‘Freudian Slip’ identifies Elie Wiesel as a “Holocaust Winner”

Written on December 24, 2010 at 9:32 am, by Carolyn

Fox & Friends lets slip what we all know—Wiesel has made a hugely lucrative career out of being a Holocaust survivor. He ‘s a Big Winner in this quite competitive arena, where there are also, in fact, many losers.

Elie Wiesel is making the rounds to promote his new book, so he showed up on Fox & Friends last week. As he was speaking, at 0:57, the words “Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Winner” appear at the bottom of the screen, and at 1:02 it is changed to “Nobel Peace Prize Winner.  So it took only a few seconds for the no-doubt-panicked technicians to change it. They might have been out of a job! Dealing with Elie Wiesel is serious business in the media.

You can see the entire interview here in this story from Dec. 22, 2010 at Mediaite.com.

Note that the interviewer says that Elie wants us to spend the Christmas season thinking about “those who are imprisoned right now, who were fighting for justice.” The first one who is mentioned by Wiesel, showing film of him along with lots of anguished words, is Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who has been held as a POW by Hamas since 2006. Of all the human rights violations being perpetrated in the world today, the fate of Shalit is definitely not the one we should be most concerned with. In fact, the worst human rights abuses are carried out by the Israelis, including by their army which they call “Defense Forces,” of which Shalit was a part. Yet, the only “abusers” Wiesel mentioned were the Palestinian Hamas, the Chinese and the Iranians! Is anyone surprised? After that, he talks about his new book which is another one built around the “guilt” of the Germans of the 1940’s generation. No surprise here – just more of the same from this “winner.”  ~cy

More Reasons Why I Don’t Believe

Written on December 5, 2010 at 10:06 am, by Carolyn

By Carolyn Yeager

More reasons why I don’t believe Elie Wiesel is the author of Un di Velt Hot Gesvign

A dear reader has brought to my attention something that I covered in “The Shadowy Origins of Night, I, II and III”, but which deserves revisiting in order to shine a brighter light on some perhaps small, but meaningful, details that impact on the question of whether Elie Wiesel is the author of the Yiddish-language Un di Velt Hot Gesvign (And the World Remained Silent).

If we start with the map provided in “Shadowy Origins of Night, Part II,” we notice that Sighet is not in Transylvania, but in Maramures [sometimes called Marmaros], a district distinct from Transylvania. We see that Sighet is the only city shown in the eastern half of Maramures and is exactly on the border with Czechoslovakia.

 

The writer of Un di Velt describes his hometown of Sighet on the first page of the book as

the most important city [shtot] and the one with the largest Jewish population in the province of Marmarosh. Until the First World War, Sighet belonged to Austro-Hungary. Then it became part of Romania. In 1940, Hungary acquired it again.” 1

It is totally reasonable for a man born in 1913, as was Lazar Wiesel, to write such a description since, at the time of his birth, Sighet was indeed part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After WWI [1919] it became part of Romania when the borders of Central and Eastern Europe were “rearranged” by the victorious powers [France, Britain, United States]. Then, in 1940, at his age of 27, it again changed rulers and borders, and became German-allied Hungary.

Lazar Wiesel lived through all these changes. He was old enough to understand them. As a man in his thirties at the end of the war, and his early forties when the book was published in 1955, Lazar Wiesel could be expected to write a comprehensive account of his experience—not only a good deal of historical/political material on his hometown and its townspeople, but covering his personal political/religious beliefs also. And this is indeed what we know is contained in the published book, Un di Velt. 2 Taking eight to nine years to complete the entire 862 pages of it, if that’s what it was, is quite reasonable, and even to be expected.

This makes a great deal more sense than Elie Wiesel’s incredible description of frantically typing 862 pages of “memory” during an ocean voyage to Brazil, without pre-planning, reference materials or access to other persons.

Returning to the location of Sighet, Wiesel, in the French and English versions La Nuit and Night, changed, on the first page, what had been described as the “most important city with the largest Jewish population in the Maramures province” to:

that little town in Transylvania where I spent my childhood.

Nothing more. Why does Elie Wiesel say that Sighet was in Transylvania? Could it be because the average person might recognize that name in association with Hungary and/or Romania, while they would not recognize Maramures or Marmarosh? And why would the author’s hometown go from the largest city in the entire province to a little town, presumably of no significance?

While it is true that more recently Maramureş, Romanian Crişana and the Romanian Banat are sometimes considered part of Transylvania,  it is not precisely so. An inhabitant who identified with his region would probably not put it that way, but someone for whom the geography held no special place in his mind, heart or memory, this kind of generalization might be preferred. For example, if I don’t want a person[s] to know much about me or ask me questions, I will say I was born in the American mid-west and hope to leave it at that. If I don’t mind more being known, I’ll say exactly where, and give some detail. I know, because I do both and it’s very clear to me why.

Whatever the reasons Elie Wiesel had to cloud the picture of his hometown, it is clear that he and his publisher wanted to emphasize some things, de-emphasize, or delete, others, and shorten, shorten, shorten. This fictionalizes the account.

For me, the crux of whether to accept Elie Wiesel as the author of Un di Velt comes down to that odd paragraph in his 1995 memoir3 describing the burst of unbelievable energy that came over him while on a ship traveling between France and Brazil, when he typed 862 pages of 9 year-old memories on a portable Yiddish typewriter within no more than a two week time period.. Think back nine years in your own life and discover just how clearly you can remember everything that took place. Yes, his was an exceptionally traumatic time, but that doesn’t necessarily make one’s memories any clearer, just that certain parts stand out from the rest. Also, for me as a writer, just that high amount of sustained, concentrated typing would be an impossible task.

