Elie Wiesel and the Yiddish Version of Night

[Stubble]

I ran across this article today on CODOH and something jumped out at me (because of a previous thread).

https://codoh.com/library/document/elie ... els-night/

Seidman compared Wiesel’s Yiddish text with the French (and English) versions. She discovered a passage referring to the liberated inmates of Buchenwald that reads in Night, the English version (1960), as follows:

On the following day, some of the young men went to Weimar to get some potatoes and clothes and to sleep with girls. But of revenge, not a sign. (Night, p. 109)

But here’s how his original Yiddish translates:

Early the next day Jewish boys ran off to Weimar to steal clothing and potatoes. And to rape German girls. The historical commandment of revenge was not fulfilled. (Un di velt…, p. 244)

Any of you read the original Yiddish of Night? Looks like it might have a different tone to it than the French, German or English versions...

[Archie]

This is the Siedman 1996 article, "Elie Wiesel and the Scandal of Jewish Rage."
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4467484

Siedman notes that the 1956 Yiddish book is considerably longer than the 1958 French version (245 pages vs 158). The original reportedly has a stronger revenge theme.

By stopping when it does, Night provides an entirely different account of the experience of the survivor. Night and the stories about its composition depict the survivor as a witness and as an expression of silence and death, projecting the recently liberated Eliezer's death-haunted face into the postwar years when Wiesel would become a familiar figure. By contrast, the Yiddish survivor shatters that image as soon as he sees it, destroying the deathly existence the Nazis willed on him. The Yiddish survivor is filled with rage and the desire to live, to take revenge, to write.

The Yiddish version seems to be quite rare, but USHMM has it.
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/bib32337

This link has some pics of what it looks like.
https://www.manhattanrarebooks.com/page ... dItem=true

Another relatively mainstream critique would be this Alexander Cockburn article from Counterpunch. I think Norman Finkelstein also has some critiques of Wiesel in Holocaust Industry.
https://www.unz.com/acockburn/truth-and ... els-night/

Nikolaus Grüner (a Hungarian Jew who was at Auschwitz) makes the explosive claim that Elie Wiesel stole the identity of Lazar Wiesel. According to Grüner, the Yiddish version was written by the other man and EW stole it.
https://archive.org/details/gruner-niko ... l/mode/2up

HH #30 is another resource.

[Stubble]

I'm with Grüner. Dude is a plant.

When you really dig deep in any of the versions, the dates are all wrong and the story of when his Father passes changes. Did he die on the way? Getting off the train? A week later? Depends, do you want dates that line up with the events as they transpired? Or are you partial to one or another telling he has given?

Carolyn Yeager has put hours in to examining the man, and the mythos. She is also sharp witted and uses puns and language in general playfully and thus is not hard to read.

Ultimately, I'd like to know who the fellow actually is, how he got embedded, and who he worked for. Had to be western, I'm thinking OSS.

I've also got suspicions about Mr Vrba...

[HansHill]

Fascinating, i was never aware of this, thanks for sharing gentlemen. I hope this isn't too much of a derail from your topic Stubble, its at least tangentially related.

Grok has recently suspended auto-translations from Hebrew into English due to "inaccuracies" and bizarrely enough, too "literal" translations being considered as too violent or hate speech for the platform. This has obviously drawn quite a bit of attention and raised some eyebrows.

https://nitter.net/grok/status/1990185074965504152#m

https://nitter.net/RedPillMediaX/status ... 77938290#m

https://nitter.net/grok/status/1991002116836716955#m

It seems less about "mistranslation" to me, and more about sanitization for non-Jewish audiences. Also yes I know that my example is Hebrew and the OP is Yiddish, but same idea!

[Archie]

I'm with Grüner. Dude is a plant.

His point about the number and tattoo seem strong. Elie Wiesel has claimed he was A-7713 and that his father was A-7712. But there are records showing this number actually belonged to Lazar Wiesel (who also had a different birthday). That would be quite the coincidence if the number would have been assigned twice to people with such similar names. Doesn't seem likely. Elie also never showed his tattoo which seems suspicious.

