Holocaust survivor taught faith, hope
Holocaust survivor taught of faith and hope
“Witness” relays classroom lessons taught by the writer Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel is best known as a Holocaust survivor and a writer whose works, such as “Night,” called attention to the importance of remembrance and the need to prevent further inhumanity.
But while the Nobel Peace Prize winner – who died in 2016 at age 87 – taught millions of people around the globe lessons of faith and activism, many forget he was a professional educator, too.
For decades, he taught at Boston University, where his courses were among the most popular on campus.
A new book chronicles those lectures and classroom interactions. “Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 259 pp., ★★★g) is by Ariel Burger, who met the master writer when he was 15, studied under him in his 20s and served as his teaching assistant in his 30s.
Burger transports the reader to those salons of learning on the Charles River, where Wiesel’s students over the years included everyone from the granddaughter of a Nazi SS officer to a Korean minister in training.
Unlike the best-selling “Tuesdays with Morrie” – which highlighted author Mitch Albom’s relationship with another Boston-area professor – Burger’s book has a protagonist who was already world famous.
“Witness” does have a Wednesdays-with-Wiesel feel. Burger intersperses bits of his life and background as he shares an album’s worth of snapshots from Wiesel’s time at BU. Burger’s tone and execution are exactly what his title promises – and in keeping with the way Wiesel lived his life.
Here are three lessons for those who never sat in a classroom with Wiesel:
1. Why faith remains after horror.
Wiesel’s book “Night” is part of the canon not only of Holocaust writing, but American literature.
According to Burger, Wiesel rarely taught his most famous volume, but he made an exception for the 2006 fall semester at the request of students. (That was the year Oprah Winfrey selected “Night,” an autobiographical account of his family’s deportation by the Nazis to the Auschwitz death camp and then Buchenwald, for her book club.)
Theology and suffering were among the topics addressed.
“I believe in a wounded faith. Only a wounded faith can exist after those events,” he told his class, adding, “(W)e cannot conceive of that place with God or without God. It is impossible to pray. But I did, and I said that prayer, because my father said it, his father, his grandfather. How could I be the last?”
2. It’s essential to fight hate.
Wiesel lived a history he never wanted to see repeated. He assembled activists and thinkers in conferences called “Anatomy of Hate” to explore why, decades after the Holocaust, people continued to annihilate those different from themselves.
“When you face evil, don’t let it grow, fight it right away,” he said. “Anyone who is suffering, anyone who is threatened becomes your responsibility ... It is not the end – I do not know how to end hatred, I truly wish I did – but recognizing our shared humanity is a good beginning.”
3. The power of words, for good and evil.
Burger, like his mentor, knows that the 26 letters in the alphabet, arranged into endless combinations of thoughts, can effect change – or destroy.
“Language is essential. It is more than a vehicle to transmit ideas or memories; it is a desire of the human being to transcend his own limits,” Wiesel told students. “But language can be corrupted. It can be contaminated by human cruelty.”