Another difficulty is that Wiesel didn’t describe the writing of his original manuscript until it appeared in his memoir, where, as I continue to remind, he gave it only one short paragraph! Or, if you will, a few sentences. I said above that it is a lot to swallow. I want to make it plain right now that I cannot, and thus do not, swallow it. I am convinced Elie Wiesel did not write Un di Velt Hot Gesvign [And the World Remained Silent]. I think it remains for him to prove that he did so, since his attempts at that so far only make us doubt it the more. He can begin by answering some of the many questions put to him on this website, as they are not frivolous or unfair.

 In the remainder of this article, I will point to further items of interest and fact that, while not individually conclusive, bolster my position “not to believe.”

Night is a work of fiction

We must remember that Night was classified as fiction when it was first published. Today, there is a good deal of embarrassed uncertainty as to how to categorize it. The original English-language Hill and Wang publication in 1960 listed the book as Judaica/Literature. The new translation from the same publisher issued in 2006 says it is Autobiography/Jewish Interest. On the Wikipedia page for Night,4 it is called “Autobiography, memoir, novel”—all three. Words lose their meaning when dealing with Elie Wiesel, and we’re familiar with his professed difficulty with “the limitations of language.”

On that same Wikipedia page, we read:

[I]t remains unclear how much of Wiesel’s story is memoir. He has reacted angrily to the idea that any of it is fiction, calling it his deposition, but scholars have nevertheless had difficulty approaching it as an unvarnished account.

Most who write about Wiesel are not scholars or, if they claim to be, they don’t live up to the title. Ruth Franklin, though an avid apologist for Wiesel, admits that the original Yiddish author blames the Jewish concept of “chosenness” as the source of the Jews’ troubles, and she accepts that Wiesel is the author.5 Yet this is an idea that Wiesel would never entertain for an instant. Franklin writes:

The Yiddish version was an historical work, political and angry, blaming the Jewish concept of chosenness as the source of the Jews’ troubles. Wiesel wrote in the 1956 Yiddish version: “In the beginning was belief, foolish belief, and faith, empty faith, and illusion, the terrible illusion. … We believed in God, had faith in man, and lived with the illusion that in each one of us is a sacred spark from the fire of the shekinah, that each one carried in his eyes and in his soul the sign of God. This was the source—if not the cause—of all our misfortune.

Naomi Seidman, professor of Jewish culture at the Graduate Theological Union, whose article 6 I have referred to above and quoted in “Shadowy Origins,” documented the transition from a historical account of events to an autobiographical novel, concluding that Night transforms the Holocaust into a religious event, the abdication of God, with the witness [Eliezer] both priest and prophet. Wiesel himself has said that Auschwitz is as important as Mount Sinai—where in the Bible the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God.7

On the Internet, we find various sites that still call Night a novel. At the website About.com: Secondary Education, Night is called “A novel by Elie Wiesel.”

At the website Yahoo!Answers, the question is asked: Discuss the significance of “night” in the novel Night by Elie Wiesel?

In 2006, Alexander Cockburn wrote 8:

Amazon.com […] had been categorizing the new edition of Night under “fiction and literature” but, under the categorical imperative of Kakutani’s “memory as a sacred act”9 or a phone call from Wiesel’s publisher, hastily switched it to “biography and memoir”. Within hours it had reached number 3 on Amazon’s bestseller list. That same evening, January 17, Night topped both the “biography” and “fiction” bestseller lists on BarnesandNoble.com.

In the same article, Cockburn tells of an interview with Eli Pfefferkorn of Toronto, who related this story:

“In 1981, Wiesel invited me to give a talk to his seminar students at Boston University. In the course of my talk, I discussed the relationship between memory and imagination in a number of literary works. I then pointed out the literary devices he used in Night, devices, I stressed, that make the memoir a compelling read. Wiesel’s reaction to my comments was swift as lightning. I had never seen him as angry before or since. In the presence of John Silber, the then President of Boston University, and my own Brown University students whom I invited, he lost his composure, lashing out at me for daring to question the literalness of the memoir. In Wiesel’s eyes, as in the eyes of his disciples, Night assumed a level of sacrosanctity, next in importance to the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. In terms of veracity, it is a factually recorded work, virtually meeting Leopold von Ranke’s benchmark of historical accounts: Wie es eigentlich gewessen, how it really was.

Examples of fiction in Night

Beyond all the well-known fictions in Night, there are some that may have gone largely unnoticed. For example, another dear reader pointed out that on page 68 of the 1960 edition,10 a hanging is described as taking place at Buna [Monowitz].

The head of the camp began to read his verdict, hammering out each phrase:

“In the name of Himmler … prisoner Number … stole

[…]

 prisoner Number …is condemned to death.”

The reader commented, “The person who wrote that could never have been around any SS officers. Heinrich Himmler was only referred to as Reichsfüher.” He further points to the fact that in the new 2006 translation of the book, the passage was changed [on page 62] to:

In the name of Reichsführer Himmler …

Someone obviously pointed out the error to Wiesel or his editors. But this doesn’t fix it either, because not even a lowly camp inmate would be sentenced to death in the name of the second in command. The order would have to read: In the name of the Führer …

Says my reader: This is enough in itself to prove that Wiesel had never been around any SS personnel.

