Elie Wiesel has become a symbol in his own lifetime," pronounces Hungarian director Judit Elek. "He is not only a great French writer, but his name is also closely associated with the destiny of the Jewish people in the 20th century and the memory of the Holocaust victims."
Elek has dealt several times in the past with the fate of her own people (Memory of a River), and it was almost inevitable that, sooner or later, she and Wiesel would meet and collaborate. Wiesel was born in Sighet, a small Hungarian town. At the age of 15, he was deported with his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau, before ending up in Buchenwald. The only surviving member of his family, he has devoted his life to keeping the memory of the Holocaust in the public domain.
The film begins with Wiesel at the opening of the Holocaust Museum in Washington talking about his mother, and ends with his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. In between, Elek focuses on two main episodes. The first shows Wiesel revisiting his birthplace. After the war, Sighet, once mostly populated by Jews, was delighted with Hitler's policy of racial genocide. Now that one of their sons has become famous, practically a media star, the people greet him as a long-lost brother, a perfect example of hypocrisy at work. But the other episode is probably the film's centrepiece: Wiesel and some survivors of "the final solution" walk once again through the alleys of Auschwitz, among its barracks and crematoriums: their faces stunned, destroyed, speechless.
Wiesel's own texts, juxtaposed with archive footage, have a numbing effect, making the film a shocking experience that none of Hollywood's prefabricated horror flicks could ever match.
"I made this film because I feel that today, four short years before the end of the millennium, ethnic and racial hatred is once again rampant all over the world," says Elek. "And Europe - the same Europe which has witnessed two bloody wars - stands by watching helplessly while a new generation, ignoring the past, is about to perpetrate the same horrors all over again.
"Like Elie Wiesel, I believe that our mission is to pass on to our children the history we have inherited, hopefully helping to protect the living from repeating the same mistakes and doing justice to the dead."
Edna Fainaru
Prod Co: Hunnia Filmstudio with Taxila, Neuropa Film, Danielfilm Studio, France 3
Dir/Scr/Ed: Judit Elek
Ph: Gabor Balog
Mus: Laszlo Balog
Cast: Elie Wiesel
Running time: 95mins
Int Sales: Film Transit International
