Elie Wiesel
photograph from The Arizona
Republic, December 25, 1966, p.35
Elie Wiesel wrote the following, it
appears in an 1978 book¹,
but can be read in full in a 1985
newspaper article².
"You will not understand, you will never understand," were the words heard everywhere during the reign of night. I can only echo them. You, who never lived under a sky of blood, will never know what it was like. Even if you read all the books ever written, even if you listen to all the testimonies ever given, you will remain on this side of the wall, you will view the agony and death of a people from afar, through the screen of a memory that is not your own. An admission of impotence and guilt? I do not know. All I know is that Treblinka and Auschwitz cannot be told. And yet I have tried. God knows I have tried. Have I attempted too much or not enough? Among some 25 volume, only three or four penetrate the phantsmagoric realm of the dead. In my other books, through my other books, I have tried to follow other roads. For it is dangerous to linger among the dead, they hold onto you and you run the risk of speaking only to them.
- Elie Wiesel
1. Wiesel, Elie: Why
I Write. In: Rosenfeld, A. H.
Greenberg, I. Green, B. Confronting
the Holocaust. The Impact of Elie Wiesel. Indiana University
Press. 1978. pp.203-204.
2. Ottawa Citizen - Apr 27, 1985, p.B1
2. Ottawa Citizen - Apr 27, 1985, p.B1
He's full of shit. would anyone leave a child under his guard?
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