"The opposite of love is not hate but indifference, the opposite of life is not death but indifference to life and death."
—Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize winner and a tireless advocate for human rights, died July 2 at the age of 87. A survivor of the death camp at Auschwitz, the beloved Jewish writer had devoted his life to defending the memory of the Holocaust.

I first came to know Wiesel during my undergrad years, when I chose to read his first novel Night as part of a class assignment. Looking back, I'm afraid I was first attracted to the book because it was so darned short—a mere 100 pages. But I was soon captivated by the drama of loss and longing, fear and faith and friendship in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the reception and extermination center for the concentration camp. In his novel, Wiesel told of a young Jewish man, Eliezer, who arrived at the camp with his family on a crowded cattle car. There, Eliezer and his father were "selected" to live, and were consigned to forced labor; his mother Hilda, along with his sisters Beatrice and Tzipora, were deemed less productive and so were sent to the right destined for the gas chamber.

Wiesel describes the pathos of the moment, explaining how Eliezer was separated from his mother and sisters:

Men to the left! Women to the right!

Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight short, simple words. … For a part of a second I glimpsed my mother and my sisters moving away to the right. Tzipora held Mother's hand. I saw them disappear into the distance; my mother was stroking my sister's fair hair ... and I did not know that in that place, at that moment, I was parting from my mother and Tzipora forever.

I was certain, reading that passage, that it was autobiographical. Wiesel lived in the Nazi death camp with his father, and was present—hiding in the bunk above—as his father endured a severe beating from which he could not recover.

Wiesel authored some forty books in all, including A Beggar in Jerusalem (about the Six Days War) and a play, The Trial of God. In that work, Wiesel asked the question, "Where is God when innocent human beings suffer?" The drama is set in a Ukranian village in the year 1649, and only two Jews, Berish the innkeeper and his daughter Hannah, have survived the brutal Cossack raids. Three itinerant actors arrive in town to perform a Purim play, Berish persuades them to stage a mock trial of God instead, indicting Him for His silence in the face of evil. Berish, a latter-day Job, intends to take on the role of prosecutor. But who will defend God? A mysterious stranger named Sam, who seems oddly familiar to everyone present, shows up just in time to volunteer.

The idea for this play came from an event that Elie Wiesel remembered from his boyhood in Auschwitz. Speaking of it later, he said:

“Three rabbis—all erudite and pious men—decided one evening to indict God for allowing His children to be massacred. I remember: I was there, and I felt like crying. But there nobody cried.”

Wiesel, grateful to have survived the Holocaust but devastated by the loss of so many, devoted his life to the memory of those who died. With his wife, he created the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. He held a Chair in Humanities at Boston University. In addition to the Nobel Prize, he was recognized by the U.S. Congress for his work as head of the Holocaust Memorial Council in the United States. In 2006, he refused the presidency of the State of Israel, saying that he was "just a writer."

And now the figure who captivated the world by his courage and insight, is gone. Wiesel strove, during his lifetime, to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive; and today it falls to us to continue his mission.

Another Holocaust Survivor, Trapped In His Pain

Some years ago, when my children were small, I took them to hear a Holocaust survivor speak at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan. He told of the angst upon seeing loved ones herded toward the gas chamber, or dying for lack of nutrition. He recounted memories of unallayed hunger and ruthless beatings and unbearable cruelty.

And at the end of his talk, he accepted questions from the audience. I had a question: "How," I asked, "did your faith help you in this great crisis?"

I expected him to say that God had comforted him, that his belief in eternal life had helped him to endure the hardships of this present age. But no: He stood up, face flushed with anger, his frown darkening the room. "There is no God!" he screamed. "No loving God could ever permit such a thing to happen!"

The room fell silent, and I sat there shocked—shocked that someone so old and frail, so near to the day when he would meet his Creator, could so adamantly deny His very existence. I prayed that when the time came, God would welcome him and would guide him past his lifetime of pain and anger, offering the comfort and security that had eluded him all these years.

Elie Wiesel also struggled for a time to understand why God didn't act to halt the atrocities at Auschwitz. Some of his writings reflect that questioning, even denial of God as a loving Father. But ultimately, Wiesel identified as a Jew—and his lifelong faith led him back to God. "I can be with or against the Jewish God," Wiesel said,

"...But not without God. My father was a believer, my grandfather was a believer, his father was a believer and so on. How can I break that chain?"

May God welcome Elie Wiesel home to his eternal reward. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.