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Elie

his life as an inspiration

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Wiesel

The book "Night" by Elie Wiesel has become essential reading for all young people studying history, particularly the history of the Holocaust. The book is an incredibly reflective portrayal of what happened in Auschwitz. However, what is immensely important in the context of Elie Wiesel is not just how he survived the wartime experiences, although that is certainly crucial, but how his life shaped up after the war.

The narrative about Elie Wiesel is a story of the choices made by a young man in 1945. How his life unfolded was a result of his choices and the people he encountered along the way. It's a journey that led Elie Wiesel to become a defender of memory on one side and of all oppressed people on the other. This journey, the experience of the Holocaust, led him to develop a unique philosophy of remembrance, which provided the basis for the entire process of commemorating the Holocaust that emerged in the late 1980s.

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Life of Elie Wiesel:

Session's name

Elie Wiesel - his life as

an inspiration

Duration

- 60 / 90 min. (q&a included)

Author:

- Dr. Jerzy Wójcik

Technical requirements

Our sessions and lectures are run on 3DVISTA and PREZI applications. Auschwitz Virtual Tour is run by 3dVista application and it can be easily open on your browser that is fully and remotly controlled by the educator. It doesn't require any high level computer equipment, howevet we would like to follow the technical instructions below:

  • Please use a computer to watch the session. A tablet and phone may be incompatible with our system.

  • Try to lighten the load on your computer by closing all unnecessary programs and tabs in your browser.

  • It's best to use the Chrome browser for this session. You can change the browser during the session using the same link.

  • The optimal mode for experiencing this session is full-screen mode (Windows: F11 / Apple: green button and enter full-screen mode).

  • Ensure that your browser is up to date. the lack of updates may cause certain graphical aspects not to be displayed properly.

  • Make sure you have a fast internet connection; otherwise, you may experience interruptions in streaming or a lower quality display.

It is possible and even recommended to try to connect with us before the sessions and conduct a 5-minutes practice in terms of connecting and managing the system. We always propose to meet before the saession (the same day or some days before) to test the session. After scheduling the session You will receive a visual instruction how to join the session using Chrome browser.

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Nobel Prize

Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for speaking out against violence, repression, and racism.

You can read Wiesel's speech from Oslo at the bottom of the page.

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"Night"

Wiesel moved to Paris and in 1954 completed an 862-page manuscript in Yiddish about his experiences, published in Argentina as the 245-page Un di velt hot geshvign ("And the World Remained Silent").

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Francoise Mauirac

Elie Wiesel's meeting with Francois Mauriac was a key moment in the young Wiesel's life. Both men, despite a significant generational difference, remained in close relations until the death of the French philosopher in 1970

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Paris

Young Elie Wiesel emigrated to France after the war, where he received his education. The French language remained his primary language for writing even after he moved to America.

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1958 - "Night"

The first version of the book was published as 862-page manuscript in Yiddish about his experiences, published in Argentina as the 245-page Un di velt hot geshvign ("And the World Remained Silent").

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Sighet

Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, a small town in Romania. The house today was transformed into the Museum dedicated to the history of Elie Wiesel.

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House of Elie Wiesel in Sighet, Romania.

Paris became Elie Wiesel's home after the war.

And it was Paris where Elie Wiesel met in 1954

Francoise Mauriac - a nobel prize philosopher

who inspired Wiesel to publish "Night"

Life of Elie Wiesel:

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What is extremely inspiring about Elie Wiesel's life is his unique creation of a memory ideology. The maturation of a young, lost individual into making key life choices. Equally incredible is how significant his meetings with Francoise Mauriac, a French philosopher, were, with whom he remained in close relations until the end of his life.

When Elie Wiesel decided to publish his war memoirs, he searched for a publisher for a year, and even after publication, it did not gain much popularity - the world was not ready for the Holocaust story. It only happened after the Eichmann trial. Elie Wiesel's story is the story of an ordinary person who step by step reached an unprecedented position of being a bastion and pillar of morality, undoubtedly changing and shaping the memory of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel's journey serves as an example for the younger generation of how incredibly important it is to strive for truth, shape one's own beliefs, and aspire to forge one's own path through life.

Quotes of Elie Wiesel:

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"For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. Not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are responsible for what we do with those memories"

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"Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered.Memory is the keyword which combines past with present, past and future"

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"For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time"

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“Those of us who were never hungry will never understand hunger,” said Elie. “Hunger brings humiliation. The hungry person thinks of bread and nothing else. Hunger fills his or her universe. His prayer, his aspiration, his hope, his ideal are not lofty: They are a piece of bread. To accept another person’s hunger is to condone his or her tragic condition of helplessness, despair, and death”

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Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant

Nobel prize - 1984

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Elie Wiesel receives a peace Nobel Prize in 1986

Elie Wiesel's extract

"It is with a profound sense of humility that I accept the honor you have chosen to bestow upon me. I know: your choice transcends me. This both frightens and pleases me. It frightens me because I wonder: do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? … I do not. That would be presumptuous. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.".

Read the whole speech >>>

Those who are engaged

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