Elie Wiesel and the Importance of Primary Sources
Historians know why history matters. However, as history is reduced to bare facts, forgettable dates, and occasional pictures, the appreciation for its study, the very subject aimed at perfecting man, dwindles. While textbooks have a purpose, the chilling and visceral words of Joseph Stalin encapsulate something essential: “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.”1 When history is reduced to mere statistics, its aim cannot be realized, hence the importance of first-person accounts. Elie Wiesel, a Romanian Jew who survived the concentration camps, wrote on what he endured. Through Elie Wiesel’s Night and other works, men in the modern day are invited into the realities of the Jewish ghettos, Birkenau, Auschwitz, and the vicious evil that took place therein. Indeed, history does not achieve its aim in the death statistics of the concentration camps. Instead, Elie Wiesel’s witness as an ordinary man who endured the worst of hell, has contributed more to history than a textbook ever could.
Any history textbook can account for the deportation, dehumanization, and mass execution of the Jews. However, in Elie Wiesel’s book Night, he describes Jewish communal degradation from a first-hand account. One of Wiesel’s most revolting stories involves a Jewish woman, Mrs. Schachter, who, while on the train headed for Birkenau, erupted in grave panic:
“”Fire! I see a fire! I see a fire!...Look at the fire! Look at the flames! Flames everywhere…” She received several blows to the head, blows that could have been lethal. Her son was clinging desperately to her, not uttering a word. He was no longer crying…Suddenly there was a terrible scream: “Jews, look! Look at the fire! Look at the flames!” And as the train stopped, this time we saw flames rising from a tall chimney into a black sky…We stared at the flames in the darkness. A wretched stench floated in the air. Abruptly, our doors opened… “Everybody out! Leave everything inside. Hurry up!” We jumped out and I glanced at Mrs. Schachter. Her little boy was still holding her hand. In front of us, those flames. In the air, the smell of burning flesh. It must have been around midnight. We had arrived. In Birkenau.”2
While reading this, one cannot help but pause. This story is emotionally wounding and captures that which the fact, “conditions inside the transports were extremely inhumane,” cannot.3 While this statement is correct, much is lost because the historians have not experienced the event described, and report the emotional realities in statistical language. Wiesel’s accounts are quite contrary to a textbook: “A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes…children thrown into the flames.”4 Not long after seeing this, Wiesel spoke to a young Jew who, “told us that having been chosen because of his strength, he had been forced to place his own father’s body into the furnace.”5 And further in Night, Wiesel describes the vulgar image of a young boy being hung but unable to die:
“Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen, and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing…And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished.”6
With all the dead bodies accumulated, Wiesel also remembers “a snowy field in Poland” where “hundreds of naked orphans without a tomb” lay across the land.7 His simple stories are so repulsive that readers question, “Why remember them at all?” Yet Wiesel understands the importance in doing so, capturing the reality and thus, the human. Wiesel’s accounts are the most real. Therefore, by reading his work, man aquaints himself with the reality of the past, bringing life not only to the dead, but to the reader.
In addition to communal degradation within the camps, Wiesel also describes his internal degradation:
“My father had been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal’s flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast? Remorse began to gnaw at me. All I could think was: I shall never forgive them for this. My father must have guessed my thoughts, because he whispered in my ear: “it doesn’t hurt.”’8
Hatred grew within Wiesel: “I felt no pity for him (a Natzi dentist). In fact, I was pleased with what was happening to him: my gold crown was safe.”9 Some argue Wiesel’s anger was justified. However, Catholics such as Sts. Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein suggest otherwise. As does Viktor Frankl who was able to find meaning in his suffering at Auschwitz. Yet Wiesel depicts the ordinary Jew as most men did not find God nor hope within the camps:
“When You were displeased by Noah’s generation, You brought down the Flood. When Sodom lost Your favor, You caused the heavens to rain down fire and damnation. But look at these men whom You betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray before you!”10
Wiesel’s honesty: “One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live,” captures the normality of the broken Jewish spirit.11 This brokenness is one that historians can barely imagine, and cannot encapsulate in a textbook. Thus, Wiesel’s ability to account for his hopelessness invites readers to intensely sympathize over the evil committed. Sympathy serves its purpose in perfecting man, and Wiesel avails this.
Elie Wiesel describes precisely why he recorded the dreadful memories of the concentration camps:
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the smell of the faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as God Himself. Never.”12
He invites his readers to do the same. Although reading Wiesel’s work is uncomfortable in its ability to wound a heart, it is essential. Night, along with Wiesel’s other books, have gifted historians primary sources, showcasing the realities of the communal and internal degradation within the ghettos, Birkenau, and Auschwitz. The nearly six million lives that were lost within the camps must not remain a mere statistic. History, the subject aimed at man’s perfection, requires pathos; a heart capable of being moved. Emotions are not weak but the foundation from which the essence of being derives. Thus, a subject that studies mankind should appeal to man's power to deeply feel. Elie Wiesel’s work certainly accomplishes this. For those who wish to become more human - more fully realized - there must be a revitalization to the study of history, not merely through textbooks, but through the reality of primary sources. And through this reality, a heart moved to be ordinary and courageous.
Notes
Joseph Stalin in John Tirman, “Counting: A Single Death Is a Tragedy, a Million Deaths Are a Statistic,” Oxford Academic (2011): 316.
Wiesel, 24-28.
“SS Concentration Camp System,” The Holocaust Explained, https://www.theholocaustexplained. org/the-camps/ss-concentration-camp-system/journeys/ (accessed November 20, 2022).
Wiesel, 32.
Ibid., 35.
Ibid., 65.
Ibid., 99.
Ibid., 39.
Ibid., 52.
Ibid., 68.
Ibid., 109.
Ibid., 34.
