Elie Wiesel, a "witness for humanity". Who was Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)? He survived the Holocaust as a teenager, wrote numerous literary works, taught at Boston University, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his commitment to peace, reconciliation, and human dignity.

Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Hungary (now Romania) as part of a Hasidic Jewish family. In the spring of 1944, Sighet was declared a ghetto and the Wiesel family was deported to Auschwitz. Only he and two of his three sisters survived the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel was liberated from the small camp in Buchenwald on April 11, 1945.

After a decade, he broke his silence and put his experiences in the camps into words for the first time: In 1956, the testimony Un di Welt hot geschwign (And the world was silent), written in Yiddish, was published. The release of an abridged form of it, titled Night in 1958 quickly earned notoriety and cemented his success as a writer.

Since 1956, Elie Wiesel lived in the United States, where he wrote many works commemorating the victims of the Shoah and raised the question of God's and man's responsibility for evil. He was an advisor to American Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan as chairman of the Washington Holocaust Commission. Elie Wiesel was particularly committed to the rights of Jews in the Soviet Union.

Elie Wiesel died on July 2, 2016.

This and much more was presented last Thursday evening by Valesca Baert-Knoll and Dr. Elisabeth Migge, two research assistants of the Research Center, to the university groups in Tübingen and Heidelberg. After a great introduction to his life and work, everyone had the possibility to talk to each other about text excerpts from Wiesel’s book The Town beyond the Wall (in German translation: Gezeiten des Schweigens) and a new translation of Night.

The passages of the impressive and modest man left no one untouched and a great and personal exchange resulted.

On July 12, 2022, the Elie Wiesel Research Center presented its new translation of Night: Memory and Testimony to the press. Shoah Survivor Elie Wiesel’s (1928-2016) Night is one of the best-known literary testimonies of the Holocaust. Recently, scholars at the Elie Wiesel Research Center and other contributors retranslated this work to ensure it remains accurate to the original text. This new translation corrects previously mistranslated terms and includes a special glossary that explains Jewish terms, camp language, and Nazi terminology with the help of a map depicting the most essential places in Elie Wiesel’s life. This addition to the new translation aims to facilitate academic studies of the piece for adolescents and young adults. Joining the event as a guest speaker was Dr. Michael Blume, Commissioner for Combatting anti-Semitism in the state of Baden-Württemberg, who emphasized the importance of Night to remembrance ant its ability to impact people today. The new translation of Night was reported on regionally (Schwäbisches Tagblatt), nationally (Jüdische Allgemeine), and also abroad in New York (Leo Baeck Institute).

The Elie Wiesel Research Center presented its current projects in a poster presentation at the Baden-Württemberg Foundation’s 22^nd Research Day, themed “Mission Science?!”. The Baden-Württemberg Foundation’s Research Day is a major research funding event at which all researchers with projects funded by the foundation are given the space to network and exchange knowledge. The event attracts many distinguished guests from the sciences, business, and politics.

The Elie Wiesel Research Center’s

poster

"More than five years have passed since my father died, but his words have never been more important than now. It is still common to hate Jews in the name of left-wing or right-wing ideologies. Our world is still dominated by violence. I am grateful that this new German translation is being made available to a new generation of readers so that the teachings of Night can continue to work against evil."

Elisha Wiesel

On June 20, 2019, the annual meeting of the Elie Wiesel Research Center (FEW) took place at the Riverside Hotel in Berlin. The discussion focused on planning the first publication of the German translation of Un di Welt hot geshwign. Marion Eichelsdörfer, a certified Yiddish scholar who translated Un di Welt hot geshwign into German during her dissertation project, shared her latest research findings, and presented excerpts from her translation. The team then discussed how upcoming publications of Elie Wiesel's complete works would be reviewed and edited by the Research Center. In this regard, Prof. Reinhold Boschki presented the current state of the new translation of La Nuit. We hope to begin publishing Elie Wiesel's autobiographical writings, opening with Un di Welt hot geshwign in the fall of 2020.

In addition to the scholarly exchange, two international conferences have been planned for 2020 and 2021, which the FEW will host in Berlin/Potsdam and Tübingen

The Elie Wiesel Research Center convened for an international symposium on "The Genesis of Night" from September 3-5, 2019, at the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg in Berlin. The symposium was chaired by Prof. Dr. Daniel Krochmalnik (University of Potsdam) and Prof. Dr. Reinhold Boschki (University of Tübingen), and featured guest and keynote speaker Dr. Yoel Rappel, Director of the Elie Wiesel Archive at Boston University. The first two days focused on exchanges and discussions between the Elie Wiesel Research Center (FEW) and Dr. Rappel Yoel on the genesis of the Survivor's Report Night. The symposium included presentations by individual members of the FEW on their current research. Marion Eichelsdörfer presented excerpts from her translation of Un di Welt hot geshwign. Valesca Baert-Knoll explained the editorial procedure for the upcoming publication of Wiesel's autobiographical writings in the Elie Wiesel Werksausgabe (EWW) - a complete collection of Elie Wiesel’s work. The conference concluded with a visit to the Buchenwald Memorial, where Elie Wiesel first started writing his account of survival.

Yoel Rappel first met Elie Wiesel in New York in 1983, where they built a strong friendship and a foundation for their academic collaborations. Rappel worked for a long time as Wiesel's research assistant. Rappel later founded the Elie Wiesel Archive at Boston University and has served as its director since its establishment. Through his close collaborations with Wiesel and years of professional engagement with Wiesel's work as a journalist, historian, and author, Rappel was able to provide profound insight into the genesis of Night.

This is of great importance to some of FEW's biggest ongoing projects: The new translation and edition of Nacht, the first German translation and edition of Un di Welt hot geshwign, and an extensive Yiddish version of Night. One of the central issues discussed at the symposium concerned the controversy over the original version of Night. Was it first written in Hebrew or Yiddish? What historical interdependencies rely on the answer? These discussions led to a further question that is equally relevant for our upcoming edition of the work: How should we, as scholars, deal with textual differences among versions and languages (e.g., Yiddish, Hebrew, French, English, etc.) in terms of authenticity? What conclusions can we draw from the differences? As Wiesel’s work is built in concentric circles around Night these questions will largely inform our editing and assessment of upcoming editions of his work.

Acknowledging that conferences can be held remotely, the FEW held a team meeting over Skype on December 12, 2018. Staff members joined from Jerusalem, Tübingen, Heidelberg, and Potsdam to join Prof. Reinhold Boschki in conversations with scholars and Elie Wiesel experts in Israel about our planned historical-critical edition of Elie Wiesel’s complete works. Through hours of discussion, it became clear that our project is both well received and supported. In our meeting, we also decided to plan a conference for later in the year to which we would like to invite experts on the work and life of Elie Wiesel from Berlin and Potsdam. We will take this conference as an opportunity to present our colleague Marion Eichelsdörfer’s in-progress translation of Un di Welt hot geschwign, which she is undertaking for her doctoral project. After the conference, we plan to publish a volume of knowledge and current projects from the experts who participated. This will provide an incentive for experts to participate and enable us to make recent studies and works more easily accessible to the public.