There is another similar incident in Night that is widely considered to be fiction, in full or in part. This is the 3-person hanging scene, also known as the “Crucifixion” scene. It appears on page 70 in the 1960 edition:

One day when we came back from work, we saw three gallows rearing up in the assembly place, three black crows. Roll call. SS all round us, machine guns trained: the traditional ceremony. Three victims in chains—and one of them, the little servant, the sad-eyed angel.

The SS seemed more preoccupied, more disturbed than usual. To hang a young boy in front of thousands of spectators was no light matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow over him.

This time the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner. Three SS replaced him.

The three victims mounted together onto the chairs.

The three necks were placed at the same moment with the nooses.

“Long live liberty!” cried the two adults.

But the child was silent.

“Where is God? Where is He?” someone behind me asked.

At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over.

Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting.

“Bare your heads!” yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping.

“Cover your heads!”

Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive …

For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:

“Where is God now?”

And I heard a voice within me answer him:

“Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows …”

Except that there was no child. And probably no crucifixion-style hanging at all.

Alexander Cockburn writes in the article referenced above that after hearing several Jews express doubt about the story, he called Raul Hilberg, author of a standard work on the Holocaust, who was at that time 80, at Hilberg’s home in Vermont. [I have added the underlining]

“From a purely academic viewpoint”, Hilberg began, “it would be interesting to have a scholarly edition, comparing the Yiddish version with subsequent translations and editions, with appropriate footnotes, Wiesel’s comments etc. He was addressing two entirely different audiences, the first being the Yiddish-speaking Jews, members of the world of his youth whom he addressed in nineteenth-century terms. There’s more detail, more comment. I made that suggestion to Wiesel and he didn’t react favorably.”

 Hilberg turned to the crucial scene: “I have a version of the hanging from an old survivor with the names of all three adults.” That survivor had said that there was no boy among the three. Hilberg mentioned this in a review of Night, in which, he told me, “I made no secret of our differences. But whereas it [the age of the central figure in the hanging] may seem somewhat small, it makes a very big difference to Christians, particularly Catholics, because it’s very clear that mystics are intensely interested in the scene because it seems to replicate the crucifixion. It made a considerable impact. So the fact that this figure may not have been a boy at all is disturbing.”

“It would appear”, Hilberg went on, “from the record I have, that some witnesses have questioned whether this scene took place at all. I have a long statement by an older man, a man whom I judge to be quite trustworthy, though one must always remember that things are sometimes observed or heard about later. I talked recently to a survivor of that section of the camp who said it [the hanging of the three] didn’t take place, but maybe it took place earlier. I don’t know. Dating these things is hard for survivors. Some have doubted this would have taken place. Buna was a work camp, so this other survivor, a PhD in history and a very intelligent man, didn’t believe it. I said to him, ‘How do you know this didn’t happen?’ I consider it not only a possibility but plausible. But age is a big issue to some people. That’s something [Wiesel] did not discuss in the new edition of the book.” 11

Arthur Butz reminds us12 that Bruno Dössekker, who never came near a German concentration camp in wartime, published an acclaimed purported memoir of the ordeals of a certain Jew, Binjamin Wilkomirski, at Majdanek, Auschwitz, and other camps. When he was exposed as a fraud, many important supporters remained loyal to him, on the grounds, roughly speaking, that his account sounded powerful.

Age Confusion 

 Continuing on with the issue of age and the part it plays in Elie Wiesel’s credibility as a holocaust survivior—so very related to his credibility as the author of Un di Velt—we go to page 39 in the original 1960 edition of Night. Eliezer and his father have just arrived at Birkenau and been separated from the women and children into the men-only group. A prisoner speaks to him.

“Here, kid, how old are you?”

It was one of the prisoners who asked me this. I could not see his face, but his voice was tense and weary.

“I’m not quite fifteen yet.”

“No. Eighteen.”

“But I’m not,” I said. “Fifteen.”

“Fool, Listen to what I say.”

Then he questioned my father, who replied:

“Fifty.”

The other grew more furious than ever.

“No, not fifty. Forty. Do you understand? Eighteen and forty.”

He disappeared into the night shadows.

 In May 1944, Elie Wiesel, born Sept. 30, 1928, was 15 years old; his 16^th birthday was still four months away. So what does it mean for the star “witness” of the story, Eliezer, to say he is 14, going on 15? If this is Wiesel’s “deposition”, why would he make himself months younger than he really was?  Does he want to emphasize his tenderness and vulnerability? Or was he simply careless, forgetting what his age would have been and what season of the year it was?

Once again, the error was corrected in the 2006 new translation—there he answers that he’s fifteen, not “going on fifteen.” The prisoner tells him to say he’s eighteen.

On page 41:

We continued our march toward the square. In the middle stood the notorious Dr. Mengele […]

I was already in front of him:

“How old are you? He asked, in an attempt at a paternal tone of voice.

“Eighteen.” My voice was shaking.

“Are you in good health?”

“Yes.”

“What is your occupation?”

Should I say that I was a student?

“Farmer,” I heard myself say.

Apparently, this means that Eliezer and his father are accepted to be 18 and 40 years of age. Eliezer is adding three years to his stated age of 15. This forces us to ask once again those never-satisfactorily answered questions: Were the Germans so easily fooled or were they not? Did they or did they not keep careful records? Did they follow their policies to the letter or were they sloppy at times? It seems to depend on what’s most convenient for the camp survivor’s story—on one occasion they lie about their age and get away with it; on another, the SS keep impeccable records and know everything.

