Nobel-Laureate Elie Wiesel divides his memoirs into 10 segments starting with his childhood in Transylvania in the 1930's and ending in present-day Jerusalem. He is haunted by dreams of his dead family; his father and grandfather, his mother and grandmother and younger sister.
Click here to see the rest of this review...
After he was liberated from the concentration camp, Wiesel was sent to France where he received an education and recovered his religious fervor. Later, he became a journalist, joining a secretive Yiddish weekly, an organ of the Irgun, a resistance movement in Israel. As such, he was able to travel to Israel and observe the fight for Independence in 1947.
In Israel, Wiesel found little attention paid to the Holocaust. "Six hundred of us defeated six Arab armies," he was told. He became a correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth, the smallest of Israel's daily papers and sailed back to Paris. To supplement his meager income, he became a sumultaneous translator. At one of his assignments at a Geneva conference, he heard Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish congress accept an offer of reparations from Germany in exchange for the promise that Israel would not mention German war crimes. Elie Wiesel quit his job as translator to report this shocking capitulation for his newspaper.
On the question of forgiveness, Wiesel writes, "I could conceivably forgive the evil the Germans did to me personally, but not the suffering and death they inflicted on my parents, on all the dead Jewish parents and all their murdered children."
In New York, where he went as a foreign correspondent, Wiesel landed a job witht he most presigious most widely read Yiddish daily, the Forward, (now a weekly), and became a U.S. citizen. He compares the ease with which he received his papers witht he complicated bureaucracy of France where he lived for many years.
Wiesel concludes his memoirs in Jerusalem where he marries Marion at age 40 and has a child.
The review of this Book prepared by B.J. Korson
Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, Dawn, and various other books dealing with the holocaust and Jews, brings to us his personal collection of memoirs. Part 1 in a two-volume series, this book goes in depth with Wiesel - his childhood, concentration camp life, his wanting to kill himself, right up to the day he gets married. Wiesel really lets us get inside his head. We find out about his childhood friends, his relationship with relatives, and his crushes on various women. It's a very eye-opening book for those who want to read more on this extraordinary man.
The review of this Book prepared by Megan
Elie Wiesel begins All Rivers Run to the Sea with his experience growing up in Sighet, and then briefly touches on his experiences in Auschwitz. The book talks about his experiences as a student and journalist in France after the war, his move to New York City, experiences in Israel, and his American citizenship. All Rivers Run to the Sea is a dialogue between Wiesel and his readers. It inspires questions about humanity, religion, and scholarship while providing a moving account of how Elie Wiesel became a writer and human rights figure.
The review of this Book prepared by loveandsqualor9
