Elie Wiesel Admits His True Holocaust Stories Never Happened?

• Elie Wiesel Admits His True Holocaust Stories Never Happened?
  by Carolyn Yeager, http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com/  
  The pieces to the puzzle of Elie Wiesel and his book Night will never come together to form a coherent image.  Readers and critics have long puzzled over the nightmarishly grotesque events that Wiesel presents as real, and refuses to repudiate. But he has actually given us the explanation all along—it’s just that it’s one so many don’t want to believe.
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  In his autobiography, Wiesel recounts a time when, visiting Israel, he went to see the “young” Rebbe of Wizhnitz, whose father he remembered with reverence from his childhood. At the end of the visit, which took two pages (273-75) to tell, the Rebbe questioned the young writer without being satisfied with his answers. Then:
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  The conversation became more relaxed. He asked me about my work. He wanted to know if the stories I told in my books were true, had they really happened. I answered not too convincingly: “In literature, Rebbe, certain things are true though they didn’t happen, while others are not, even if they did.”
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  I would have loved to have received his blessing.1
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  Notice that he first says he is writing “literature”2, not faithful accounts of his own experience. Next, we understand that by withholding his blessing, the noted Hasidic rabbi conveyed he was not pleased with the evasive answers of the Hasidic Jew Elie Wiesel. Wiesel himself says his answer to the final question was “not too convincing.” And finally, since Wiesel admits that he writes about things that never happened as being true, we can’t even be sure that this event happened, can we. This is the problem with everything in the life and work of Elie Wiesel.
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  In a book first published in 1968, Legends of Our Time, Wiesel tells the story of that same visit to the rabbi this way: The Rebbe is troubled to learn that Wiesel has become a writer, and wants to know what he writes. “Stories,” Wiesel tells him, “…true stories”:
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  About people you knew? “Yes, about people I might have known.” About things that happened? “Yes, about things that happened or could have happened.” But they did not? “No, not all of them did. In fact, some were invented from almost the beginning to almost the end.” The Rebbe leaned forward as if to measure me up and said with more sorrow than anger: That means you are writing lies! I did not answer immediately. The scolded child within me had nothing to say in his defense. Yet, I had to justify myself: “Things are not that simple, Rebbe. Some events do take place but are not true; others are—although they never occurred.”
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  What are we to make of this? Truth loses all meaning; Wiesel acknowledges he tells tales that he wants you and me to believe really happened when he himself knows they didn’t. He doesn’t apologize either. He justifies. He deflects the rabbi’s sharp moral denunciation with his own measure of pseudo-mystification, in spite of the fact that his rebbe sees through him. And that is the way he is with the public too—even though it is understood by the intelligent critics that he is writing fiction, he keeps up the “witness” pretense for the gullible and the young.
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  In another book, One Generation After, first published in 1965, he wrote the same thing. He referred to it in a conversation with Giles Lapouge in 1970, which became a chapter in the book edited by Robert Franciosi, Elie Wiesel: Conversations (2012). The chapter was titled “Elie Wiesel, The Witness.” On page 33, Lapouge quotes Wiesel:
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  In [my] book “One Generation After” there is a sentence which perhaps explains my idea: “Certain events happen, but they are not true. Others, on the other hand, are, but they never happen.” So! I undergo certain events and, starting from my experience, I describe incidents which may or may not have happened, but which are true. I do believe that it is very important that there be witnesses always and everywhere.
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  There you have it—Wiesel’s method. He makes it up! And the overarching purpose of his efforts is to contribute to the well-being of the Jewish State of Israel. To Wiesel this is the greatest cause of all, for which he offers his writing ability to contribute to the “Holocaust” stories that are so crucial to Israel’s success. In this, Wiesel has joined a horde of other Jews who do the same, copying from one another, but no other “witness testimony” has had the impact of Night.
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  read more.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y55i4icwHM]

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