According to holocaust historiography, if, upon arrival at Birkenau, you were too young or too old to work [or were a woman with young children], you were sent immediately to the gas chamber. [Although in Night no such name is used; it is always called the crematoria.] Thus, we are to believe that Eliezer and his father were saved from that fate by lying about their ages.

The problem with this explanation comes later at Buchenwald, when Eliezer’s father dies shortly after arrival, on January 29, 1945. On page 114, Elie Wiesel writes:

I had to stay at Buchenwald until April eleventh. I have nothing to say of my life during this period. It no longer mattered. After my father’s death, nothing could touch me any more.

I was transferred to the children’s block, where there were six hundred of us.

If Wiesel had been entered into Birkenau as an 18-year-old, he would now be listed as 19—not a child. Why would he have been assigned to the children’s block after the death of his father? It’s true it was later called the orphan’s block by some, but that term may have come about later when the underage inmates who could not be reunited with a family member were sent to an orphanage in France.

We have no records for the death of Shlomo Wiesel at Buchenwald nor a registration [entry] number for either Shlomo or Eliezer Wiesel. But whatever the facts are finally determined to be, according to Elie Wiesel’s later writing he was there and was once again sixteen years old. And, in fact, the birth date on the transport list to France for the person of the mysterious Lázár Wiesel was 1928.

Wiesel describes his own book

Wiesel has said of Night:

 …my first narrative was an autobiographical story, a kind of testimony of one witness speaking of his own life, his own death. All kinds of options were available: suicide, madness, killing, political action, hate, friendship. I note all of these options: faith, rejection of faith, blasphemy, atheism, denial, rejection of man, despair and in each book I explore one aspect. In Dawn I explore the political action; in The Accident, suicide; in The Town Beyond the Wall, madness; in The Gates of the Forest, faith and friendship; in A Beggar in Jerusalem, history, the return. All the stories are one story except that I build them in concentric circles. The center is the same and is in Night.13 

“Night was the foundation; all the rest is commentary. In each book, I take one character out of Night and give him a refuge, a book, a tale, a name, a destiny of his own. 14

First, he calls his book an autobiographical story, a kind of testimony. These are modifiers indicating it is not a true autobiography, or a true testimony. Then, he saw options in it for further exploitation. From this story—Un di Velt Hot Gesvign as the original treasure-trove?—he can get a whole career-ful of books. Wiesel has authored nearly 40 books, all given credence and believability because of this one Yiddish original.

He also calls it “one witness speaking of his own life, his own death.” Of course, Eliezer didn‘t die, but Wiesel is referring to his spiritual death after undergoing the horrors of the holocaust, as he describes it. However, and this is very important, the author of Un di Velt was not a “corpse” looking back at himself in the mirror at the end of the book, but a revitalized man [not a child] looking forward to his regained health, his freedom, and the opportunity to give his account of it in his own way.

This is a huge point that all pro-Wiesel “scholars” downplay or completely ignore. Only Naomi Siedman addresses the questions it raises, but then she also lets it lay. Another opportunity for scholars that is not taken advantage of is Wiesel’s insistence that the “Holocaust” is the private domain of the “survivors.” Typical of his statements is this one:

The Holocaust cannot be described, it cannot be communicated, it is unexplainable. To me it is a mystical event. I have the feeling almost of sin when I speak about it.15

This rings false coming from someone who has made a 50-year career and gotten rich out of writing and speaking about “The Holocaust.” If it “cannot be described,” this releases him from accurate description and covers for the sense we all get that he is not speaking from first-hand experience. If it is “unexplainable,” that can explain his contradictory and foolish statements. Elie Wiesel hides dishonesty in mysticism, which is what Alfred Kazin meant when he criticized Wiesel publicly by calling him “a mystifier.”16

And isn’t it a strange choice of words for Wiesel to confess to a “feeling of sin” when he speaks about the holocaust. It’s a psychological truism that we’ve learned watching TV crime shows, if nowhere else, that the criminal has an urge to confess and therefore will often admit the truth without admitting it. [Larry Silverstein of 9/11 fame confessing to the “pulling” of Bldg. 7 comes to mind.]

To another writer,17 Wiesel said:

I knew the role of the survivor was to testify. Only I did not know how. I lacked experience, I lacked a framework. I mistrusted the tools, the procedures. Should one say it all or hold it all back? Should one shout or whisper? Place the emphasis on those who were gone or on their heirs? How does one describe the indescribable? How does one use restraint in re-creating the fall of mankind and the eclipse of the gods? And then, how can one be sure that the words, once uttered, will not betray, distort the message they bear? [my added underlining]

This passage now reverberates very strongly to me that Wiesel is confessing his uncertainty as to how to construct a holocaust survivor story that will be convincing. He lacks experience—not in writing, but as a camp inmate. He lacks a framework—that would be the personal experience that he doesn’t have. He doesn’t know how to tell it, not because he lacks writing expertise, but because he lacks first-hand knowledge.

