From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences » (~)

Since his unprecedented memoir Night woke up the world to the atrocities of the Holocaust in 1958, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel has dedicated his days to turning his survival story from one of horror to one of hope. From several works inspired by his experience to his insightful reflections in After the Darkness, Wiesel s work serves to both admonish and inspire.

"One of the great writers of our generation" (The New Republic) weaves together memories of his life before the Holocaust and his great struggle to find meaning afterwards. Included are Wiesel's landmark speeches, among them his powerful testimony at the trial of Klaus Barbie and his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

Publishers Weekly

In these moving essays and speeches, Wiesel swings between outbursts of eloquence and the quiet, insightful conversations one might share with an old friend. His searing account of a trip to Auschwitz, Treblinka and Birkenau, many years after the war, encapsulates the enormity of the Holocaust. In another essay he castigates ``revisionist'' scholars who would explain away Hitler's crimes by lumping them with Stalin's. Included are his plea to former president Reagan not to visit Bitburg cemetery, his testimony at the trial of Nazi murderer Klaus Barbie and his 1986 Nobel lecture in Oslo, a dark meditation on the fanaticism, racism and political repression rampant in the world. On a more personal note, Wiesel revisits the Transylvanian town where he grew up, poignantly recalling his simple, unquestioning boyhood faith. Other pieces deal with friendship, Jewish rituals, Hitler's perversion of language, and the modern predicament--``knowledge has replaced love, machines have killed imagination.'' (Aug.)

Why I Write To Believe or Not to Believe Inside a Library The Stranger in the Bible A Celebration of Friendship Peretz Markish Dialogues Pilgrimage to the Kingdom of Night Sighet Again Kaddish in Cambodia Making the Ghosts Speak Passover Meeting Again Trivializing Memory Bitburg Testimony at the Barbie Trial When Memory Brings People Together More Dialogues What Really Makes Us Free?
Are We Afraid of Peace?
The Nobel Address The Nobel Lecture