Death of author, Holocaust survivor inspires reflection

By Kate Hayden | A&E Editor

We’re going to take a quick detour in this week’s Community Bookshelf.

Nobel laureate, Holocaust survivor and journalist Elie Wiesel died early this month at the age of 87. Wiesel lived through horrors we can barely imagine today, and penned not one book (“Night”) but multiple that are now taught in classrooms worldwide. He was a literary prize winner and a behind-the-scenes observer of both the worst darkness, and the brightest change it inspired.

“‘Night’ was so bleak that publishers doubted it would appeal to readers”, the Chicago Tribune recalled this month, but Wiesel’s book went on to become one of two defining pieces of writing for the Holocaust genre — alongside Anne Frank’s diary, which ends abruptly before Frank and her family was arrested. Wiesel was among the first accounts to enter bring the details of Nazi camps to the general public. He went on to author or co-author over 60 books, and found the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

If you’ve never ventured beyond “Night” and are curious about Wiesel’s life, or more on the Holocaust in general, try picking up one of these books:

1. “All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs” by Elie Wiesel (1995)
2. “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak (2005)
3. “Dawn” by Elie Wiesel (1961)
4. “In My Hands: Memoirs of a Holocaust Rescuer” by Irene Gut Opdyke with Jennifer Armstrong (1992)
5. “Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields” by Wendy Lower (2013)