Quote

You cross a border and the policeman or the frontier policeman look at you, What are you doing here? Why are you coming? How long will you stay? Well, if I had nearly enough years, I would write a novel about being a refugee.

Elie Wiesel

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Elie Wiesel
Age: 87 †
Born: 1928
Born: September 30
Died: 2016
Died: July 2
Autobiographer
Humanist
Journalist
Judaic Scholar
Novelist
Philosopher
Political Activist
Professor
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Sighetu Marmaţiei
Eliezer Wiesel
A-7713
Élie Wiesel
Well
Cross
Policeman
Looks
Crosses
Frontier
Enough
Stay
Policemen
Writing
Novel
Frontiers
Long
Coming
Refugee
Years
Write
Border
Would
Look
Borders
Wells
Nearly

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What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.
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I think that human beings are capable of the worst things possible.
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I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory.
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When adults wage war, children perish.
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I want to go back to the child I used to be, and to read with the same naiveté [the Pentateuch]. I want to leave science aside and go back to the pure perception offered to me in the text that is waiting there for me year after year.
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I have a tremendous respect for Professor [Frank Moore] Cross.
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And action is the only remedy to indifference, the most insidious danger of all.
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I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death. So that you could prepare yourselves while there was still time. To live? I don't attach any importance to my life any more. I'm alone. No, I wanted to come back, and to warn you. And see how it is, no one will listen to me.
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We didn't really differ [with Frank Moore Cross] because we have the same love of the text. We share that love.
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But where was I to start? The world is so vast, I shall start with the country I knew best, my own. But my country is so very large. I had better start with my town. But my town, too, is large. I had best start with my street. No, my home. No, my family. Never mind, I shall start with myself.
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In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, that person comes first. One's very suffering gives one priority. . . . To watch over one who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God.
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I don't speak about my pain. My pain is something that doesn't need to be purged. I want to prevent people from suffering. I don't speak about my suffering. Suffering is something personal and discreet. Also, I know it will never leave me. I don't want it to leave me. It would be a betrayal.
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The Holocaust is not a cheap soap opera. The Holocaust is not a romantic novel. It is something else.
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Words can be turned into spears. They can be turned into prayers. It's a strange world that you are in. But you deal with words.
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I remember those faces of people who were good I saw that. I saw a father who gave his bread to his son and his son gave back the bread to his father. That, to me, was such a defeat of the enemies, will of the enemies, theories of the enemies, aspirations, here [in Auschwitz].
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Politicians, they give the visible aspect of the change, but the change, the root, the anchor are in young people.
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The Holocaust is a sacred subject. One should take off one's shoes when entering its domain, one should tremble each time one pronounces the word.
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When I say it doesn't make much difference, I mean in terms of the importance of the piece of literature.
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I did not weep, and it pained me that i could not weep. But I had no more tears. And, in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like--free at last!
Elie Wiesel
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I never compared Nazis into communism, but communism was the same thing, the end justifies the means. Whatever the means.
Elie Wiesel