi…” Indeed, by all accounts, he remained “fully committed to his belief that the annihilation of the Jews is a provision for the recovery of the world and Germany.”)
It was at that moment; Elie saw his mother and youngest sibling – Tzipora – for the final time.
Whereas they were marched to their deaths in the gas chambers, both he and his father were chosen to be worked to death in the notorious "Buna-Werke" sub-camp.
(The sprawling industrial mass of the “Buna-Werke” subcamp where Elie and his father were sent to be worked to death as slave labor. In addition to the countless numbers of Jews held there, hundreds of British and Commonwealth POWs were also incarcerated – albeit, within another subcamp administered by the German Wehrmacht. According to one of the British inmates who survived his ordeal in Buna’s “Stalag E715” camp for British soldiers – Denis Avey – he said that while their “conditions were dreadful, they were nothing compared to what the Jews next door went through…” “I am telling you”, he said, later on in his life, “I know without exaggeration, nearly 200,000 Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz were worked to death…” “They lived no more than 4 months”, he added, and “were clubbed and beaten every day without any justification whatsoever.” Avey himself gained post-War recognition for the incredible risk he took to rescue a Jewish prisoner – Ernst Lobethal – whom he saved by smuggling him cigarettes, which, as a “life-saving currency”, enabled Ernst to bribe his SS guards; acquire a good pair of shoes; and escape the “death march” he was forced into shortly before Buna was liberated by the Russian Red Army in late January 1945.)
There, they withstood months of tortuous slave labor, before then being transferred to Buchenwald, where Elie’s father – suffering from disease and exhaustion – was taken away from him in the dead of night, and murdered, mere weeks before the camp was liberated.
(A hauntingly iconic photograph taken by an American soldier following the US liberation of Buchenwald Concentration Camp on April 15th, 1945. Elie can be seen seventh from left on the middle bunk, next to the vertical post.)
At the war’s end, he was placed in the care of the French-Jewish humanitarian organization – “Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants” – whose selfless aid workers reunited him with his surviving sisters – Beatrice and Hilda – and looked after them as if they were their own.
(Young survivors of Buchenwald Concentration Camp in the care of the French-Jewish humanitarian organization – “Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (Children’s Aid Society – OSE) – at the OSE’s home in Ambloy, France, where Elie lived at the War's end. Cared for by the home’s director – Judith Hemmendinger – the latter was Jewish herself, born to German parents in Frankfurt, in 1923. At five years of age, her father moved her, her mother, and four siblings to France, where, after the French capitulation in the summer of 1940, they traveled to the so-called “Free Zone” under the leadership of Marshall Philippe Petain. There, her father was later arrested, and, tragically, deported to his death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Following a failed escape attempt to Switzerland, she and her surviving family members were interned in a refugee camp in Geneva, from where, she was able to join the OSE as a social worker. Bestowed the “Ordre national de la Légion d'Honneur” in 2003 for her selfless work helping to rehabilitate child survivors of the Holocaust, she explained her success with “the boys of Buchenwald” by saying: “I loved them, I never judged them, I became attached to them, and I felt that it was reciprocal.”)
In the decades that followed, Elie became one of the greatest moral voices of his generation – speaking, writing, and battling not just to keep the blessed memory of more than 6 million martyred Jews alive, but also, in his stated endeavor “to prevent a repeat” of such horrific genocide.
(Elie stood with his beloved wife, Marion, and their cherished son, Elisha, while being presented with his richly deserved Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. In addition to his Nobel Prize, Elie received many other awards and honors for his life’s work, including the “Ordre national de la Légion d'Honneur”; the Congressional Gold Medal; the Presidential Medal of Freedom; and an honorary Knighthood from Her Majesty the late Queen Elizabeth II.)
When he passed away aged 87 on this day in 2016, the world lost what his close friend and then President of Israel – Reuven Rivlin – called:
“A hero to the Jewish people – a Nobel Prize-winning laureate, who made ‘never again’ his life’s mission.”
“In order to protect the causes Ellie fought for,” Rivlin continued, “it is incumbent upon us to carry his mission forward.”
“And if we truly want to fulfill it,” he concluded, “then we must do everything we can, to ensure his legacy forever lives on among us.”
(Elie photographed in prayer shortly before his passing on this day in 2016. When asked if the horrors he endured during the Holocaust had caused him to lose faith in his Jewish faith, he replied by saying: “No. I have not lost faith in God…” “Yes, I have moments of anger and protest”, he continued, “but, sometimes I’ve been closer to Him for that reason.” “So yes, I have faith”, he concluded. “Faith in God and even in His creation. Without it, no action would be possible. And action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious danger of all.”)
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