Elie Wiesel may be haunted by his past, but the Holocaust survivor believes in the power of storytelling

At a fundraising event in Montreal last week, Elie Wiesel, the world's best-known Holocaust survivor, demonstrated that at 80 he is still a powerful public speaker and outspoken advocate for human rights. But Wiesel was a little stiff during the meet and greet portion of the evening, when he posed and mingled -- dutifully -- with the crowd.

Wiesel seemed to relax only in the company of one elderly man with a long white beard and crooked back. Chaim Farkas, 87, a retired Montreal furrier, grew up in Sighet, Romania, the same town from which Wiesel, his parents and his sisters were deported and sent to Auschwitz. Wiesel's parents and youngest sister never returned.

Wiesel and Farkas reminisced about schools, synagogues and former neighbours. "I know the street where he lived," said Farkas, who spent three years in a Hungarian labour camp, and who also lost family in Auschwitz. "But to tell you the truth, I never read his books."

Despite Wiesel's fame, and despite the adulation he receives from crowds such as the one he addressed in Montreal -- supporters of the Ben Weider Education Centre at the Chaya Mushka Seminary, a Montreal girls' yeshiva--he is haunted by his past. "The problem," he said as he began his keynote address, "is one is often alone with one's memories and one's words."

For the first 10 years after the Holocaust, Wiesel never spoke about what had happened to him. This self-imposed silence came to an end with the publication in Yiddish of Un di velt hot geshvign ( And the World Kept Silent). He translated that book into French, renaming it La Nuit. It came out in English--as Night -- in 1960. Since that time, Wiesel has hardly had a silent moment. He has authored more than 40 books; he is the Andrew W. Mellon professor of humanities at Boston University; he and his wife, Marion, run the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity; and he continues to lecture widely about the Holocaust and other human rights violations.

Those years of silence served him well. Wiesel needed time to come to terms with his experience, and when he explains this process he seems to speak not only for Holocaust survivors but also for all those who have experienced trauma. "You need time to adjust, to catch up with the meaning of an event," he said.

During a brief interview before his speech, Wiesel indicated he is not disheartened by the fact that Holocaust survivors are dying off and taking their stories with them. "I believe anyone who listens to a witness becomes a witness. Everyone who has spoken to a survivor is a witness to that survivor," he said.

Though Night has for a long time been required reading at high schools and universities around the world, Wiesel is reluctant to discuss how many copies of the book have been sold, or the impact of its selection for Oprah's Book Club. "When it comes to business, I don't know. I don't watch TV. But Oprah," he acknowledges, "is a very good friend."

What Wiesel does do is read. Later, he tells the audience he studies the Talmud daily -- a practice he began as a young man in Sighet.

He turns to the Talmud to explain why Jews did not seek vengeance on the Nazis after the Holocaust. "The Talmud says you cannot define a human being when he is angry. If anger becomes hatred, it is wrong. Hatred destroys not only its victim, but also its author. Hatred is never an option; anger is possible."

When the Dalai Lama contacted Wiesel, asking for advice on how to help the Tibetan people, Wiesel recommended books. "I told him when we left Jerusalem, we didn't take our jewels. Just a little book and we remained faithful to it. And that book created hundreds of books. The whole history of our people is the history of learning," Wiesel said.

Over the years, Wiesel, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, has protested apartheid in South Africa and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans; delivered humanitarian assistance in Cambodia; and addressed the United Nations Security Council about the genocide in Darfur. "Why should I try to help the world that was silent -- that didn't help my people when they needed it? The Talmud says

the poor people of your town come first. But Jewish concerns are not my exclusive priorities. Others also need our attention and our presence. People in jails, in Darfur, in prisons in China, they need us. What we can do is tell maybe one prisoner, 'Look, you are not forgotten.' "

Wiesel made special reference to a Canadian human rights crusader, Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler. The two have worked together since the early 1970s, and are currently involved in a plan to indict Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement of crimes against humanity. "We're two Jewish boys fighting Ahmadinejad," Wiesel said.

Last week in Montreal, Cotler thanked Wiesel for travelling from his home in New York for the event. "You are my mentor," Cotler said.

Asked if he can ever forgive the Nazis for what they did to his family and his people, Wiesel is unequivocal. "No," he says.

Despite the genocide in Darfur, despite suicide terrorism (what he describes as "the scourge of the 21st century"), Wiesel has hope for the future. "I have to have hope. We are learning nevertheless. More and more people are now interested in the tragedy that was the Holocaust. We've never had more courses being taught, more books being written. That makes me an optimist."

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