Elie Wiesel: The Inward Eyewitness in "The Testament"

Abstract

verisimilitude is probably one of the most decisive. Whether drawing on his own concentration camp experiences or on other witness accounts, or on historical documentation, Wiesel goes to great lengths to set the plots of his stories in realistic backgrounds. This faithfulness to historical veracity seems to emanate from the impulse to bear witness, which has become his life's commitment. Wiesel regards individual testimony, carried by word of mouth or inscribed in letters, as a cumulative process in which collective memory is tantamount to ethnic survival; oblivion, in contrast, equates with the death of a people and its culture. The underlying triple connection between memory, testimony and survival, undoubtedly valid at all times, assumes a meaning of immediate urgency in the context of the Holocaust. In Conversation with Elie Wiesel, the interviewee conveys some of the awesomeness involved in bearing witness: Recently I reread the chronicles written by historians in the ghettos: Ringelblum, Kaplan. They were all young and all became witnesses. They all felt that they had to record events for future generations, the main 9bsession during the war, so the tales should not be lost or wastedthe experience should not go astray.... Actually, I saw myself following in their footsteps.