Elie Wiesel

Why Did Wiesel's Night Fall Off the Bestseller List? Times Mulls New "Classics" Category

Public Editor Clark Hoyt wrote his column this weekend about the Times Bestseller List. What does it do and how does it work, he wanted to know; also, why was Elie Wiesel's Night retired from the list last month despite the fact that it was still selling well enough to chart at number nine on the paperbacks list the week before?

   read more »

Oprah, Elie: TiVos Go on Overdrive as Waldorf Fills With Swells … on a Sunday!

Oprah Winfrey and Elie Wiesel.
Getty Images
Oprah Winfrey and Elie Wiesel.

It’s hard to imagine two people whose combined influence could get more important people off their couches and over to the Waldorf-Astoria on a Sunday night (May 20) than Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel and talk-show hostess Oprah Winfrey, who was being honored by Mr. Wiesel’s foundation.  read more »

The Transom

Isn’t it Tisch? Odd Bedfellows Denise Rich and Elie Wiesel Hype Hotelier’s New Book  read more »

The Transom

Isn’t it Tisch? Odd Bedfellows Denise Rich and Elie Wiesel Hype Hotelier’s New Book  read more »

Forgiving Elie Wiesel, Somewhat, on His Opposition to Gypsies in Holocaust Museum

The Nazis' extermination of Gypsies was nearly as complete, proportionally, as the Nazis' extermination of European Jews. Yet the commemoration of Gypsy victims of the Holocaust has never come even close to the memorialization of Jewish victims.

In her fine book on gypsy life, Bury Me Standing, Isabel Fonseca describes the resistance by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council to the inclusion of Roma, or gypsy, victims of the Nazis in the museum that the council supervises in Washington.

It was only after the 1986 resignation of President Elie Wiesel, the survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, who had opposed Gypsy representation, that one Gypsy was invited onto the council...

I tended to judge Wiesel for this opposition, till a few days ago, when I read his book on his father's murder in a concentration camp, Night (1958). In it, he describes his first night in Auschwitz, after saying goodbye to his mother and one of his sisters for the last time. He and his father are moved to a barracks where Gypsy inmates assisted the German guards, or kapos. His father is suffering from colic and approaches a Gypsy to find out where the bathroom is.

The gypsy looked him up and down slowly, from head to foot. As if he wanted to convince himself that this man addressing him was really a creature of flesh and bone, a living being with a body and a belly. Then, as if he had suddenly woken up from a heavy doze, he dealt my father such a clout that he fell to the ground, crawling back to his place on all fours... I did not move... Yesterday, I should have sunk my nails into the criminal's flesh... I thought only: I shall never forgive [him] for that...
Night's great theme is the son's guilt at surviving while his father dies. It includes another scene of cruelty by Gypsies. I wish Wiesel could have gotten past his anger at Gypsies when he held a position of authority; and yet I find that I also excuse him.

Events for November 16, 2006

Time's Up! holds a press conference on the amount of taxpayer dollars spent on the police response to the Critical Mass bike rides on the steps of City Hall.

Former Czech President Vaclav Havel, former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevick, and Elie Wiesel discuss a report urging UN action on North Korean human rights violations at the UN.

The Port Authority Board of Commissioners holds their monthly meeting at Port Authority headquarters.

Andrea Stewart-Cousins, along with David Paterson, Malcolm Smith and Liz Krueger, announces the Senator-elect's victory in the 35th state senate district at the Westchester County Courthouse.

The New York Young Republican Club holds its November meeting with the New York Post's Ryan Sager at the Union League Club.

Also the City Council will release a report on "how to strengthen the State's ailing hospitals and ensure that all New Yorkers have access to affordable health care." [added].

And House Democrats vote on whether Jack Murtha or Steny Hoyer should be their majority leader[added].

—Nicole Brydson

Will Nobody Weep For All the Innocents?

Every day seems to bring forth another newspaper ad expressing solidarity with Israel.  read more »

Prince of the Church, and Prince of the City

When the 1990's were young, I asked a daily newspaper columnist who had described John Cardinal O'Co  read more »