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Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Holocaust Survivor, Dies at 87
- relk4 10y agoA sad day. Although much of what he wrote was controversial, he remains my favorite author I was assigned to read in three separate occasions in high school.
- EazyC 10y agoWhat was the controversy about?
- littletimmy 10y agoSome allege that parts of Night are too implausible and historically inaccurate. But then again, I think he wrote it as a novel rather than a historical document.
- know-fear 10y agoI know parts are very historically accurate. My father and uncle were there and are mentioned in the book.
- Zafira 10y agoI think for a lot of people, it's simply impossible to believe that people could be that cruel. Most of us have not seen and blissfuly have not lived through the horrors of World War II. I feel like this element, more than anything else, drives a lot of the nonsense views that the Holocaust or the wanton slaughter of people the Japanese deemed inferior is a made-up number or that it "wasn't that bad" and so on. I remember when the Holocaust was being discussed in school and having to read books like Night in school and I was actually fascinated by this; the depths of good and evil that people can do are simply unfathomable. A British journalist wrote about the aftermath of the Battle of Shanghai when he visited what was once a densely packed suburb, "I saw only 5 Chinese, who were old men, hiding in a French mission compound in tears."[1] [1]https://books.google.com/books?id=zNN6M97vYMEC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70#v=onepage https://books.google.com/books?id=zNN6M97vYMEC&pg=PA70&lpg=P...
- Zafira 10y agoI think Wiesel has done much good and his writing and very public campaigns to insure that the horrors of the Holocaust are never forgotten are what he shall be remember for. Still, he is a man and a man is nothing, if fallible. In his memoirs, "All Rivers Run to the Sea", he exhibits a certain hostility when his writings are questioned; he quotes from his essay "A Plea for the Survivors": "You who have not experienced their anguish, who do not speak their language and do not mourn their dead, think before you offend them, before you betray them.… Wait until the last survivor, the last witness, has joined the long procession of silent shadows whose judgment one day will resound and shake the earth and its Creator."
- Wonnk13 10y agoWow. I was fortunate to be doing my undergrad in Boston at a time when you could hear talks by Weisel, Zinn and Chomsky. I didn't always agree with him but he was an intellectual treasure.
- bsaul 10y agocurious to read comments about controversial statements from eli wiesel... what coule those have been ??
- benjohnson 10y agoThe one that stands out (for me) is Eli's question after God let the Jews die in the Holocaust - "What is man? Ally of God or simply his toy?''" Eli's question is a continuation of the theological "Problem of Evil": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil As a person of faith, Eli's question is still haunting in it's note of despair.
- themartorana 10y agoI've always been amazed people can still have faith after things like the holocaust. I'm agnostic myself, something I'm sure you didn't need me to say... But I don't know if there is a god or gods or afterlife at all - but if there is, I'm pretty sure they don't intervene in our daily lives. Believing he/she/they do is accepting a policy of extreme incompetence, or admitting that our well being isn't always at the forefront. At least admitting that God does give us free will and does provide an afterlife, but doesn't step in when shit gets ugly in this life (and I mean levels of horrors you would have trouble believing actually exist) allows faith to continue with some acceptance of logic. But the idea that everything bad is of man, and everything good is of God is a pretty untenable position, it seems to me. But of course, I am not a man of faith, and my life is pretty good. So these aren't surprising positions I'm sure.
- benjohnson 10y agoMy faith tradition would heartily agree that the situation is entirely untenable - only that we would turn our suffering over to God as a way of sharing in His suffering for us. My rational side finds such a ideas entirely disturbing! From a Christian viewpoint - God indeed isn't always interested in our (momentary) well being - only that we are saved in everlasting life. Our more mystical faithfull would remind us that we each experience this world in the palm of God's hand - in that God could create a separate experience for each of us and that (perhaps) the suffering we witness isn't experienced in the way that we see.
- nanna 10y agoWithout disrespecting his memory, we should not forget that Wiesel lent serious support to the occupation and, what is effectively, the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem. Haaretz touches on this: "In April 2010, he took out advertisements in four major newspapers, criticizing the Obama administration for pressuring the Netanyahu government to halt construction in Jewish neighborhoods located across the Green Line in East Jerusalem." For me, as an Israeli Jew, I find him too compromised by nationalism to bother with. I'd much rather read Primo Levi or Paul Celan. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel#Opinions_about_Jerusalem_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel#Opinions_about_Jer...
- bobdo 10y agoIf Israel is ethnically cleansing Jerusalem they are doing a pretty poor job considering that the Muslim population has gone from 54,963 in 1967 to 281,000 in 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerusalem#After_Jerusalem_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerusal...
- Cyph0n 10y agoOh, so ethnic cleansing, genocide, widespread discrimination, and expulsion must involve the population going down! See http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext-printerfriendly.htm http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext-printer...
- golergka 10y agoWow. Building homes is one hell of an ethnic cleansing operation.
- labster 10y agoYou laugh, but the Bay Area is like one level of NIMBYism away from Palestine.
- Cyph0n 10y agoBuilding homes on illegal lands, forced expulsion and demolition of Palestinian homes, carpet bombing of a prison city, discrimination against Palestinian Arabs at all levels of society - I think that's quite close to the definition of state-sponsored terrorism, and in some cases, genocide.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoBaruch dayan emet. When I was a young boy I had the good fortune to meet Mr. Wiesel and chat with him for a while about his book 'Night', an life in general. He was one of the warmest, most intelligent and interesting people I've ever met.
- edw519 10y ago"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” - Elie Wiesel R.I.P.
- metaos 10y agowhy is this on hacker news?