But there would seem to be a lot of gaps in the suggestion that Lazar wrote the longer Yiddish text which Elie then stole. It's not clear to me how all that would have happened, and the first edition lists Eliezer Wiesel (rather than Lazar) as the author. So is the idea that Elie stole a prepublication manuscript and then published it? How did Elie obtain this manuscript? Lots of questions there.

Grüner claimed that Elie couldn't speak Yiddish but this seems incorrect as Elie seems to have published many articles in Yiddish in the 50s and 60s.
https://ingeveb.org/pedagogy/elie-wiese ... bliography

[Stubble]

Mr Hill, thank you for that. I appreciate being informed of 'the news'.

The story reminds me that there is an entire field of jewish apologetics that exists because goys sometimes read the talmud. I'm speaking of course of pilpul.

Archie, with Grüner I think his strongest point is that his friend didn't recognize him or speak his mother tongue. With regard to Yiddish, I'd take Grüner's word that he couldn't speak it either. A published article attributed to him can not be proven to be him, especially if he was a plant, a figure used for 'spreading messages'.

Personally, I find enough about the fellow dubious to not be opposed of him having a 'writing committee' similar to Wiernik with 'The Warsaw circle'. I also wouldn't be surprised to find out he simply hijacked a real person and took up his identity after the Yiddish novel was written.

I don't discount either hypothesis.

[Archie]

This seems to be Grüner's version of events regarding the book publication.

While searching for him, he discovered that his friend had written an 862-page manuscript in Yiddish titled ‘Un dit velt hot gesvign’ (‘And the world kept silent’) about his camp experiences. It was published in Argentina. Lázár Wiesel later came back to France where it was copyrighted in 1948, Grüner said. “The influential French author François Charles Mauriac translated it into French. Since Mauriac was not a camp survivor, he used a young man named Elie Wiesel to become the ‘author’ of that book which sold about 11 million copies in different languages. But it was based on the writings of my friend.”

https://bosnewslife.com/2017/11/15/ausc ... robe-book/

Addendum: I was getting confused with the contradictory page counts, but Wikipedia also mentions a much longer manuscript.

After the war, Wiesel moved to Paris and in 1954 completed an 862-page manuscript in Yiddish about his experiences, published in Argentina as the 245-page Un di velt hot geshvign (Yiddish: און די װעלט האט געשװיגן, lit. 'And the World Remained Silent').[3] The novelist François Mauriac helped him find a French publisher. Les Éditions de Minuit published 178 pages as La Nuit in 1958, and in 1960 Hill & Wang in New York published a 116-page translation as Night.

Text A - Yiddish Manuscript, 862 pages, pre-1956 [unclear if this even exists]
Text B - Yiddish Published Version - 245 pages (Siedman), 1956
Text C - French Edition, 158 pages (Siedman), 1958 [Mauriac enters the picture]

In a footnote, Siedman mentions that multiple journalists have said that the original Yiddish version of night if 862 pages. It seems these people had never seen the Yiddish publication which is much shorter, but they were relying on Elie Wiesel's own account where he claims he dashed off 862 pages once he broke his "silence." I'm leaning toward the 862 pages being total BS. Probably an exaggeration to create a greater contrast with his "silent" period.

[Stubble]

Not unlike 'A Year in Treblinka', there is a handwritten copy. I wonder it it has any 'chlorine hatches' in it, or if it too omits the 'homicidal gas chamber' all together like its successors...

https://www.ynetnews.com/culture/article/sjavklr00kg

He apparently knew English, French and Hebrew.

From that moment on, the race began for me to find that unknown manuscript, about which I did not yet know when and where it was written, although Wiesel wrote in English on the document, "First draft".

Not Hungarian or Yiddish...

