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A new documentary on Elie Wiesel brings the late Nobel Laureate’s life to audiences today. Wiesel is known for his best-selling memoir, Night, about surviving the Holocaust, reminding viewers that “time erases memories.”
The late author’s son, Elisha, is traveling the country to make sure that people remember his father’s experience. He spent time with east Idaho and Jackson high school students on March 10 and hosted a screening of the documentary, “Soul on Fire,” together with the Jackson Hole Jewish Community.
Before the screening, he and his son Elijah joined KHOL’s Evan Robinson-Johnson in the studio to discuss the significance of the holocaust during a time of rising antisemitism and global conflict.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. – Ed.
Evan Robinson-Johnson: Elisha and Elijah, thank you for spending time with us.
Elisha Weisel: We’re thrilled to be here.
ERJ: You spent this afternoon with students at Jackson Hole High School, what was your message to them?
Elisha: Our message was that my father and his legacy is not just about Holocaust memory. It’s really about what it means to have a moral responsibility in the world, lenses through which to view current events, and really a sense of, could this happen again? How do we avoid it? And what does all this mean? So I always say that the book “Night,” which my father wrote, itself is a question. And I was very pleased that we heard many excellent questions from the students today.
ERJ: Surveys in recent years seem to suggest that knowledge of the Holocaust is waning, with some respondents in the U.S. and Europe even suggesting the genocide is a myth. Does that concern you?
Elisha: Of course it concerns me. Holocaust denial is certainly a plank of antisemitism, but it concerns more in a broader context of history. I think that we’re not doing as good a job of teaching history. In terms of Holocaust education, I don’t think it can or should be our only defense against antisemitism. If it’s the only game in town, we’re gonna have a problem, because it really only relates to things that happened a long time ago. To really fight antisemitism, we have to engage with people’s expectations and understanding of Jews as they live today.
Elijah: I would like to add on to that modern Holocaust education doesn’t talk about what the Jewish life in Europe was like before World War II and before the 1930s. It doesn’t talk about the massive communities in Europe that were uprooted in a matter of weeks, like my grandfather’s hometown of Seget [Croatia], which had a vibrant Jewish community, a third of the population was Jewish and people would come from all over the region to have their books printed in Seget. And then all of that was wiped away in like three or four weeks. That’s what’s missed.
ERJ: Is that why it was important for you to make this documentary?
Elisha: My mother and I decided to make the film shortly after my father died because we felt that we were just worried that his legacy needed to be preserved. We wanted to make sure that a new generation who maybe wasn’t reading books as much needed to have access to it. And, therefore, it was important to get into that media. My father had left strict instructions that his book “Night” was never to be turned into a film. He was very concerned about the thought that any creative would interpose themselves between him and his reader, so it wasn’t going to be a retelling of “Night,” but to tell his broader story, his broader arc, that was something we felt needed to be done.
ERJ: You appear in the film alongside your mother, Marion Wiesel. What was it like making the movie together?
Elisha: It was, I’d say, a little concerning. It’s hard to hand over to someone the rights. But I’m extremely glad that we did it when we did because my mother passed last year, and I think getting her on camera was extremely important to have her voice on the record.
ERJ: Do you both have a favorite scene?
Elijah: This is gonna sound a little narcissistic — I like the scene that I’m in because I remember it was a very meaningful trip. Oren Rudavsky, the producer of the film, flew me out to Romania two and a half years ago and for me that was a very moving trip. I’d been to Sighet before but this time I was there as an older person, I went there six years ago, seven years ago. Being there was very just impactful. And I like being able to see that some of those moments were caught on camera.
ERJ: And what about for you?
Elisha: For me, I got to say, Oren did such a good job with the archives. He brought forth stuff I had never seen before. I didn’t know, for example, that the way my father was reunited with his older sister after the war was because she had seen a photograph of him at the orphanage in France playing a game of chess. And Oren actually found that exact photo. And that was very meaningful to me. I had known that they regrouped because she’d heard he was in France, but to see the exact mechanism, in the exact photograph. That prompted her to take a train going to Paris and have them reunite was very powerful.
ERJ: Jackson Hole is a uniquely isolated but global community. Why was it important for you to show ‘Soul on Fire” here?
Elisha: I think Jackson Hole, like the rest of this country, is at the center of a nation that is undergoing so much discussion. You look at our current political debates and what’s framing them. We as a country right now are debating everything from immigration. How do we conduct immigration ethically? How do we allow for asylum for the people that are in need? How do we enforce our borders when we have people who are living here illegally? How do we conduct ourselves as a police force in a way that is in keeping with our morals, but also the job that needs to get done. We’re grappling with issues overseas. The U.S. is now engaged in a war with Iran. There’s a lot of opinions. There’s a lot of misinformation. There’s a lot of missing history. And when you bring a perspective like my father’s, who was so grateful to the U. S. military for having ultimately intervened, for having ultimately rescued him in the liberation of Buchenwald [concentration camp] in early April 1945. And you think about the fact that there’s an Iranian regime that has pledged to the destruction of over six million Jews currently living in the state of Israel. There are many historical resonances and there’s a lot of room for digging deep into history and understanding these different lenses. So I think it’s important to have these discussions now given the pace at which history is accelerating over the last few years.
ERJ: Elijah, anything to add?
Elijah: I think he hit the nail on the head.
ERJ: Well, thank you both very much for being here. We really appreciate it.
Elisha: Thank you to Jackson Hole for the incredibly warm welcome, the great skiing, and we hope that you get to see and enjoy the film.
