Elie wiesel biographical timeline information
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Elie Wiesel, his father, and his two older sisters survived the initial selection process and became part of the working population of the camp. At every turning point in my life as a writer, there he was, protector and ally, sincere and generous, as he had been in the early days of our friendship.
Paris 1954. I succeeded in reporting the first Israeli-German conference (in Wassenaar, the Netherlands) in such a way that nobody could have guessed that the negotiations for economic reparations concerned me much more than they did either group of delegates.
My most intimate friends could not make me speak.
François Mauriac was there.
And then, inexcusable insolence on my part, on whose behalf had I allowed myself to cause him uneasiness and pain by detracting from his love for someone who, for him, represented Love?
Bathed in cold sweat, I wanted to vanish, to erase myself from his memory, or at least, to ask his forgiveness and alleviate the effect my words had produced.
After being reunited with my comrades, I might have missed the children’s transport leaving for France; I might have gone back to Transylvania or elsewhere, done other things. The Bible? In brief, staccato sentences: “Yes, I lived through those events. Place the emphasis on those who were gone or on their heirs? The result was Night, the story of a teenage boy who survived the camps and was devastated by the realization that the God he once worshiped had allowed his people to be destroyed.
At this time, he refused to write about his experiences during the Holocaust.
Wiesel first wrote about his experiences in the long form of his memoirs, And the World Stayed Silent. Everything hinged on chance.
His writings
Wiesel's writings bear witness to his year-long ordeal and to the Jewish tragedy.
The remuneration was small, but thanks to the press cards that came with the job, I was offered a number of free trips. The following year, his most famous work, Night, was published. Yes, I have known the sealed trains. Yet he did not hesitate. The passion of Christ, the agony of Christ, the death of Christ. In 1956 Wiesel's first book, a Yiddish memoir entitled And the World Was Silent, was published in Argentina.
The family was well-educated and active in their communities. Wiesel translated the manuscript from Yiddish into French and retitled it La Nuit (Night). “Yes, thank you.” I would have accepted any date, any hour.