The Jews of Silence [Paperback]

Elie Wiesel (Author), Martin Gilbert (Afterword)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 16, 2011

In the fall of 1965 the Israeli newspaper Haaretz sent a young journalist named Elie Wiesel to the Soviet Union to report on the lives of Jews trapped behind the Iron Curtain. “I would approach Jews who had never been placed in the Soviet show window by Soviet authorities,” wrote Wiesel. “They alone, in their anonymity, could describe the conditions under which they live; they alone could tell whether the reports I had heard were true or false—and whether their children and their grandchildren, despite everything, still wish to remain Jews. From them I would learn what we must do to help . . . or if they want our help at all.”
 
What he discovered astonished him: Jewish men and women, young and old, in Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad, Vilna, Minsk, and Tbilisi, completely cut off from the outside world, overcoming their fear of the ever-present KGB to ask Wiesel about the lives of Jews in America, in Western Europe, and, most of all, in Israel. They have scant knowledge of Jewish history or current events; they celebrate Jewish holidays at considerable risk and with only the vaguest ideas of what these days commemorate. “Most of them come [to synagogue] not to pray,” Wiesel writes, “but out of a desire to identify with the Jewish people—about whom they know next to nothing.” Wiesel promises to bring the stories of these people to the outside world. And in the home of one dissident, he is given a gift—a Russian-language translation of Night, published illegally by the underground. “‘My God,’ I thought, ‘this man risked arrest and prison just to make my writing available to people here!’ I embraced him with tears in my eyes.”

Editorial Reviews

Review

“One passionate outcry, both in content and in style.”
—Isaac Bashevis Singer , The New York Times Book Review

“While all religions survive precariously in the Soviet Union, Judaism struggles against singular oppression . . . Wiesel does not portray a self-pitying Soviet Jewry. Rather, he stresses the indomitable strength of their belief. His most moving images focus on the students, who by all laws of logic should have spiritually vanished into the mainstream of Mother Russia long ago.”
—The Christian Science Monitor  

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Schocken; Rev Sub edition (August 16, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805208267
• ISBN-13: 978-0805208269
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #671,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elie Wiesel is the author of more than forty books, including his unforgettable international best sellers Night and A Beggar in Jerusalem, winner of the Prix Médicis. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States Congressional Gold Medal, and the French Legion of Honor with the rank of Grand Cross. In 1986, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and University Professor at Boston University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars They would not be severed from their people, July 14, 2007

By 

Gary Selikow (Great Kush) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Jews of Silence (Paperback)

This book, is a classic testament to the brutal persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union during the dark days of Communist opression.

With both poetic and potent eloquency Wiesel describes the atmosphere of fear and silence, that reigned among Soviet Jewry during the 1960's when this book was written. The attempts to force Jews to abandon their faith and identity, and to cut ties with their brothers and sisters in Israel, by the malignant and brutal Communist tyrants. then there was the daily disparagement of the State of Israel and the maligning of Zionism by the State Media (something we see in may countries around the world today).

Indeed even though Communist tyranny in Russia has collapsed, the crusade of hate by the Left, formulated by Soviet propagandists has only got more vicious and irascible, in recent years.

In South Africa, for example, a hard-core Stalinist Cabinet Minister, (of Jewish descent) trained and educated in the old Soviet Union, daily comes up with venomous and ruthless attacks on the Jewish State and it's supporters, and is directing a campaign of ethnic hatred against Israel and it's Jews.

But the Jews of the Soviet Union refused to forget who they were, or to give up their faith or their love for the State of Israel.

Reffering to the violent anti-Israel propaganda formulated in the Soviet Union, the author explains : "The purpose of such propaganda is to make Israel seem hateful to the general populace but to the Jews as well, to undermine the esteem in which they hold the Jewish state, and to convince them finally to relinquish an idea which has failed, a vision of redemption which has somehow been made profane..."

But this form of psychological warfare, directed against the Jewish dream, and designed to divide Jews of the diaspora from their own people in Israel, failed in Russia.

Jews all over the world need to reject it, wherever it raises it's ugly head.

As Wiesel describes 'there are Jews who will under no circumstances let themselves be severed from their people'.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that helped change history, October 31, 2004

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Jews of Silence (Mass Market Paperback)

This report by Elie Weisel on the Jews of Silence helped increase greatly Western interest in the Russian Jewish community. It helped rally the Jewish world in support of the emigration movement. And eventually it helped in the liberation of the Soviet Jews from their prison. Over one million were to come to Israel in the decades ahead.

It is rare that a book has so much influence. A courageous witness like Elie Weisel deserves great credit for this historical ' miracle'.