Elie Wiesel: Messenger to All Humanity, Revised Edition [Hardcover]

Elie Wiesel: Messenger to All Humanityis a call to both Christians and Jews to face the tragedy of the Holocaust and begin again.

Robert McAfee Brown was a friend of Wiesel and wrote Elie Wiesel: Messenger to All Humanity to process his own thoughts, engage with Wiesels thinking, and inspire others to read and engage with Wiesels own works. First published in 1983, this book grapples with the horrors of the Holocaust without overshadowing or speaking over Jewish survivors. Brown writes with care and sensitivity and does not shy away from the true magnitude of the tragedy and suffering. As he says in the introduction, Although we cannot enter Elie Wiesel's world, we can let him enter ours. This text lets Wiesel enter our world and allows us to learn from him through the eyes, ears, and heart of a friend.

How is contact made between Elie Wiesel's world,l'univers concentrationnaire, and our world?

The connecting link is story.

Elie Wiesel is not a historian (though he deals with the stuff of history), nor is he a collector of data (though every line he writes provides data for a new geography of the soul and of hell) , nor a systematician (though systematic reflection can follow from his words. No, he is a teller of tales. You want to know about the kingdom of night? There is no way to describe the kingdom of night. But let me tell you a story . . . . You want to know about the condition of the human heart? There is no way to describe the condition of the human heart. But let me tell you a story . . . You want a description of the indescribable? There is no way to describe the indescribable. But let me tell you a story . . . .

If we are to learn from Elie Wiesel, we must listen to stories. His stories. They challenge our stories. They open horizons we had never seen before. They smash barriers we had thought were impregnable. They leave us desolate. They also bind us in new and deeper relationshil“/