He doesn’t want to do it wrong and be found out to be someone who wasn’t there … a fraud! Later, he decided to describe it as indescribable. Not having suffered all that much, he decided to project overwhelming suffering for every inmate.  The very fact that he calls it “the fall of mankind and the eclipse of the gods” tells us—screams at us—if only we will listen, that what he describes doesn’t exist in our real world. Wiesel continues with this:

So heavy was my anguish that I made a vow: not to speak, not to touch upon the essential for at least ten years. Long enough to see clearly. Long enough to learn to listen to the voices crying inside my own. Long enough to regain possession of my memory. Long enough to unite the language of man with the silence of the dead 18

This, of course, doesn’t make sense; it’s nonsense talk. Wiesel decided to wait until he could learn more about it, read what others wrote, talk to survivors. Then, lo and behold, he found a manuscript that he could claim to be his very own, and his real career was launched.

Endnotes:

1. Un di Velt Hot Geshvign, Eliezer Wiesel, page 7, translated by Naomi Siedman in “Elie Wiesel and the Scandal of Jewish Rage.”
2. “Elie Wiesel and the Scandal of Jewish Rage,” Naomi Siedman, Jewish Social Studies, Dec. 1996.
3. Elie Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea, Knopf, New York, 1995.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_(book)
5. “A Thousand Darknesses”, Ruth Franklin, The New Republic, March 23, 2006.
6. Siedman, ibid.
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_(book)#Memoir_or_novel
8. “Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel’s Night: Is Frey or Wiesel the Bigger Moral Poseur,” Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch.com, April, 2006. Found online at http://www.rense.com/general70/elie.htm
9. In the New York Times for January 17 [2006], Michiko Kakutani wrote in her usual plodding prose, with her usual aversion to any unconventional thought, that “Mr. Frey’s embellishments of the truth, his cavalier assertion that the ‘writer of a memoir is retailing a subjective story,’ his casual attitude about how people remember the past — all stand in shocking contrast to the apprehension of memory as a sacred act that is embodied in Oprah Winfrey’s new selection for her book club, announced yesterday: Night, Elie Wiesel’s devastating 1960 account of his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald.” From Cockburn, see footnote 8.
10. Elie Wiesel, Night, Hill and Wang, New York, 1960.
11. Cockburn, ibid.
12. “Historical Past vs. Political Present,” Journal of Historical Review, vol 19, Nov/Dec 2000. Online at http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v19/v19n6p12_Butz.html
13. Harry James Cargas, In Conversation with Elie Wiesel, Paulist Press: New York, 1976, p. 86
14. Cargas, ibid, p. 3
15. ”Elie Wiesel: Out of the Night,” Morton A. Reichek, Present Tense. Spring 1976, p, 42
16. Cockburn, ibid.
17. Wiesel, “An Interview Unlike Any Other,” in A Jew Today, trans. Marion Wiesel (New York, 1979), p.15.
18.  “Interview,” ibid.

Romanian grave: “We can’t confirm that they are Jews.”

Written on November 17, 2010 at 8:56 am, by Carolyn

Questions on Elie Wiesel and the Sorbonne

Written on November 15, 2010 at 11:04 am, by Carolyn

By Carolyn Yeager
copyright 2010 carolyn yeager  [updated 12-5-15]

Is Elie Wiesel lying about having enrolled at the Sorbonne University in Paris?  Or is he a victim of confused memories?

 Elie Wiesel wrote the following in his memoir (1) published in 1995:

With Francois’s help I enrolled in the Faculty of Letters of the Sorbonne. At last I found my vocation.

I have happy memories of my student years.  There were lectures by Daniel Lagache in the Descartes or Richelieu amphitheater, and by Louis Lavell at the Collège de France. (2) I devoured books on philosophy and psychology, Plato’s dialogues, Freud’s analyses. I wandered from bookstore to bookstore, from park to park. I remember the silence of the Sainte-Genevieve Library [not at the Sorbonne] and the chance encounters and inevitable rendezvous in the Sorbonne courtyard. Francois, my tutor, guide, and friend, did his best to initiate me into the life of the Latin Quarter, taking me to hear Sartre and Buber, whose lecture on religious existentialism was an event. The hall was packed, the audience enthusiastic. Buber was treated like a prophet. His listeners were elated, conquered in advance, ready to savor every word. There was just one problem. Had Buber spoken in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, or German, there would have been some people in the hall able to follow his address. But he opted for French, and his accent was so thick no one understood him. Everyone applauded just the same. No matter, they would read the text when it was published. But I was delighted to have seen the handsome face and heard the searching voice of the author of I and Thou, one of the great Jewish spiritual thinkers of our time.

According to the book’s index, this is the only page on which the word “Sorbonne” is found in the entire book of 418 pages—twice on page 154. The above is all Wiesel has to say about his “student years” at this historic and revered institution of higher education.  Yet in spite of its paucity, this paragraph is seemingly all it has taken for the majority of Elie Wiesel’s followers, biographers, interviewers, and promoters to repeat it without question, as I will show further on.

Wiesel gives no dates for what would be something of a milestone in his life, either—as is in keeping with his penchant for “free-floating memories.” The last date he gives that refers to his own actual life at the time, is way back on page 120: “Fortunately, in 1947 the OSE arranged for a young teacher, Francois Wahl, to give me private lessons.” He says more on the next page, 121:

In 1947, as the underground war raged in Palestine, Francois performed important secret tasks for a Jewish resistance group . The following year our paths diverged. Later, much later, they would cross again.

It was in 1947 that Shushani, the mysterious Talmudic scholar, reappeared in my life. For two or three years he taught me unforgettable lessons about the limits of language and reason, about the behavior of sages and madmen, about the obscure paths of thought as it wends its way across centuries and cultures.”