[Archie]

Mr Hill, thank you for that. I appreciate being informed of 'the news'.

The story reminds me that there is an entire field of jewish apologetics that exists because goys sometimes read the talmud. I'm speaking of course of pilpul.

Archie, with Grüner I think his strongest point is that his friend didn't recognize him or speak his mother tongue. With regard to Yiddish, I'd take Grüner's word that he couldn't speak it either. A published article attributed to him can not be proven to be him, especially if he was a plant, a figure used for 'spreading messages'.

It's possible, but I don't think Elie Wiesel was anybody important until 1958 with the French version of Night. Also consider that the Yiddish version has been swept under the rug, so I don't really see the motivation to establish a bogus history of Yiddish writings. For what purpose? They would not have anticipated in 1956 that Elie would become this huge Holocaust star or that one day people like us would start asking questions about the Yiddish version.

When Wiesel met Grüner in 1986, it's possible Wiesel had lost his speaking fluency in Yiddish at that point, or perhaps just didn't want to speak it. Whatever happened exactly, I would not rule out Elie as having written material in Yiddish in the 1950s. I suppose it's possible he wrote the articles in French and they were translated before publication. But if so I don't think they were playing any sort of long game.

Another point to bear in mind is that we should not be too credulous with someone like Grüner just because he's telling us what we want to hear. We should be cautious relying on him, just as we would anyone else.
https://codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=207

[borjastick]

Much has been written about the man and the claims he made. Carolyn Yeager exposed him from top to bottom and there was another chap who had a website dedicated entirely to the lack of Wiesel's tattoo, if I remember correctly.

The man was very strange indeed and most likely a complete fraud. Wasn't one of the claims that he was never in any camp and appeared after the war claiming all manner of things but never showed his tattoo. I seem to remember camp inmates (auschwitz of course because it was the only camp to tattoo inmates) lining up to show and be photographed showing their tatts. But not so Wiesel.

And some of his deep and meaningful sayings were off the scale crazy. I'll paraphrase but he said something like this 'some things happened but were not true'...

[Stubble]

I can see from our exchange that I clearly have more diligence due Archie. Let it never be said that you are not both reasonable and grounded Sir.

Some food for thought;

ELIE WIESEL; A PROMINENT FALSE WITNESS



Elie Wiesel and the Holocaust Fraud by Carolyn Yeager



Holohoax Tales Elie Wiesel was Liberated from Multiple Concentration Camps



Some reading;

https://codoh.com/library/document/the- ... ie-wiesel/

In my first article, I stated that the time sequence is pure invention. If Wiesel did leave his hometown of Sighet on 3 June 1944, he could not have arrived at Auschwitz in April. Moreover, the ID number A-7713 was issued on 24 May when 2,000 Hungarian Jews were assigned the numbers A-5729 through A-7728.[8] In his book, Elie Wiesel writes that he was tattooed as A-7713,[9] a statement he repeated under oath at the trial of the State of California vs. Eric Hunt on 8 July 2008,[10] adding that his father’s number was A-7712.

------------------------------------------------------
Here Mattogno appears to be having trouble understanding Grüner.

Hence, according to Grüner, someone (he does not say who) gave “in good faith (?)” false indications in the questionnaire mentioned. But the reasons he proposes are absolutely ludicrous: In what way would the true date of birth (4 September 1913) and the true Buchenwald ID number (123565) not have suited “Wiesel Lazar’s future” and not benefitted “his coming future”? And how could anyone seriously hope to slip a man of 32 into a convoy of youths bound for Paris by making him 17?

I believe I can clear this up. What is being said is that this document was mocked up to slip out Elie, it leaves open the question of what happened to Lazar. This seems simple to me because as Mattogno points out, slipping a 30 year old man into a group of teens with just a document like this doesn't make any sense...

I will need to look at Grüner's comments in chronological order to determine exactly what he was trying to say of course, because it is quite the smorgasbord.

