All Rivers Run to the Sea by Elie Wiesel

First published:Tous les fleuves vont à la mer, 1994, in France (first pb. in US, 1995)

The Work

Taking the title of his autobiography from Ecclesiastes, Elie Wiesel presents the important people and events of his life, beginning with his childhood in Sighet, Romania, and culminating in his 1969 marriage in Jerusalem. Wiesel, through stories and remembrances, tells of a family full of piety, moral courage, and selfless devotion to Judaism. From his mother and grandmother, Elie learned goodness and love; from his grandfather, the Jewish legends he would later use in fiction and essays; from his father, rectitude and altruism. His teachers, at various times of his life, inculcated in him a reverence for learning, an exactness in biblical or philosophical discourse, and above all the joy, sadness, and truth of the old masters.

World War II and the persecution of the Jews destroyed Wiesel’s idyllic world forever. He and his family were taken to Auschwitz. He later was transferred to Buchenwald. Unable to understand German cruelty, angry at those who did not intervene on the victims’ behalf, angry too at God for letting it happen, Wiesel emerged alive after terrible trials. At age seventeen he was endowed with a special knowledge of life and death.

Shortly after his liberation from Buchenwald he went to France, where he eventually enrolled at the university, enduring hardship and contemplating suicide. Saved by Zionist fervor, he worked as a journalist for an Israeli newspaper in Paris. A crucial meeting with novelist François Mauriac in 1955 was to decide his literary career: Mauriac encouraged him to break his self-imposed silence about his experience in concentration camps and found a publisher for Wiesel’s first novel, La Nuit (1958; Night, 1960), to which he contributed the foreword.

After Wiesel moved to New York to become his newspaper’s American correspondent, he soon applied for U.S. citizenship. In a series of amusing anecdotes he describes his life in a Jewish American milieu. He also tells of his relations with his French publishers and of his meeting with Marion, his future wife and translator. More moving and bittersweet are his return to his native town, where relatives and friends have disappeared and only the ghosts of his youth remain; his personal and literary campaign for Russian Jewry; the fear caused by the Six-Day War of 1967, since it could have meant the end of Israel and the Jewish dream; and his prayer of thanksgiving at the newly liberated Wailing Wall.

Throughout, a celebration of life and of the great Hasidic teachers and thinkers as well as a moral and ethical strength permeates Wiesel’s conduct and writings over his first forty years. In memorializing his relatives and friends and in bearing witness to their passing, he leaves his own mark behind.

Sources for Further Study

Berenbaum, Michael. Elie Wiesel: God, the Holocaust, and the Children of Israel. West Orange, N.J.: Behrman House, 1994. This reprint of The Vision of the Void, Berenbaum’s thoughtful 1979 study of Elie Wiesel, emphasizes Wiesel’s insights about Jewish tradition.

Berger, Alan L. Crisis and Covenant: The Holocaust in American Jewish Fiction. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985. Contains important reflections on Wiesel’s encounters with and impact on American Jewish life.

Brown, Robert McAfee. Elie Wiesel: Messenger to All Humanity. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983. A leading Christian theologian provides an important overview and interpretation of Wiesel’s multifaceted writing.

Cargas, Harry James. Conversations with Elie Wiesel. South Bend, Ind.: Justice Books, 1992. An updated and expanded edition of Cargas’s 1976 interviews with Wiesel, this important book features Wiesel speaking not only about the Holocaust but also about his audience, craft, and mission as a witness and writer.

Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven. By Words Alone: The Holocaust in Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Ezrahi insightfully discusses Wiesel’s writings in the context of a wide range of Holocaust literature.

Gornick, Vivian. “The Rhetoric of Witness.” The Nation 261, no. 22 (December 25, 1995): 839.

Horowitz, Sara. Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Contains a helpful discussion of Wiesel’s emphasis on the importance of memory.

Kakutani, Michiko. “Remembering as a Duty of Those Who Survived.” The New York Times, December 5, 1995, p. A19.

Kolbert, Jack. The Worlds of Elie Wiesel: An Overview of His Career and His Major Themes. Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 2001.

Langer, Lawrence L. The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975. A leading Holocaust scholar interprets Wiesel’s work in ways that are insightful and accessible.

Patterson, David. The Shriek of Silence: A Phenomenology of the Holocaust Novel. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992. Patterson’s book explores the distinctive ways in which Wiesel wrestles with the theme of silence as a feature of the Holocaust and its aftermath.

Phillips, Melanie. “Bearing Witness: Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel Explains the Importance of Memory to Melanie Phillips.” The Observer, June 9, 1996, p. 16.

Rittner, Carol, ed. Elie Wiesel: Between Memory and Hope. New York: New York University Press, 1990. Philosophers, theologians, and literary critics respond to the ethical, religious, and philosophical themes explored in Wiesel’s diverse writings.

Rosen, Alan, ed. Celebrating Elie Wiesel: Stories, Essays, Reflections. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998. Distinguished scholars reflect on the ethical and religious dimensions of Wiesel’s essays and novels.

Roth, John K. A Consuming Fire: Encounters with Elie Wiesel and the Holocaust. Atlanta, Ga.: John Knox Press, 1979. This book explores key philosophical and religious themes in Wiesel’s authorship, drawing out their implications for post-Holocaust Christianity.

Stern, Ellen N. Elie Wiesel: Witness for Life. New York: Ktav, 1982.

Wiesel, Elie, and Richard D. Heffner. Conversations with Elie Wiesel. Edited by Thomas J. Vinciguerra. New York: Schocken Books, 2001. A dialog between Wiesel and his interviewer. Offers the reader a wide-ranging discussion in which Wiesel touches on tolerance, nationalism, and state-endorsed killing.

Zesmer, David M. “Not Quite an Icon: The Complex Private Self of Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel.” Chicago Tribune, December 31, 1995, p. 1.