Francois was only one of many revolutionary Jewish “terrorists” Wiesel was associated with during this period. But more important to our theme is that it seems a strange juxtaposition for Wiesel to claim he is learning about the “limits of language and reason” from the most important teacher in his life, by his own admission, while being an enrolled student taking courses at the Sorbonne University. The French Academy has always been known for putting great store in language and reason!  We are left with another big contradiction in Elie Wiesel’s life story.

Other reasons to be skeptical of Wiesel’s claim

Prof. David O’Connell, a professor of French at Georgia State University, has written unambiguously that Wiesel was never enrolled at the Sorbonne:

Despite his claims over the years about having studied philosophy and psychology at the Sorbonne and doing a two year internship at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne in clinical psychology,(3) he actually never enrolled for any credit-bearing course at the Sorbonne, or any other branch of the University of Paris. Even worse, there is no evidence that he ever earned a French secondary school diploma. Yet, he now earns a huge six-figure salary per year as a Mellon Professor of Literature at Boston University, a position that theoretically requires a Ph.D.(4)

After O’Connell’s article was published in 2004, neither Elie Wiesel nor the Sorbonne University provided any evidence to the contrary.  Searching for a clue on the Internet, I came only upon evidence of the well-known Internet trend (5) of copying from other sites and sources without the slightest direct research being done. What I did not find was anything from Elie himself, in speeches, writings, interviews, about his “happy years” as a student at the Sorbonne, or anything to do with his education. In the examples listed below, the original source from which the information came is not given, nor is it known in most cases, because it was doubtless copied from someone who copied it from somewhere else. In some cases, the 1995 memoir may have been the source, but it was never cited.

Google Search on Elie Wiesel + Sorbonne:

In 1948, Wiesel enrolled in the Sorbonne University where he studied literature, philosophy and psychology. He was extremely poor and at times became depressed to the point of considering suicide.  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Wiesel.html

After the liberation of the camps in April 1945, Wiesel spent a few years in a French orphanage and in 1948 began to study in Paris at the Sorbonne.  http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/holo/eliebio.htm

In 1948, Elie began to study literature, philosophy, and psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris. http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/elie-wiesel-13.php

Elie lived in a French orphanage for a few years and in 1948 began to study literature, philosophy, and psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris.  http://www.gradesaver.com/author/elie-wiesel/

Where did Elie Wiesel Study? After the war, he studied at the Sorbonne. http://answers.encyclopedia.com/question/did-elie-wiesel-study-101042.html

Elie Wiesel studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. He becomes interested in journalism. http://www.inthefootstepsofeliewiesel.org/about-elie-wiesel.html

In France, Elie Wiesel resumed his Jewish studies, eventually attending the Sorbonne to become a journalist  http://www.inthefootstepsofeliewiesel.org/film-locations.html

Elie Wiesel: A Religious Biography by Frederick L. Downing. “With the help of his French teacher, Francois, Wiesel enrolled at the Sorbonne. He took classes on Plato and Freud and wandered through the bookstores.” http://books.google.com/books?id=GzdKZklZ2UIC&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=Elie+Wiesel+Sorbonne&source=bl&ots=jADPVye9CO&sig=bCo4TwonO3oMzIGQyp6yxzaGePY&hl=en&ei=Mz_bTLzyMsaPnwfOzskW&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFwQ6AEwCTgK#v=onepage&q&f=false

ElieWiesel: Spokesman for Remembrance by Linda N. Bayer. “As Elie’s teen years drew to a close, he enrolled at the Sorbonne, where he was quite happy.”  http://books.google.com/books?id=IidC8iab6xgC&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=Elie+Wiesel+Sorbonne&source=bl&ots=In97QVm3I5&sig=YDs8oXNhf8gmUpmByHlsUeZQg3A&hl=en&ei=_kTbTLOcGNC9ngfX7IEX&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFoQ6AEwCTgU#v=onepage&q&f=false

After the war, Wiesel attended the Sorbonne in Paris and worked for a while as a journalist. http://www.litlovers.com/guide_night.html

1947  Elie Wiesel enters the Sorbonne in Paris. http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/Night-Elie-Wiesel-Biography-Historical-Timeline.id-89,pageNum-7.html#ixzz14vnm6Bso

1948  Elie Wiesel studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. He becomes interested in journalism. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007200

1952 After studying at the Sorbonne, Elie Wiesel begins travelling around the world as a reporter for the Tel Aviv newspaper Yediot Ahronot.  http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007201

After learning French, Elie studied at the Sorbonne, a famous university in Paris. After he graduated [!! this writer got carried away – cy] Wiesel taught Hebrew and choir. He decided to become a journalist because of his life experiences. http://www.nobelpeacelaureates.org/pdf/ms_EliezerWiesel.pdf

Gary Hart, “Story and Silence” He had learned French and assumed French nationality by 1947 when he entered the Sorbonne. There he studied, among other things, philosophy and psychology. [Wiesel never became a French national – cy]    http://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/life/henry.html

Sent to Paris to study at the Sorbonne after several years of preparatory schools [Wiesel was not educated at a preparatory school –cy], he became a journalist for a small French newspaper, and supplemented his meager income as a translator and Hebrew teacher. http://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/life/index.html  

The Academy of Achievement: Wiesel mastered the French language and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, while supporting himself as a choir master and teacher of Hebrew. http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/wie0bio-1

TIME magazine 1986: After the war Wiesel settled in France, where he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,962649-1,00.html#ixzz14wFTUljN

Encyclopedia Britannica: After the war Wiesel settled in France, studied at the Sorbonne (1948–51), and wrote for French and Israeli newspapers.  http://www.britannica.com/holocaust/article-9076939

Oprah! He studied literature, philosophy and psychology at the Sorbonne, http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Oprah-Interviews-Elie-Wiesel

An analysis of Elie Wiesel’s exact words

 From the single paragraph in his memoir, we can extract only one sentence that describes something unique to being a student.