[Archie]

Not unlike 'A Year in Treblinka', there is a handwritten copy. I wonder it it has any 'chlorine hatches' in it, or if it too omits the 'homicidal gas chamber' all together like its successors...

https://www.ynetnews.com/culture/article/sjavklr00kg

He apparently knew English, French and Hebrew.

From that moment on, the race began for me to find that unknown manuscript, about which I did not yet know when and where it was written, although Wiesel wrote in English on the document, "First draft".

Not Hungarian or Yiddish...

That is an interesting link. It's from January of this year, so I think this is mostly new information. When I looked into the pre-publication manuscripts a few years ago I didn't find much.

The author name is familiar. I believe this is the same historian who found the Eliezer Unger six million reference from Jan 1944, the earliest known claim that six million Jews had been killed.
https://www.unz.com/estriker/israeli-hi ... e-in-1944/

I wish the article was more clear. This was the paragraph that caught my eye.

Seven different versions were written of the book "Night". The first as notes from the years 1945-1947, which became the first version of the book; the second was the Hebrew version, written in my opinion in the years 1948-1950, found by me in Boston; there was also an extensive 864-page version in Yiddish that was not found, and another shortened version, from that extensive manuscript, published in 1956 in Buenos Aires.

This indicates that the supposed 864 page manuscript has never been found. The existence of a Hebrew manuscript is certainly a surprise. It does not say how long the Hebrew version was, but most likely it was relatively short. I continue to think the 864 page manuscript is probably legendary.

[Stubble]

I'm sure the number is some joke in gematria that I don't get.

You may be right Archie, it may be completely apocryphal.

https://carolynyeager.net/shadowy-origins-night

As we talked, Turkov noticed my manuscript, from which I was never separated. He wanted to know what it was and whether he could look at it. I showed it to him, explaining it was unfinished. “That’s all right,” he said. “Let me take it anyway.” It was my only copy, but Turkov assured me it would be safe with him. I still hesitated, but he promised not only to read it, but “If it’s good, I’ll publish it.” Yehudit Moretzka (the singer) encouraged me by telling me she would make sure the manuscript would be returned to me in Paris, with or without a rejection slip. I was convinced Turkov wouldn’t publish it. I couldn’t see why any editor would be interested in the sad memoirs of a stranger he met on a ship, surrounded by refugees nobody wanted. “Don’t worry so much,” Yehudit told me as she left. But I felt lost without my manuscript

All Rivers Run to the Sea, ibid. p. 241

(A thought occurred to me, the page discrepancy could be a nothing burger. Elie's flame script could have simply been rendered larger than the typed format, and thus the print copy may be 'verbatim')

I had no idea the Hebrew version was a relatively new discovery, as is the handwritten French.
------------------------------------------------------
Some background on 'Mark'

https://congressforjewishculture.org/pe ... rek-turkow

He was general secretary, 1933-1938, of the anti-Hitler committee in Poland. From 1939 he was living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Over the years 1946-1954, he was director of HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), and from 1954 he was the Argentinian representative to the Jewish World Congress.

That's, quite the guy to publish the work, eh?

Oh, and the Yiddish copy he did publish is #117 from the series 'Polish jewry'. I'm currently trying to track down a digital copy for you Archie, and I'll share it with you.

Just don't try to get 'x' to translate it for you, apparently it won't do Yiddish because letting non Yiddish speakers read texts written in Yiddish 'causes antisemitism'.

may have located a spoken copy on internet archive, although, I don't speak yid. It could just be 'night' read in Yiddish or something.

https://archive.org/details/elie-wiesel ... t-geshvign

[diamonddave]

A google translated Yiddish version of Night is located here

https://holocausthoax.st/original-yiddi ... els-night/

[Archie]

Looks like that was just uploaded (date on archive.org is Nov 15). I haven’t seen that online before. Kudos to Eric or whoever scanned that. I would download a copy now in case it’s taken down (not sure if it’s under copyright or what).