Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire, the new documentary portrait of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Holocaust survivor, and Jewish writer who devoted his life to sharing the story of what millions of his fellow victims couldn’t, received the Yad Vashem Award and was just shown at the Docaviv Festival.
The documentary opens with a telling quote from Wiesel: “Whoever listens to a witness, becomes a witness.” That encapsulates his life’s mission: He wanted to create a world of witnesses, and he did so by bringing the story of the tragedy of the Holocaust to millions.
But living a life filled with this sense of mission took a toll on him, personally, and on those around him, as this candid and very compelling documentary by Oren Rudavsky shows.
The film came about because the director’s friend, author and Holocaust film historian Annette Insdorf, who was close to the Wiesel family, had been getting requests from filmmakers who wanted to tell Wiesel’s story since he died in 2016. But she felt that Rudavsky and his late partner, Menachem Daum, who collaborated on such documentaries as Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust, would be a good fit for a Wiesel film.
“The process of making a film is partially by choice, partially by chance, and partially whether you can raise the money to make it,” Rudavsky said. He decided to make the film despite all the obstacles.
“I think a figure like Elie Wiesel is somebody whose message of tolerance and speaking up in times of crisis is very relevant today,” he said. “His kind, prophetic, messianic way he spoke is very… well, timely is the wrong word because he’s timeless, I think.”
A daunting task
Rudavsky admitted that it was a challenge to create a film portrait of a man who was so revered by many. His mother had studied with Wiesel at Boston University, and his parents had Wiesel’s books. As he read over Wiesel’s works, such as Night, an autobiographical novel about his Holocaust experiences, and watched many of Wiesel’s speeches, he said, “It was daunting – absolutely!”
But after he gained the trust of Wiesel’s widow, Marion, who recently passed away, and his son, Elisha, who told him their stories and were honest about how difficult it could be to be close to Wiesel and to be in his shadow, he began to formulate a structure for the film.
THE DOCUMENTARY uses rare photographs and clips, as well as interviews with his family members and short animations to tell the story of Wiesel’s happy childhood in the heart of a close-knit Jewish community he was born into in 1928 in Sighet, a village which was alternately part of Romania and Hungary.
He was encouraged by his parents to study both Torah and literature, and he spoke multiple languages. “As in a dusty mirror, I look at my childhood and wonder if it really was mine,” Wiesel says in the film.
He shares his vivid memories of how his family was put in a ghetto under Nazi rule and then deported to Auschwitz when he was 14. His mother instructed him not to stay with her and his three sisters but to go to the men’s camp with his father.
The father and son were able to stay together through the concentration camp, a death march, and Buchenwald, where his father eventually died, and Wiesel recalls his anguish at being helpless as his father passed away.
Taken to a Jewish children’s home in France following the war, he realized that the Holocaust experience would always be a key part of who he was.
“Whether we want it or not, we are still living in the era of the Holocaust. The language is still the language of the Holocaust. The fears are linked to it. The perspectives, unfortunately, are tied to it,” he said in a speech years later.
His parents and younger sister were killed in the war, but he was reunited with his older sisters afterward, and one of them is interviewed in the film. For about 10 years, he did not talk or speak about the war, studying at the Sorbonne and working as a journalist.
Eventually, in response to encouragement from the author Francois Mauriac, he wrote a long book on the war in Yiddish, The World Was Silent, which he then shortened and translated into French, changing its title to Night.
The documentary dramatizes, through its animations, some of the most horrific moments from the book. “Why do I write?” Wiesel says to an interviewer. “What else could I do? I write to bear witness.”
He went on to write many more books, including novels, autobiographies, and memoirs, and his fame grew. But the movie details how he remained isolated from others, resolving not to become close to anyone until he met Marion, a translator, whom he married.
WHILE HE traveled the world speaking about his life and his writings, he had a special moment in the spotlight in 1985 when he opposed then-president Ronald Reagan’s visit to a military cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, that contained graves of SS officers.
While Reagan seemed not to have known about the presence of the SS graves when he was first invited there, Reagan compounded the faux pas by saying that these SS members were victims of the Nazis “just as surely as” those who were killed in the death camps.
The planning of the Bitburg visit coincided with the moment when Wiesel was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by Reagan. In a small meeting, which was caught on tape and is included in the documentary, and in a public speech when accepting the medal, Wiesel very respectfully – but very directly – challenged the president, imploring him not to lay a wreath on the graves of those who murdered his family and millions of others.
“This medal is not mine alone. It belongs to all those who remember what SS killers have done to their victims… While I feel responsible for the living, I feel equally responsible to the dead. Their memory dwells in my memory. Forty years ago, a young man woke up and found himself an orphan in an orphaned world.
“What have I learned in those 40 years? I learned the perils of language and those of silence. I learned that in extreme situations, when human lives and dignity are at stake, neutrality is a sin. It helps the killers, not the victims. But I’ve also learned that suffering confers no privileges. It all depends on what one does with it,” he said.
He went on to say, “I, too, wish to truly attain reconciliation with the German people. I do not believe in collective guilt nor in collective responsibility. Only the killers were guilty; their sons and daughters are not, and I believe, Mr. President, that we can and we must work together with them and with all people, and we must work to bring peace and understanding to a tormented world that, as you know, is still awaiting redemption.”
Rudavsky said he was impressed by “that speech, which I consider as one of his top few speeches. His eloquence, the whole circumstance considering where we are now with our politics… the way he spoke so gently and persuasively to President Reagan...”
The film shows important moments in Wiesel's life
The film goes on to show Wiesel’s speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in 1986 and other important moments, such as his visit to Auschwitz with Oprah Winfrey, who featured him on her show.
“He always saw himself as a teacher,” said Rudavsky, and one of the highlights of the film is a scene in which a class of African-American high school students in the US discuss Night, completely engaged by it.
As he worked to finance the film, Rudavsky said he was grateful to a number of his producing partners, among them the Claims Conference, Jewish Story Partners, the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, the Public Broadcasting Service’s American Masters, and Patti Askwith Kenner.
The film has been shown at and will be shown at Jewish film festivals in America, and Rudvasky is hopeful for a limited theatrical release of the film in the fall in the US. Eventually, it will be shown on the PBS American Masters series. It has won Audience awards at several US film festivals and will likely turn up on one of Israel’s documentary channels.
Asked at a recent screening – and virtually all screenings – what Wiesel would say about what’s happening in the world today, Rudavsky said, “I can’t speak for Elie, but he would be crying for those who are suffering.”