 I have happy memories of my student years. There were lectures by Daniel Lagache in the Descartes or Richelieu amphitheater, and by Louis Lavell at the Collège de France.

 [Image: Richelieu amphitheater]

First, he says he was a student for “years,” which means at least two. The Descartes and Richelieu amphitheaters are large lecture halls where the professors give their lectures to students enrolled in their course. Daniel Lagache held the chair of psychology at the Sorbonne beginning in 1947; during the war he was active in the Resistance and had been imprisoned. This would make him especially attractive to Wiesel. I believe that one could manage to attend lectures when there was space without being enrolled in the course. Note that Wiesel carefully writes “There were lectures …”, not anything suggesting he was a student of Daniel Lagache.

At the Collège de France, which was not the Sorbonne, lectures were open and free to the public. Louis Lavell was a religious philosopher recognized as a forerunner of the psychometaphysic movement.

Conclusion: If Wiesel were a real student at the Sorbonne for at least two years, it’s a certainty he would have more to say about it than that he remembers lectures given by one professor in the amphitheaters. What was his course of study, who were his teachers, how much time did he spend studying and what kind of grades did he get? Who were his fellow students?

Instead, he substitutes that he “devoured books” of an assorted nature, which only means he read a lot. He “wandered” among bookstores and parks. He “remembers the silence” of a library [the Sainte-Genevieve, which is not at the Sorbonne] and “chance encounters” in the Sorbonne courtyard. This all sounds enchanting, but it doesn’t sound like a hard-working student … and he would have had to work hard at that university.

The rest of what he wrote, in spite of his remembering Freud and Martin Buber, is just more open lectures, now in the Latin Quarter. This is the description of a dilettante taking advantage of what was available in the great city, picking and choosing what interested him, not fitting into any strict discipline of real schooling. There is no doubt in my mind, under our present knowledge,  that he was not a student; thus it’s no wonder he remembers his “student years” in Paris as happy; he was basically doing as he wished. Remember, he was a student of the mystic Shushani during this time.

What we find in this instance is totally reminiscent of the single paragraph by which he described in his memoir another important undertaking in his life—the writing of his first manuscript after his 10-year vow of silence [Or was  it actually nine years? He jumped the gun by one year, according to his memoir]. The reason he has so little to say? It’s pretty obvious it is because there was nothing there for him to remember.

But these few lines in his 1995 memoir cannot be the origin of the belief that he was educated at the Sorbonne, because Time magazine wrote in 1986, after Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, that “After the war Wiesel settled in France, where he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne…”  Where did Time magazine get that information? What is the earliest source of it?  It would be interesting to know this, but it’s not essential because we know that Wiesel’s own brief mention, written in 1995, is not convincing. Thus any earlier mention of it would not be convincing either. I don’t doubt that it’s possible Wiesel may have actually enrolled for one course at the Sorbonne, and maybe even one more course the following year—something like that. But that does not equal an education, or “studying at the Sorbonne.”

Has damage control on the Sorbonne question begun?

Here is another odd fact.

On Elie Wiesel’s Wikipedia page, there is no mention of his attending the Sorbonne University, let alone being enrolled there–or at any school or university. Yet, it was previously there and has been removed.  It currently says:

After World War II, Wiesel taught Hebrew and worked as a choirmaster before becoming a professional journalist. He learned French, which became the language he used most frequently in writing. He wrote for Israeli and French newspapers, including Tsien in Kamf (in Yiddish) [and] L’arche.(6) [Both are Jewish newspapers, the first being Zion in Kamf in English -cy]

But on the previous Wikipedia page found at : http://web.archive.org/web/20080804112451/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel dating  from Aug. 2008, found at a web archive, it was there. [See comment #1 below.] And I think it was there up to 2010; during this year the page was updated. It read:

After the war, Wiesel was placed in a French orphanage, where he learned the French language and was reunited with both his older sisters, Hilda and Bea, who had also survived the war. In 1948 he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne.

Why was it removed? Only one reason: Because someone at Wiki, or someone who can direct someone at Wiki, knows that Elie Wiesel did not study at the Sorbonne, and they would like it to appear that they never said he did. This is what is called Rewriting History because it’s done without telling  readers what has been changed, and why.

A serious charge? Or do many of you accept  it without complaint. Many of us know that the life history of Elie Wiesel was partly made up to begin with, so adding and subtracting parts of it, as research into his life uncovers some of the lies, may simply appear understandable damage control.

Yet, what about the “why”? Whose bright idea was it to pretend that Wiesel had “studied” at a famous university rather than tell the truth that he has never been a registered student since he left his hometown in Sighet at age 15. We have to believe that Wiesel himself began saying and implying this to give himself better credentials. He has never disputed it or set the record straight. Therefore, until we hear from him, we have to conclude that Wiesel thinks nothing of committing fraud – while he constantly points the finger of blame to so many of the rest of us.

