Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz Survivor and Witness for Those Who Perished in the Holocaust, Dies at 87

The Wired Word for the Week of July 10, 2016Elie Wiesel, who, after surviving a Nazi death camp in his teens, became a living witness for the six million Jews slain in the Nazi terror during World War II, died last Saturday at 87 at his Manhattan home.

While he was the author of 57 books, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, an activist for oppressed peoples and a humanities professor, he was defined more by the fact that his words and testimony pressed the memory of the Holocaust on the world's conscience. In receiving the Nobel Prize, he was described as "a messenger to mankind."

Writing in The New York Times about Wiesel's passing, Joseph Berger said, Wiesel "was defined not so much by the work he did as by the gaping void he filled. In the aftermath of the Germans' systematic massacre of Jews, no voice had emerged to drive home the enormity of what had happened and how it had changed mankind's conception of itself and of God."

Berger continued, "For almost two decades, the traumatized survivors -- and American Jews, guilt-ridden that they had not done more to rescue their brethren -- seemed frozen in silence."

"But by the sheer force of his personality and his gift for the haunting phrase," Berger said, "Wiesel, who had been liberated from Buchenwald as a 16-year-old with the indelible tattoo A-7713 on his arm, gradually exhumed the Holocaust from the burial ground of the history books."

Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel was born in 1928 into a Jewish family in Sighet, Romania, growing up with his parents and three sisters. All of that was disrupted in the spring of 1944 when the Nazis marched in and sent the city's Jews, including all of the Wiesel family, to death camps. The Wiesels were routed to Auschwitz, where the male and female members were separated.

The point of separation was the last time Wiesel ever saw his mother and one of his sisters, both of whom died in that camp.

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp," Wiesel wrote in his book Night, "which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself. Never."

Eventually Elie and his father were moved to another camp, Buchenwald, where the elder Wiesel died from dysentery, starvation and a beating by a German soldier.

On April 11, 1945, Elie Wiesel, having not eaten in six days, was among those liberated from the camp by the U.S. Third Army. He wondered why he had survived when millions of others had not. He eventually concluded that it must have been so that he could bear witness to what had happened. In his Nobel speech, he said that he had worked to "to keep memory alive" and "to fight against those who would forget." He did that, he said, "Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices."

In his first book, Night, Wiesel recounted the horrors he had experienced, and in subsequent writings, lectures, interviews and other openings, he bore witness to the great crime that was the Holocaust. "He came to personify the Holocaust survivor," Berger wrote.

Wiesel's experience led him to denounce persecution of other suffering populations as well, including targeted ethnic groups in Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda, the Darfur region of Sudan, South Africa and Latin America. He also condemned the burning of black churches in the United States.

In 1986, after receiving the Nobel Prize, he and his wife established the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity to combat intolerance and injustice around the world through dialogue in general, and through programs for youth.

Wiesel was a prime mover in the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and he continued to speak out about threats against Jews. Thus, in  2013, when the United States was in talks with Iran about limiting the latter's nuclear weapons capability, Wiesel urged President Obama to insist on a "total dismantling of Iran's nuclear infrastructure" and its "repudiation of genocidal intent against Israel."

Admitting that the death of one million children in the camps caused him to question God and even wonder about God's existence -- and despite his words in Night quoted above about "moments which murdered my God, Wiesel did not abandon faith. He regularly attended prayer in a nearby synagogue and became more devout as the years passed.

In a 2006 interview, Wiesel was asked what it was like having strangers ask him why he still believed in God. He responded, "You know who asks me the most? It's children. ...There are all the reasons in the world for me to give up on God. I have the same reasons to give up on man, and on culture and on education. And yet … I don't give up on humanity, I don't give up on culture, I don't give up on journalism … I don't give up on it." Likewise, he didn't give up on God.

More on this story can be found at these links:

Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Dies at 87. The New York Times 
Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Renowned Holocaust Survivor, Dies at 87. Haaretz 
Elie Wiesel on His Beliefs. Crown Heights Info 

Applying the News Story

Horrific trauma scarred Elie Wiesel's life early, and it set a for him a life's work as a witness to the massive atrocity that would later be called "ethnic cleansing." In that regard, Wiesel reminds us of some individuals in the Bible, especially the prophets, Paul and, of course, Jesus. But some of us have a special calling as well. This news gives us an opportunity to explore that.

