Elie Wiesel's legacy to Elgin and elsewhere

Last year I spoke to a class at Elgin High School. They were all immigrants. They were reading their first book. In any language. Not "Cat in the Hat." Not "Dick and Jane." Not "Harry Potter." They were reading "Night." My job was to provide some cultural context.

None of them had been in a synagogue or ever met a Jew. In preparation, I reread the book, I have taught it before. I first read it in middle school, not much younger than they.

It is a powerful book. Elie Wiesel gave voice to the voiceless. Wiesel made it impossible to deny the Holocaust with his first hand account, in simple, haunting language.

Together with Anne Frank, Simon Wiesenthal and Victor Frankel, Wiesel made us confront the most difficult history and ask the most difficult questions. How can people be basically good at heart? Why did the Holocaust happen? What meaning does life have? Should we forgive? Can I forgive? Where was God?

The students were attentive, appreciative. What they lacked in cultural competence they understood with their own life experience. Even as they didn't have answers of their own, they understood the questions.

They added their own questions. They, whose parents made a different difficult decision, couldn't understand why Wiesel's family didn't leave Hungary. Was it really possible that they could be deported? Could there really be a wall built between the U.S .and Mexico? They saw the connections. They wanted reassurance that what happened to Wiesel could not happen to them.

We owe it to the memory of Wiesel that it never does. Not here in Elgin. Not here in America. Not anywhere. That is Wiesel's legacy for Elgin High School and for all of us.

Margaret Frisch Klein

Israel

Elgin