The Wikipedia page for his book Night still mentions the Sorbonne:

From 1947–1950, he studied the Talmud, philosophy, and literature at the Sorbonne, attending lectures by Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Buber.(7)

This appears to be taken from his memoir, but is confusingly written, perhaps on purpose. Confusion abounds around the narrative of the life of Elie Wiesel, as this entire website Elie Wiesel Cons The World shows. You’re probably already familiar with the quote of Wiesel to the Rebbe that some things are true that never happened and vice versa. On another occasion Wiesel revealed how his mind works. This is from  Elie Wiesel: Conversations by Elie Wiesel and Robert Franciosi. Wiesel responds to a question about one of his books:

In this book “One Generation After” there is a sentence which perhaps explains my idea: “Certain events happen, but they are not true. Others, on the other hand, are, but they never happen.” So! I undergo certain events and, starting from my experience, I describe incidents which may or may not have happened, but which are true. I do believe that it is very important that there be witnesses always and everywhere. (8)

From this, the reader can judge for him/herself what kind of a witness Elie Wiesel is. We can understand that “certain events” he experienced during the war gave him ideas to “describe incidents which didn’t happen” but could have happened and so are true in his mind. This exactly explains how he can say “every word is true” and “I have a tattoo on my arm.” My judgment is that Wiesel really missed out by not getting an education at the Sorbonne, which might have grounded him in reason and precise language. As it is, he lives in a mystical realm wherein things are true because he says they are … leaving him satisfied, his peace undisturbed.

Endnotes:

1.  Elie Wiesel, Memoirs: All Rivers Run to the Sea, Alfred Knopf, 1995, pp. 154-55.

2.  Collège de France is a separate institution across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Ecoles […] What makes it unique is that each professor is required to give lectures where attendance is free and open to anyone, even though some high-level courses are not open to the general public. The motto of the Collège is “It teaches everything;” its goal can be best summed up by Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phrase: “Not preconceived notions, but the idea of free thought.”   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coll%C3%A8ge_de_France

3. Updated Dec. 2. Prof. O’Connell says that Wiesel made this statement in his interview book with Brigitte-Fanny Cohen entitled Qui etes-vous, Elie Wiesel?, Lyon, La Manufacture, 1987, p. 63:  “For two years, every morning, I took classes at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne and observed the patients.” Please read Prof. O’Connell’s comment  below [#3] and my reply.   A portion of this interview was included in Elie Wiesel: Conversations, ed. by Robert Franciosi, University Press of Mississippi, 2002.

4. “Elie Wiesel and the Catholics,” Culture Wars magazine, Nov. 2004. Online at http://www.culturewars.com/2004/Weisel.htm

5.  This phenomenon is not limited to the Internet; historians also quote from the published work of other historians without knowing the truth of it. It’s enough for their source to be from a recognized scholar or writer from a recognized university.

6.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel#cite_ref-11

7.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_(book) 

8.  http://books.google.com/books?id=Ym8KcrzUZKYC&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=Elie+Wiesel,+Sorbonne&source=bl&ots=nahRgAmiLz&sig=PP17IzP9fhIZMFRfEg0sAWfpwDE&hl=en&ei=eSPbTK3CAZT0tgOfkqSaBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CFIQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=Elie%20Wiesel%2C%20Sorbonne&f=false

$1000 in Prize Money for Best Essays on Ethical Challenges Surrounding Elie Wiesel

Written on November 8, 2010 at 11:23 am, by Carolyn

The following news release has been sent to Boston, MA and Orange County, CA campus and regular media, and to selected Internet sites. It will also be mailed to students at BU and CU, where Elie Wiesel holds positions as a teacher. This is a major effort on our part, and we ask the assistence of our readers to publicize this extraordinary event, with all its hope for the exercise of free speech and the removal of taboos.

“A Question of Ethics” Essay Contest announced for Boston and Chapman University students; $1000 in prizes      

We are pleased to announce the first East Coast—West Coast “A Question of Ethics” Essay Contest for students enrolled at Boston University in Massachusetts and Chapman University in Orange, California. 

The winning essay will be awarded $500; second prize will receive $250; two honorable mentions $125 each. The winning essays will be published on the web site Elie Wiesel Cons The World.

 The essays must analyze one or more ethical issues surrounding Elie Wiesel as they are presented on the pages of the website Elie Wiesel Cons The World. These issues may include [not in order of importance]

• Prof. Wiesel’s refusal to show his claimed tattoo.
• The documents from Buchenwald that do not support Wiesel’s presence there.
• His claim to be in the famous Buchenwald Liberation Photo when, according to his book, he was deathly ill in the hospital at the time.
• His close association with the Irgun terrorist gang in the late 1940’s.
• The questions surrounding the authorship of his first book, Un di Velt Hot Gesvign, allegedly 866 pages written in less than two weeks while on a ship crossing the Atlantic.
• The insistence that his book Night, read by school children all over the world, is a factual account of his experience at Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

 Though the essays must utilize the information made available on Elie Wiesel Cons The World, information from other sources is acceptable as additional material. Our objective is for the essayists to examine the ethics challenges facing Prof. Wiesel in light of the information we have provided at our website.

Deadline for essays to be received is Feb. 1st, 2011. To be considered for a prize, essays must be a minimum of 500 words. Proof of registration as a student at Boston or Chapman University must accompany the essay. This can be a copy of one’s current semester course registration along with a University ID card. Manuscripts should be emailed to [email protected] with the subject line: Ethics Essay Contest.

Contact:

Carolyn Yeager

 c/oCODOH,  PO Box 439016
San Ysidro, CA 92143
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.eliewieseltattoo.com