Trinity University Professor asks, "Did Elie Wiesel Christianize the Holocaust?"

Did Elie Wiesel Christianize the Holocaust?
Wiesel's Night in Yiddish and French: Critical Appraisals and a New Approach

A lecture by Professor Alan Astro, Trinity University, San Antonio, TX
Friday, October 26
Room 609 Social Sciences Building
12:00p.m.

Elie Wiesel's Night, which first appeared in French as La nuit in 1958, may well loom as the archetypal Holocaust survivor account. But it was only in 1994, in his memoirs, that the author addressed the fact that Night is part adaptation, part translation of a Yiddish work he originally published in Buenos Aires in 1956, entitled ...Un di velt hot geshvign (...And the World Was Silent).

Critics have read discrepancies between the two versions in various ways: favorably, as resulting from appreciation for the distinct literary idiom of each language; provocatively, as the consequence of Wiesel's desire to cast the Holocaust in Christian, rather than Jewish, terms; and disparagingly, as part of a strategy to hide ideologically unpalatable, ethnocentric attitudes from a wider audience.

This presentation will review merits and flaws of these differing interpretations of Wiesel's work, and sketch a possible new approach.

Alan Astro (Ph.D., Yale University, 1985) is professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas. He has published on Beckett, Borges and Sholem Aleichem as well as other modern authors in French, Spanish and Yiddish. Astro's latest work is Yiddish South of the Border: An Anthology of Latin American Yiddish Writing (2003).

Wiesel calls on France to stop Roma deportations

Jewish Chronicle
By Jennifer Lipman, August 31, 2010

Elie Wiesel has condemned the French government's decision to expel Roma immigrants but cautioned that a comparison with the Nazi round-ups was not appropriate.
The Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor described the repatriation of Roma people from France to Romania and Bulgaria as unacceptable.


As a former refugee, Mr Wiesel expressed his solidarity with the Roma and called on French president Nicolas Sarkozy to stop the crackdown. But he also said: "It is necessary to be careful with the language."These Roma are sent to Romania, to Hungary, not to Auschwitz. He added: "One doesn't have the right to trivialise events, memories and souvenirs."
Robert Le Gall, Archbishop of Toulouse, had likened the situation to the expulsion of Jews from occupied France during the Holocaust.
Around 700 Roma, also known as gypsies or Romany, are expected to be deported from France. Mr Sarkozy has defended the plan as necessary to decrease crime levels, but it has been met by criticism in France and around the world.
France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, the founder of humanitarian aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières, is one of a number of senior French politicians who have publicly questioned the decision.
Mr Kouchner, whose father was Jewish, said he had considered resigning. He said: "I am not happy with what has happened. I have been working with the Roma for 25 years."
More than 220,000 Roma are believed to have been murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
For more on this see: Sarkozy's crackdown on Roma camps adds fuel to criticism at home and abroad