Legends Of Our Time

Legends of our Time by Elie Wiesel As a child in Sighet as
a young boy in Auschwitz as a teenage displaced person
wandering through post-World War II Europe as a young man
at the beginning of his career as a writer witness and
human-rights activist Elie Wiesel had haunting often
surreal encounters with a wide range of people—sages
mystics teachers and dreamers. In Legends of Our Time he
shares with us some of their stories. On a Tel Aviv bus
Wiesel encounters a notorious Auschwitz barracks chief who
forces him to confront past demons that he thought had
long since been laid to rest. While traveling through
Spain he is approached by a young Catholic man holding an
ancient family document in an unfamiliar language; written
in Hebrew in 1492 by the man’s Marrano ancestor it proudly
proclaims to future generations the family’s Jewish
origins. Twenty years after being deported from Sighet
Wiesel returns to discover that the only thing missing are
the towns 10000 Jews and the collective memory of their
ever having existed. In a Moscow synagogue in the fall on
1967 Wiesel finds a sanctuary filled with young Jews who
have miraculously educated themselves in their history and
ancient language who sing Hebrew songs in the street as
KGB agents take down names. And from a rabbi in Auschwitz
who fasted on Yom Kippur Wiesel leans that there is more
than one way to confront a God who seems to have abandoned
His people.