Showing posts with label Elie Wiesel. Show all posts

Monday, December 30, 2024

When intellectuals cheer on fascism

E.Ionesco, E.M.Cioran, M.Eliade

Emil Cioran, Eugène Ionesco and Mircea Eliade (from left to right), in Place Furstenberg, Paris, in 1977.LOUIS MONIER (GAMMA-

When intellectuals cheer on fascism

Many thinkers supported fascist regimes in the 1930s, a precedent that is very disturbing today

Guillermo Altares

27 December 2024

A famous photograph taken by Louis Monier in 1977 in one of the most beautiful squares in the Latin Quarter in Paris shows three great intellectuals of the 20th century whose influence continues to this day: the philosopher Emil Cioran, the historian of religions and novelist Mircea Eliade, and the playwright Eugène Ionesco. The first two had a very dark secret to hide: their sympathy for Romanian fascism in the 1930s and 1940s, their antisemitism, and their intellectual support for a regime responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews. The third, the inventor of the theater of the absurd, of Jewish origin, survived the war and spent the rest of his life in France. They were very good friends in their youth, but their relationship was forever affected by Cioran and Eliade’s past.

Elie Wiesel / The Night / Preface

ELIE WIESEL: THE NIGHT

PREFACE

Preface to the New Translation

by Elie Wiesel

If in my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past lingers in the present, all my writings after Night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear its stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works.

ELIE WIESEL: MEMORIES OF JERUSALEM

by Elie Wiesel

When did I see Jerusalem for the first time? I don’t even know. When I visited the city for the first time, it seemed to me that it was not for the first time. At the same time, each visit since then I have had the feeling it is my first visit.
Is there a Jew, a Jewish child, who possessesa different relationship toward the most Jewish city in the world? Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s nostalgic poem celebrates us all: though we find ourselves here and there in the Western world, the Jewish heart is always in the East.

Elie Wiesel

by Alain Elkann

The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity fights for human rights and peace and is anti-racism. It organizes lectures, conferences and annual meetings with other Nobel Prize awardees like Wiesel.

Wiesel arrives in his office followed by a bodyguard. There are several young people working in his Foundation, which he runs with his wife Marion. He is wearing his Grand Croix de la Légion d’Honneur decoration on the lapel of his navy blue corduroy jacket. Very few people around the world have reached this notably high distinction.

My hero / Elie Wiesel by David Miliband

‘The word refugee is not popular, but everyone likes the idea of refuge’ … Elie Wiesel.
Photograph: Bebeto Matthews/

My hero:

Elie Wiesel by David Miliband

The writer and Holocaust survivor fought for justice, defending persecuted people of all races and religions. He taught us that the word ‘refugee’ need not be unpopular

Saturday 9 July 2016 14.00 BST

met Elie Wiesel only once, in his New York office two years ago. He had joined the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee in 1985, and continued on our board of overseers. As the new president and CEO, I wanted his advice.

Wiesel remained doughty, passionate, inspiring. “I am a refugee but the word refugee is not popular,” he told me. “But everyone likes the idea of refuge. Fight for refuge. We all need refuge.”

I remember in that moment understanding the often-cited description that Wiesel believed in taking sides – someone who knew what he was for as well as what he was against. He understood, as well as anyone, the power of knowledge and truth in the battle against ignorance. His descriptions of his first visits to Germany, and his meetings with German youth who used education to overcome their own country’s past, are not just moving, they are testimony to an openness of mind even in the midst of the worst memories.

Wiesel’s enduring legacy will not only be his story of survival through the darkest hours of humanity amid the unspeakable horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. But also the inspiration of his lived life: his fight for truth and justice wherever he saw human dignity threatened. His visits around the world with the IRC led him to defend persecuted people of all races and religions.

This fight has never been more needed. Where globalisation should be bringing down barriers, the trend is towards putting them up. Dangerous populism and toxic xenophobia are again on the rise in Europe and the US – but also afflict minorities across the rest of the world. War and insecurity displaced a record 65 million people last year; and the system of international order that upholds peace and security is under threat.

But as much as Wiesel’s life reminds us of what we need to guard against, it also embodies what we must strive to emulate. He was not just a survivor, his story reminds us that when states open their doors to those fleeing persecution, they open their doors to knowledge, creativity and untold potential.

Wiesel’s memories have documented history, and his works have informed a generation. He taught us that, in the face of atrocity and tragedy, morality can prevail; that knowledge and truth are vital in the battle against ignorance and intolerance; and that the word refugee need not be unpopular. That is the lesson of Elie Wiesel.

• David Miliband is president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee.

THE GUARDIAN