Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYWithout casting doubt on the veracity of either account of the sameevent, Elie’s version is obviously more atrocity orientated. He has 50percent more women in the transport and they are crowded naked intocattle cars for a three-day trip. Did he make up the story? Did he “varnish”what his sister really said? Did he embellish the horror of it? Elieclaims he would like to know more about the experiences of his twoolder sisters in the camps, but he is afraid to ask. Perhaps he is afraidthat the truth would lie closer to the current revisionist narrative ratherthan the narrative he has been massaging for over 60 years.In late January 1945 Wiesel’s father died in Buchenwald, not of gas,but of exhaustion, starvation, beating (in Night), and disease (accordingto the records at Yad Vashem). Elie was transferred to the children’sblock (Block 66) with (by his narration) 600 other children. But by theday of liberation by the Americans he claims there were only a fewhundred children left, 34 leaving the reader with the impression that mosthad perished. Why did he deliberately omit the fact that over 900 childrenwere liberated at Buchenwald, some as young as eight years old? 35Such omissions give credence to revisionists who argue that the six millionfigure may well be exaggerated and that the extermination thesismay be less likely than one based on the realities of war and ethniccleansing.Why did Elie omit to tell readers that the children’s block, Block 66,in Buchenwald was part of “a rescue operation inside the camp carriedout by elements of the German Communist-led international underground,together with Polish-Jewish elements who worked with the underground”?36 Bad as it was, why did he not tell us that the children inBlock 66 were given more food, clothing, and protection than prisonersin the adult population? Does the very existence of hundreds of Jewishchildren in a Nazi concentration camp not cause question of Wiesel’sown definition of the Holocaust as a systematic, bureaucratic exterminationof Jews everywhere in Europe?More importantly, why does Wiesel never mention the mass killingand torture that took place in Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen afterthese prisons were evacuated and turned over to the Russians to incar-343536Night, p. 114.www.harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90004103Wyatt Mason, “A False Story: Six Questions for Ken Waltzer,” Harpers Magazine, December31, 2008, p. 4.21