The Sonderberg Case (18 page)

In that, Yedidyah takes after his grandfather.

He is no longer alive. Nor are my parents. I’ll remember my grandfather’s funeral till the day of my own. He had made me read his will: contrary to the American custom, he wanted to avoid funeral orations, reduce them to a bare minimum. And above all, the circumstance should not be used to “celebrate his life,” as they say here, by telling funny stories. For a dead person, it is not funny. Dignified, sober, and sad, such was his funeral. As I left the cemetery on Alika’s arm, I felt that a part of me had been ripped away.

One of his remarks, recorded a few days before his death, has taken on a new meaning for me:

There’s the secret of what we so inadequately call the life or destiny of man.

——

But he knows that, if you believe the old sages, when a just man dies, God weeps and makes the heavens weep. And their cries reverberate in the immensity of the ocean. Then it is given to His children to gather the tears from the stars in order to water the heart of the orphan, forever open, in spite of everything, to an impossible joy, always searching for a reunion, at long last, with his real departed parents, who were not characters in a play.

a cognizant v5 original release september 12 2010

Elie Wiesel was fifteen years old when he was deported to Auschwitz. He became a journalist and writer in Paris after the war, and since then has written more than fifty books, fiction and nonfiction, including his masterwork,
Night
, a major best seller when it was republished recently in a new translation. He has been awarded the United States Congressional Gold Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honor, an honorary knighthood of the British Empire, and, in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize. Since 1976, he has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University.