The Oath (32 page)

I said nothing. A chilling thought came to my mind: if I no longer had the right to die, he no longer had to go on living!

Suddenly, I don’t know why, I felt like asking him not to send me away. I dared not. I dreaded his refusal as much as his consent. Instead I formulated a question that had been on my lips for some time: “Who is Moshe?”

His eyes followed the night seeking refuge behind the horizon. For a moment I thought he was displeased and would not answer. But he surprised me
.

“You. I.” And he added half mockingly: “You when you open your eyes; I when I close mine.”

With his hand he motioned me to go. I did not obey immediately. This sky lighting up. These streets filling with life. This town reawakening. Walk, die, survive. This new wound inside me—what had I gained in the exchange?

“You must,” said Azriel
.

“I must what? Leave? Die? Begin anew?” I rose. We parted without shaking hands
.

Then the young man obediently returned home, and so did the old man. That undoubtedly explains why they never saw each other again: Azriel had returned to die in my stead, in Kolvillàg
.

Elie Wiesel is the author of more than forty books, including his unforgettable international best-sellers
Night
and
A Beggar in Jerusalem
, winner of the Prix Médicis. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States Congressional Gold Medal, and the French Legion of Honor with the rank of Grand Officer. In 1986, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and University Professor at Boston University. He lives with his wife, Marion, and their son, Elisha, in New York City.

ALL RIVERS RUN TO THE SEA

This first volume of Wiesel’s memoirs recalls in intimate detail the experiences that shaped his life—from the small Carpathian village where he was born to the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald to his discovery of his calling as a writer and “Messenger to Mankind.”

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AND THE SEA IS NEVER FULL

The concluding volume of Wiesel’s memoirs opens in 1969 as the author sets himself a challenge: “I will become militant. I will teach, share, bear witness. I will reveal and try to mitigate the victim’s solitude.” He makes words his weapons, and in these pages we watch as he meets with world leaders, returns to Auschwitz, and travels to regions ruled by war, dictatorship, and racism in order to engage the most pressing issues of our day.

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A BEGGAR IN JERUSALEM

In the days following the Six-Day War, a Holocaust survivor visits the reunited city of Jerusalem. At the Western Wall he encounters the beggars and madmen who congregate there every evening, and who force him to confront the ghosts of his past and his ties to the present.

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THE FIFTH SON

When the son of a Holocaust prisoner discovers his brooding father has been haunted by his role in a murder of a brutal S.S. officer just after the war, the son also discovers that the Nazi is still alive. What begins as a quest for his father’s love becomes a reenactment of the past, as the son sets out to complete his father’s act of revenge.

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THE FORGOTTEN

A distinguished psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor is losing his memory to an incurable disease. Never having spoken of the war years before, he resolves to tell his son about his past—the heroic parts as well as the parts that fill him with shame—before it is too late.

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FROM THE KINGDOM OF MEMORY

The essays and speeches collected here include reminiscences of Wiesel’s life before the Holocaust and his struggle to find meaning afterward, his impassioned testimony at the Klaus Barbie trial, his plea to President Reagan not to visit a German S.S. cemetery, and his speech in acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize.

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THE GATES OF THE FOREST

A young Jew hiding from the Nazis in the forests and small towns of Eastern Europe allows another refugee to sacrifice himself in his stead. As he struggles with his guilt, one question recurs: How to live in a world that God has abandoned?

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A JEW TODAY

In this powerful collection of essays, letters, and diary entries, Wiesel probes such central moral and political issues as Zionism and the Middle East conflict, anti-Semitism in the former U.S.S.R., the obligations of American Jews toward Israel, and the media’s treatment of the Holocaust.

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THE OATH

A Christian boy disappears from a village in the Carpathian Mountains and the Jews are accused of ritual murder. They gather and swear that whoever survives the pogrom that is certain to follow will never speak of what has happened. But fifty years later, when the sole survivor meets a man whose life might be saved by hearing what had been promised to silence, the survivor is forced to make a heartwrenching decision.

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THE TESTAMENT

On August 12, 1952, Russia’s greatest Jewish writers were secretly executed by Stalin. In this novel, poet Paltiel Kossover meets the same fate but, unlike his historical counterparts, he is permitted to leave behind a written testament. Two decades later, Paltiel’s son reads this precious record and finds that it illuminates the shadowed planes of his own life.

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THE TOWN BEYOND THE WALL

Based on Wiesel’s own life, this is the story of a young Holocaust survivor who returns to his hometown after the liberation, seeking to understand the mystery of what he calls “the face in the window”—the symbol of all those who just stood by and watched as innocent men, women, and children were led to the slaughter.

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THE TRIAL OF GOD

When three itinerant actors arrive in a small Eastern European village to perform a Purim play for the Jewish community, they are horrified to discover that all but two of the Jewish residents have been murdered in a recent pogrom. The actors decide to stage a mock trial of God, indicting Him for allowing such things to happen to His children.

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TWILIGHT

The story of a man whose search for a friend who saved him during the Holocaust leads him to question the very meaning of survival, this novel of memory, loss, and madness resonates with the dramatic upheavals of our century.

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