accident

Adolf Hitler

book

coincidence

dream

editing

experience

forgetting

friendship

gratitude

guilt

historical truth

Holocaust

holy war

hope

hunger

identity

immortality

indifference

interpretation

Jerusalem

Jewish history

Judaism

knowledge

laughter

learning

life

madness

meaning

memory

mysticism

night

nuclear war

pain

Paris

peace

question

remembering

self-discipline

shadow

silence

story

suffering

survivor

task

television

truth

violence

witnessing

word

writing

nationality

American

Romanian

religion

prizes and famous lectures

Nobel Prize

occupation / innovator as

political activist

professor

odds and ends

Holocaust survivor

university teacher

Israeli

Judaic scholar

novelist

journalist

autobiographer

translator

trade unionist

scientific organization

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

philosopher

American Academy of Arts and Letters

is non-existent. There are only encounters with destiny.

There are no accidents, only encounters with destiny! Elie Wiesel

is like a person in that each has a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.

I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both. Elie Wiesel

In Jewish history there are no coincidences. Elie Wiesel

is reflective of the past, hope summons the future.

Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future. Elie Wiesel

is a spector in every book. In a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.

There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them. (Elie Wiesel)

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it. Elie Wiesel

is akin to killing the dead a second time.

To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time. Elie Wiesel

 marks a life even more deeply than love, which risks degenerating into obsession, which friendship is never anything but sharing.

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing. Elie Wiesel

is what defines the happiness and humanity of the human being.

Gratitude is a word that I cherish. Gratitude is what defines the happiness and humanity of the human being. Elie Wiesel

is not to be extended beyond the guilty themselves. The children of the guilty are not guilty

Only the guilty are guilty. Their children are not. Elie Wiesel

is relative. Some stories are true that never happened.

Some stories are true that never happened. Elie Wiesel

is a mystery, evoking only 'silence' as a truly appropriate response. As such it cannot be turned into a narrative, or represented in a museum.

Wiesel's understanding of the holocaust as 'mystery', evoking only 'silence' as a truly appropriate response, is evidenced throughout his literary output.

is a non-communicable 'mystery' religion that 'leads into darkness,' 'negates all answers,' 'lies outside, if not beyond, history,' 'defies both knowledge and description,' 'cannot be explained nor visualized,' is 'never to be comprehended or transmitted' whose truth lies in silence.

For Wiesel, Novick rightly observes, The Holocaust is effectively a 'mystery' religion. Thus Wiesel intones that the Holocaust 'leads into darkness,' 'negates all answers,' 'lies outside, if not beyond, history,' 'defies both knowledge and description,' 'cannot be explained nor visualized,' is 'never to be comprehended or transmitted,' marks a 'destruction of history' and a 'mutation on a cosmic scale.' Only the survivor-priest (read: only Wiesel) is qualified to divine its mystery. And yet, The Holocaust's mystery, Wiesel avows, is 'noncommunicable'... 'we cannot even talk about it.' Thus, for his standard fee of $25,000 (plus chauffeured limousine), Wiesel lectures that the 'secret' of Auschwitz's 'truth lies in silence.'

is an event that brought the jewish people into the mainstream of 'general history' but it also fundamentally altered the course of that history. In other words, the holocaust was experienced within history, yet its import reaches into the metahistorical into the realm of meaning in history.

for Wiesel, the holocaust enveloped the Jewish people into the mainstream of 'general history' but it also fundamentally altered the course of that history. In other words, the Holocaust was experienced within history, yet its import reaches into the metahistorical into the realm of meaning in history demanding that we examine not simply 'what happened and why' but what meaning this history might hold for our present and future.

is an experience of God... as such the event no longer yields to categories of history, of time and place, but transcends those categories precisely on the level of meaning and interpretation.

For Weisel, the Holocaust is an experience of God... as such the event no longer yields to categories of history, of time and place, but transcends those categories precisely on the level of meaning and interpretation. Yet, if it is an experience of God, a transcendental experience, as Wiesel says it is for him, then even a hermeneutical approach to interpretation seems inadequate in talking about the experience, how do you represent the unrepresentable'

is like sinai, the beginning of a new, universal revelation which transcended place and time. The holocaust, like sanai would galvanize the 'uniqueness of jewish suffering' as a conduit to a new revelation. A 'negative epiphany'.

just as the Sinaitic covenant would be incumbent on 'those who are standing here with us this day before the lord our god and with those who are not with us here this day' (Deuteronomy 29:13), so too does Wiesel characterized the Holocaust as the begining of a new, universal revelation. A revelation that, like Sinai, transcended place (distant nations and persons) and time (those who were born afterward). Just as Sinai would galvanize the Jewish people as a 'chosen' nation and a light unto the nations so too does the Holocaust, in Wiesel's formulation, galvanize the 'uniqueness of Jewish suffering' as a conduit to a new revelation a 'prototypically modern revelation', a 'negative epiphany'

is pace hannah arendt, not something we are all actually capable of this, there are certain things human beings are not capable of.

Still I believe that Hanna Arendt, she was wrong when she tried to say that we are all actually capable of this, it's not true. I think it's not true. There are certain things human beings are not capable of. I mean people, even normal human beings. You have to do certain things in order to become what the enemy was and I didn't accept her philosophical outlook on that. Elie Wiesel

is a historically unprecedented event that should be equal to the revelation at Sinai in significance -- and yet, mankind learned nothing from it.

Worse still is that mankind the non-Jewish world learned nothing from the Holocaust: The event which had no precedent in history, which should be equal to the Revelation at Sinai in significance. Elie Wiesel

is an event in which not all the victims were Jews, but all the Jews were victims.

It is true that not all the victims were Jews, but all the Jews were victims Elie Wiesel

Elie WieselThinkers

Elie Wiesel