Our terminal calendar week of the retrospective includes more messages from those impacted past the piece of work of Elie Wiesel, including words from Mayor Marty Walsh and erstwhile President Barack Obama.

#aneProfessor Stephen Esposito, Acquaintance Professor of Classical Studies and Offset Semester Core Curriculum Coordinator at Boston University. "Some 60 years ago, Elie Wiesel, at the age of 28, wrote the post-obit 115 words, which were to get the most renowned and powerful passage in all of Holocaust literature. "Never shall I forget that nighttime, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long dark seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into fume under a silent heaven. 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 want to live. Never shall I forget those moments that butchered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long equally God Himself. Never." (Night, p. 34, trans. Marion Wiesel, 2006) That haunting seven-fold refrain, "Never shall I forget…" was to become the motto of Prof. Wiesel's life. And and then in honor of the dead and the living Elie bore witness. More than anyone in the past generation Wiesel spoke truth to power, and he did so with astonishing results — from Auschwitz and Buchenwald to the Soviet Jews, from the Cambodian Boat People to the victims of violence in Dafur, Rwanda, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Argentina. I met Prof. Wiesel some 22 years agone and over time we became friends. For over a decade he invited me to teach in his classes and together nosotros studied numerous Greek tragedies that he loved – Antigone, Oedipus, Prometheus Bound. Team-teaching with Elie Wiesel was by far the greatest privilege and joy of my B.U. career. Those classes together also turned out to exist the most intellectually stimulating experiences of my life. For over 20 years Prof. Wiesel lectured to students in Boston Academy's Core Curriculum –on Genesis, on Exodus, on Job. And so, of course, he held court to thousands of listeners in those remarkable presentations every Autumn in the Metcalf Auditorium. Students were always at the center of his world. He loved to question students and to be questioned past them. Somehow I felt peculiarly at dwelling house with Professor Wiesel when he invited me to speak to his students about my ain specialty, Greek tragedy. Those plays ofttimes focus on themes that permeated Wiesel's life: memory and mystery, suffering and solitude, friendship and ferocity.. In his presence I often felt as if I were being transported to the sacred center of the world, to a place where tearing Nobility and benevolent Blessing stood side by side. The students, besides, felt it, peculiarly in those last years—their teacher's vocalization ever softer and more oracular, the wisdom of eight decades carved into his face ever more deeply, the wizened eyebrows highlighting the sunken eyes that had seen the unseeable—and survived. Like the ancient figure of Oedipus, whom Sophocles wrote so beautifully about ii,500 years ago, Professor Wiesel spent his life daring to pry open the clenched fist of the past, daring to reveal the wrath, the rage and somehow, through his relentless questioning, to summon forth redemption. Thank you, Elie, for the fierce courage in the face up of despair, for the never-ending fight to find the words to tell THE story. Thank you for not surrendering, for remembering your sister, your mother, your father, and your people. Thank you for conveying the torch so bravely, for holding such a steadfast beacon to the smoke-filled darkness of dark, for helping us to keep our souls on fire, for teaching the states what our children and our children'due south children must not forget."

#iiMayor Marty Walsh of Boston. "Early in his life, Elie Wiesel experienced the worst of humanity. But through his perseverance, he showed the resilience of the human spirit. I think reading his powerful memoir, Night, when I was a young pupil in Boston. Today, I am still moved past his strength and compassion. Elie was a man who dedicated his life to improving the lives of oppressed people all over the world. Between his time spent teaching about the horrors of the Holocaust as a professor at Boston University, and his work campaigning for victims of oppression in places like South Africa, Nicaragua and Sudan, Elie remained steadfast in his delivery to the human rights and freedoms deserved by anybody. I'm proud that Boston was the welcoming abode of this great human. As a City and nation founded by immigrants, Boston must proceed its piece of work to embody the ethics of compassion and stewardship so well represented in the work of Elie. We go on to strive to match the ethics and virtues modeled by Elie, and I am grateful for he brought, and what he taught, to Boston."

#3An excerpt from one-time U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power's foreword to the commemorative edition of Elie Wiesel'southward Night to be published this month by Loma and Wang. "Arguably no single work did so much to lift the silence that had enveloped survivors, and bring what happened in the 'Kingdom of Night' out into the light, for all to meet. And yet. Injustice was still rampant. Genocide denial against the Armenians, the horrors of his lifetime — Politico Pot, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Syria in his later years. He lived to see more and more people bear witness to unspeakable atrocities, merely he also saw that indifference remained too widespread. Amidst all the pain and disappointment of Elie'south remarkable life, how is information technology that the darkness did not envelop him, or shield him from the sunday? How is it that the light in Elie Wiesel'southward gaze was equally equally defining as his life's experiences? 'What is abnormal,' Elie once told Oprah Winfrey, 'is that I am normal. I survived the Holocaust and went on to dearest beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to accept toast and tea and alive my life — that is what is aberrant.' Elie raged against indifference to injustice, to be sure, but he also savored the gifts of life with ferocious zeal. 'We know that every moment is a moment of grace,' he one time said, 'every 60 minutes is an offering; not to share them would hateful to beguile them.' Maybe it was because Elie had such a strong sense of purpose on his journeying—to help those who could withal exist helped. A duty to his neighbor. To the stranger, the stranger that he one time was. He called it his 11th commandment: 'Thou shalt non stand up idly by…. You lot must speak up. Y'all must defend. You must tell the victims,… '"Yous are not alone, somebody cares.'" ….As our nation goes through difficult days, Night is a book that is firmly ingrained in that minor canon of literature that kids and young adults read when they are growing up in America. Alongside Atticus Finch and Scout, one of the narrators that will have an early shot at shaping our children's moral universe is 16-year-old Elie. So, while the void is enormous — above all, for Marion, Elisha, and the remainder of the family unit — and the void is enormous for our earth, I likewise am filled with profound joy knowing that my 7-yr-erstwhile boy and my iv-yr-old girl — like Elie's grandkids, and their children after them — will wade into big questions for the first time with Elie Wiesel as their guide. That they volition be less lone for having Elie with them. That Night volition be one of the works that lay the scaffolding for their moral architecture. All because Elie Wiesel was optimistic plenty to go along going — and to observe the strength to smoothen his light on us all."

#4Professor Abigail Gillman, Associate Professor of German and Hebrew, and last year's Interim Manager of the EWCJS. " What I miss at present are the 'Three Encounters with Elie Wiesel,' the trio of lectures that I attended at the 92 nd Street Y in New York City long earlier hearing them in Metcalf Hall. What nosotros experienced on those evenings was not studying, merely learning: the restless 'turn it and turn it' described in the Mishnah.  Each lecture wove together scholarship, wisdom, retention. Professor Wiesel managed to nowadays the Torah and the Talmud every bit Keen Books with universal relevance.  His words drew united states into the Jewish textual universe as to a place he had actually visited, whether through anamnesis, or past the power of his imagination; the insights we left with were psychological, ethical, humanistic.  I miss listening to his vocalization—the musicality, the familiar cadences; the parentheses, humble thank-y'all's to his students and to the police officers; the never-ending questions and what ifs; the irrepressible joie de vivre. The good news is that the lectures were recorded. The video recordings tin be found on both the 92 nd St. Y and the BU Howard Gotlieb Center websites, for anyone to study—and to learn from."

#5

The Office of Barack and Michelle Obama-Elie Wiesel-9.6.17_Page_2

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