was born in Romania. At the age of 16, he was deported, along with his family, to Nazi concentration camps. He survived, but his mother, father, and a sister did not. Later, he became a voice for victims of the camps, and has written more than 40 works dealing with the Holocaust, Judaism, and the moral responsibility of all people to fight hatred, racism, and genocide. In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping people learn "how not to succumb to despair."
For the last 25 years, Professor Wiesel has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, where Kim Shippey asked him how, during his time in prison, he had kept his faith.
I don't owe those I live with my despair. I owe them what I can do with it.
I don't think I did, really. I think I was angry. But my anger itself was part of my faith. I think faith that is not sensitive to other people's pain and one's own has something wrong with it. . . . In my memoirs and in my first book, Night, I wrote about faith that is tested. Abraham was tested ten times. Moses was tested. We are all tested.
I believe this is true of all people who have faith. . . .
After the war, I realized that I had never really lost my faith. I was angry within my faith. I was a rebel in my faith. And I realized that I owe something to those I live with, be they my students, or my friends, or my family, or my readers. I don't owe them my despair. . . . I owe them my despair. . . . I owe them what I can do with it. . . . Bitterness is self-destructive, as is hatred. If I am bitter, what is the use of my bitterness to other people? What can they do with it?
You've said peace is our gift to each other.
Peace is something that we can only find first in ourselves. And then we can share it with others. It's too easy to say God gives us peace. No, I must give peace. I must create peace. I must work for peace.
Do you believe in God?
I have faith in God. Absolutely.
Are you a religious person?
I don't speak often about religion—mine, for instance, my own religious practice. I don't want to divide people. To me, a person is a person. But since you ask, I must answer you. I am. I come from a religious background. I am not as religious as I was when I was young, in my little town; and my faith is not as entire, as whole; and my practice is not as I would like it to be, as it was. But nevertheless, I do pray. I do things that I think my father would have wanted me to do.
You've also stressed the importance of gratitude.
I believe in the virtue of gratitude. I think, for every person, gratitude is probably the most important response. To be able to say "thank you." In my religion, the first thing you do in the morning is say "Thank you, God, for waking me, for my being alive." And I say it to all people. . . . I spend my time it to waiters, drivers, those who serve me. They have my gratitude all the time, and my students even more so.
Do the young people you teach have a faith?
Do they have hope?
I don't like to generalize, but I can tell that my students are extraordinary. I learn so much from them, and with them, that it's almost my reward. I don't need to be paid for teaching. They teach me that I'm still a student. I'm their older student, maybe their oldest. I'm now writing a book called My Teachers and My Friends, and there I speak in general about my concept of friendship, my concept of teaching—of being a disciple.
How have your students enriched you?
I learn from them. I teach them how to listen, and then I listen to their words. I teach them respect. I teach by example. I've been a professor for 30 years, and I don't think anyone has been embarrassed or humiliated in my presence. And that I learned from them. It's how they are treating each other. It's not me doing that. That respect is what they have in themselves.
Do you still face tests in your life?
I BELIEVE EVERY DAY for me is a test.
Are you passing these tests?
Who knows? Every line I write is a test for me. Each time I enter the classroom it's a new test. I know the test is there. Sometimes I feel good about it because I see my students, I imagine my readers, and I think of children . . . and I feel that what I am doing must be useful—otherwise I wouldn't be able to do it. At the same time, I know it's never enough. . . . These are very small miracles. Daily miracles.
Just as a man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future."
Elie Wiesel
Nobel Peace Prize
Acceptance Speech,
December 11, 1986
