His face mirrored a lifetime during which he saw the depths of hell while he aspired to the blessings of heaven.
Elie Wiesel had about him an all-encompassing sadness that reflected the horrors that man can inflict on others and how in the process, so many will deny and pretend that it didn’t happen, that it couldn’t happen and even if it did, it wouldn’t happen again.
But the fact is that it did, is, and will is something he spent his life trying to get people worldwide to recognize and work to prevent.
I fear it may have been a losing battle.
Given the violence against white police going on in Texas and Louisiana and Oakland, Phoenix and Atlanta, and other places as I write this, it would appear that for all of Wiesel’s efforts, mankind is still filled with hate and cruel bigotry.
Elie Wiesel died last week. If you’re of a younger generation, you might not know who he was.
If you’re of a certain age, you no doubt know of him and perhaps have mixed opinions about what became his life’s work.
Wiesel was 87 years old when he died. He was a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, a man who lived through and personally endured the horrors of the Holocaust, after which he became a prolific writer, speaker and widely honored political activist.
Born in Romania, Wiesel was thrust into the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz when he was 15, along with his parents and three sisters.
While there, he saw his father beaten to death by a Nazi soldier. His mother and sisters had been taken away, and he didn’t learn until the end of the war that his mother and one sister were murdered in the gas chambers.
Wiesel was reunited with his two older sisters at a French orphanage after the war when he was liberated from the Buchenwald camp.
The memories of what he experienced and saw during his confinement in the death camps seared his memory. It took a while, but he finally wrote about it. His account of his experiences was published in his first book, “Night.” Written in Yiddish, it was first published in France and later in English and languages worldwide.
It was not an instant bestseller, no doubt because the facts, as well as what we learned about Nazi atrocities after the war, were so horrendous that many people didn’t want to believe.
But there was another factor – because Wiesel was (to the end of his days) an ardent supporter of Israel – he faced strong anti-Semitic attitudes in the U.S. and worldwide.
Given what we see today in world politics, that attitude hasn’t diminished but, in fact, is growing.
Elie Wiesel was regarded by many as an opportunist, who made “a career” of his experiences. It was as though his memories of what he endured weren’t valid because he was a Jew.
Shockingly, but not surprisingly, this attitude continues today.
As news of his death was reported, Max Blumenthal, an ardent Jew hater, accused Wiesel of “inciting hatred, defending apartheid and palling around with fascists.”
It’s important to note that Max is the son of Sidney Blumenthal, a long-time and current Hillary and Bill Clinton adviser.
Needless to say, the Clinton campaign quickly separated itself from Blumenthal’s comments, but it still works with Sidney.
But Max’s words lured another Democrat out from under a rock to slash at Wiesel. Dorothy Reik, as reported in WND, referred to Wiesel as a “Holocaust whore” who made his living from those experiences more than anyone else.
She defended what she said because she “thinks it’s the truth”!
Reik, described as an “anti-war activist,” is president of the Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains and is a member of the L.A. County Democratic Central Committee.
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I grew up in an area of New Jersey densely populated by Jewish people, and after World War II there was an influx of refugees, many who had been in the Nazi camps.
Many times, I saw the camp numbers tattooed on their arms and heard them recount their experiences of horror. They were not “pretty” stories for a little girl to hear, but the memories have stayed with me over the years.
So while I never had the opportunity to hear Elie Wiesel speak in person, I was, and am, aware of his battles over the years to get his message to free people.
He was and should continue to be the voice of conscience. He was speaking to everyone to value human life and to speak out and act to protect people threatened by genocide and injustice.
The Nazis were bad, but they weren’t alone.
Look at the horrors the Japanese inflicted on their prisoners during World War II. Look at the mass killings in China, Cambodia, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, North Korea, Rwanda, Darfur and, yes, today as ISIS sweeps across the globe leaving in its wake slave children and piles of dead bodies and severed heads.
Elie Wiesel was warning us against such atrocities and all the while, threats against Israel continued – threats to destroy it and the United States, under Barack Obama, seemingly siding with Israel’s enemies.
Rest in peace, Elie Wiesel, and thank you.
We need to remember the words of George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
We’re in for tough times.
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