JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin says that the release of a new documentary film called “Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire” about the life of the Holocaust survivor, author, lecturer and Nobel Peace Prize winner couldn’t be timelier. At a time of an unprecedented surge of antisemitism and demonization of Israel, Wiesel’s example of courageous truth-telling is needed more than ever.
He is joined in the latest episode of “Think Twice” by Wiesel’s only child and son, Elisha Wiesel, who works on Wall Street and for Israeli startups, as well as being a leading human-rights activist. He said that he and his late mother, Marion Wiesel, who passed away earlier this year, had been searching for a filmmaker for a story about his father before choosing writer/director and producer Oren Rudavsky. Acting on his father’s instructions, they have refused to let anyone produce a film based on Wiesel’s classic Holocaust memoir, Night, but believed that a well-made documentary could help keep his memory alive as well as reintroduce a new generation to his work.
The film traces Wiesel’s Holocaust experience and journey back to life after surviving the camps, and his rise to prominence as an activist and author. The key incident in it concerns a confrontation in 1985 with President Ronald Reagan live on national television, when Wiesel unsuccessfully sought to persuade him not to visit a military cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where Waffen-SS soldiers were buried.
Elisha Wiesel, who was present at the White House for the event, says looking back at it now, he sees how difficult it was for his father, who liked Reagan very much, to lecture him in front of the country. Still, it was a classic example of how to “speak truth to power” in the service of a great truth.
He also says that those Jews who speak out against the State of Israel since Oct. 7, 2023, and in favor of “free Palestine,” are not following his father’s example. Elie Wiesel was an ardent Zionist and never chose to criticize Israel, whether or not he always agreed with its government, because he understood how that would be used by antisemites.
“Many of these people think that they’re acting in keeping with my father’s values. You know, I’ve seen signs at Israel-hating rallies that actually say, you know what Elie Wiesel said—you know, the enemy, the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. So, a lot of people go around and they think, you know, ‘I’m being Wieselian. I’m not indifferent. Look at me.’
“I think my father hadn’t properly envisioned at the time that he made that statement how we’ve gone past, we’ve gone beyond indifference. We’ve gone straight to what I like to think of as indignant ignorance.”
He said the current generation of young American Jews doesn’t feel “what I feel in my heart. When Israel is attacked, it’s visceral. It’s gut-level. It’s emotional. This is 50% of my brothers and sisters in the Jewish people, so many of whom came, whether fleeing the Farhud in Muslim lands or the Holocaust, you know, to get to Israel. These are my people, my brothers and sisters, who have gotten to a place where they can finally defend themselves and create the state that is transforming the world with its inventions and its ideas.”
Elisha Wiesel compared the “Free Palestine” movement and support for anti-Israel New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani to the punk rock music he loved as a teenager.
“So much of the ‘Free Palestine’ movement to me—and so much of the tear it down, anarchy, let’s end capitalism—has all of the violence of punk rock without the good music. It’s just people looking for change without thinking too hard about what they’re going to build or what should be built.”
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