The Big Questions

1. Who do you know personally whose life's work was set by trauma personally experienced?

2. What does it mean that one's very life becomes a witness to some significant reality? How is that different from simply giving a personal testimony? In what ways might the former be a divine calling?

3. How is it possible to maintain faith in God in the face of great tragedy? When have you found your faith in God challenged by personal loss or other tragic events that touched your life? How did you respond?

4. Do you agree that it is important not to let the Holocaust fade into the pages of history? Why or why not?

5. Wiesel has now died, but some structures he helped build, including his foundation and the Holocaust Memorial Museum, as well as his written works, continue his witness. What structures, if any, are you intentionally putting in place to be a witness to the things you believe after you are gone?

Confronting the News With Scripture and HopeHere are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:

Jeremiah 16:1, 5, 8-9
The word of the LORD came to me: You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place. … Do not enter the house of mourning, or go to lament, or bemoan them; for I have taken away my peace from this people, says the LORD, my steadfast love and mercy. … You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink. For ... I am going to banish from this place, in your days and before your eyes, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. (For context, read 16:1-13.)

Jeremiah's ministry was to the people of Judah while that nation was in its final years. Not everyone believed that, but Jeremiah knew it was so, for the Lord had told him. He knew that before his life ended, Babylon would march against Judah and its capital city, Jerusalem. And when they did, they broke down the city walls, killed many of the people, leveled the king's palace, destroyed the temple, and forced many of those left into exile in Babylon.

When Jeremiah first starting warning the people of what was to come, however, things seemed to be going well enough in the land, and he was treated as a laughingstock, something he never let turn him from faithfully proclaiming God's word.

The verses above are from one of Jeremiah's sermons. He tells that God had told him that he must not marry or mourn or feast.

The command not to marry was unusual for prophets. Celibacy was rare among them, and some even used married life to illustrate or reinforce their prophetic messages. (e.g., Hosea 1:2-9; Isaiah 8:3-4; Ezekiel 24:15-27). But celibacy was likely either a sign that Jeremiah's life would be so hard that no wife or family should have to share it, or that Jeremiah was to be entirely focused on God with no distractions from a family. But when you add the prohibitions against mourning and feasting to the already harsh command to remain unmarried, it becomes clear that something more is meant by all of this. In effect, Jeremiah's life itself was to embody the message that normal life, with marrying, burying and rejoicing, was all soon going to be gone.

By not marrying, Jeremiah would taste in advance the isolation and loneliness that would be the fate of the people. By not feasting, he modeled the misery that would be their common lot. By not mourning in the traditional sense, he showed that in the future, while there would be plenty of death, the normal routines of time to bury and grieve would be gone. Without letting the people of Judah even bury their dead, the Babylonians would march them away into captivity.

Jeremiah's very life was a witness to all of this, as were other dramatic actions God called him to take. One such was when God told the prophet to put an actual yoke on his neck (Jeremiah 27)  and walk around publicly with it to dramatize the coming captivity of the people.

Questions: When has some unforeseen circumstance beyond your control infused your life with a new purpose? In what way have you embraced that purpose? In what ways have you tried to avoid embracing it?

Hosea 1:2
When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, "Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD." (For context, read 1:2-9.)
Ruth 1:16-18, 22But Ruth said, "Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die -- there will I be buried. May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!" When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her. ... So Naomi returned together with Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, who came back with her from the country of Moab. (For context, read 1:1-22.)

The Hosea verse refers to another prophet -- Hosea -- whose very life and circumstances became a medium for God's message. God instructed Hosea to marry a prostitute, and that woman, Gomer, proved to be unfaithful to him. That dramatized, in microcosm, how Israel was treating God. Hosea's ongoing story, in which he brought Gomer back home again, also dramatized God's intended redemption of Israel.

Ruth's story is different from Hosea's in that she heard no direction from God, only a call from circumstances. During a time of famine in Israel, the Israelite Elimelech migrated to Moab with his wife Naomi and their two sons. After he died, the sons married Moabite women. After about 10 years, both sons died, leaving Naomi without the protection a male relative normally afforded a woman in that society.

Naomi advised her daughters-in-law to go back to their own people to find new husbands while she returned to her native Israel. One might imagine that she didn't want to become a burden to the young women, and she makes it clear she doesn't believe she has anything of value to offer them that might make it worth their while to stay with her.

"But Ruth clung to her" (v. 14). She chose to radically alter her life and to live in a land strange to her for the sake of her elder relative. In her circumstances, which didn't look good, Ruth found a purpose she hadn't expected for her life. Eventually, in Israel, things turned out quite well for Ruth, but she had no way of knowing that at the time Naomi chose to return.

Questions: When has some voluntarily chosen circumstance infused your life with new purpose? In what way have you embraced that purpose? In what ways have you tried to avoid embracing it?

Psalm 83:1-4
O God, do not keep silence;
 do not hold your peace or be still, O God!
Even now your enemies are in tumult;
 those who hate you have raised their heads.
They lay crafty plans against your people;
 they consult together against those you protect.
They say, "Come, let us wipe them out as a nation;
 let the name of Israel be remembered no more." (For context, read 83:1-8.)

Hatred of Jews -- anti-Semitism -- has been in place for centuries, as this psalm attests.

Questions: Why have Jews been singled out for such sustained persecution over time? What can be done to change anti-Semitic attitudes? How should Christians view the Jewish religion? How does the suffering of the Jews over the centuries square with their biblical presentation as the chosen people?

John 18:37 
Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." (For context, read 18:28-38.)

This is one of the places in the Gospels where Jesus states a purpose to his life: "... for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth."

This is not Jesus' only purpose or even his only statement of purpose but clearly, this is an important one.

While none of us can approach what Jesus has done, his understanding that his life is a witness to truth can be a model for us.

Questions: In what ways is your life a witness? A witness to what?

For Further Discussion

1. Respond to this: In his first book, Night, Wiesel told how in the death camp where he was, a child was hanged for everyone to see, slowly suffocating, too light to break his own neck. Wiesel wrote, "Behind me, I heard [a] man asking: 'Where is God now?' And I heard a voice within me answer him: '... Here He is -- He is hanging here on this gallows.'"

2. Discuss this: In her book A History of God, Karen Armstrong, using Wiesel as her source, writes, "Yet it is ... true that even in Auschwitz some Jews continued to study the Talmud and observe the traditional festivals, not because they hoped that God would rescue them but because it made sense." Armstrong also tells this story, again from Wiesel: "There is a story that one day in Auschwitz, a group of Jews put God on trial. They charged him with cruelty and betrayal. Like Job they found no consolation in the usual answers to the problem of evil and suffering in the midst of this current obscenity. They could find no excuse for God, no extenuating circumstances, so they found him guilty and, presumably, worthy of death. The Rabbi pronounced the verdict. Then he looked up and said that the trial was over: It was time for the evening prayer."

3. Comment on this, from TWW team member Mary Sells: "Even having visited Auschwitz, I cannot fathom how one goes forward having lived and witnessed such cruel hatred and prejudice and injustice. Yet, Mr. Wiesel made it his life's mission to share his story, his truth, as boldly as possible to any and all who could learn and mend their ways. In a recent TWW lesson, we discussed that some who are not Christian might be following Jesus anyway by their ways and words. Such could be said of Mr. Wiesel."

4. Respond to this, from TWW team member Frank Ramirez: "I was having a conversation with my daughter-in-law, who teaches high-school literature. We were discussing Night by Elie Wiesel, which is part of the curriculum along with, of course, The Diary of Anne Frank. Part of our conversation was that the Holocaust has to come alive for each generation. The first portal is these books. But perhaps, we thought, there has to be a movie about the Holocaust every 10 or 15 years or so from which we cannot turn away and which we cannot bear to watch."

5. Discuss this, from TWW team member David Lee: "As for Elie Wiesel, did you do the math? At the end of the war, he was 17. Compare him to what kids are like 70 years later, with this thought: Seventy years from now, will someone write about these days with the pathos of Wiesel?"

Responding to the News

This is a good time to consider whether circumstances have presented you with a God-given purpose, and in what way you should embrace it.

Prayer

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, who provides, in so many personal ways, the means to remember and to act. We thank you for those voices which fast become silent, but who leave us their words in writing, far greater than any words ever written upon stones. May we carry these reminders, giving you that thanks, and may we act in response to them always. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.