Is this the end of Elie Wiesel?

[Eric Hunt]

I've been informed that -

On page 35 of your PDF; right side of the page.

That page is correlated (roughly) with p. 30 of the Oprah Book Club edition.

English version -

"Here, kid, how old are you?"
.......

"I'm not fifteen yet."

"No. Eighteen."

Complete Yiddish translation coming soon.

Now that there's proof that the age of the Yiddish author lines up with Wiesel's age, this nonsense can end.

[Carolyn Yeager]

A professional translation of Un die welt... would be prohibitively expensive, so unless there is a Yiddish-reading revisionist willing to have a go...

I tried doing an OCR of the PDF file, and then putting it into Google Translate. The result is not good but at least gives you an idea. It's a slow process as the demo version of the OCR program will only export a page at a time and only to a maximum of 50 pages. Here are the first two pages of the four I've done. I don't know how far the weaknesses are due to the OCR and how far to Google Translate. The PDF quality is not good and there are a lot of readings marked "doubtful". Also, although Google have made a lot of progress with machine translation of the major languages, Yiddish is probably not a priority for them.

Kingfisher -- you said you had done four pages. Would you please post the 3rd and 4th pages you have auto-translated.

Looking for sections to translate will not do it - we have to have the whole book. I have been making some inquiries and have learned that "someone" is working on a translation. This comes from a Yiddish organization, so it's very likely being done in conjunction with Elie Wiesel and/or his backers. This is not good. We have to have our own translation, totally objective. If anyone on this board has any connection to Yiddish speakers or would want to undertake this translation, let me know at [email protected].

[Carolyn Yeager]

On January 15, my right foot began to swell. Probably from the cold. I felt horrible pain. I could not walk a few steps. I went to the hospital. The doctor examined the swollen foot and said: It must be operated. If you will wait longer, he said, your toes will have to be cut off and then the whole foot will have to be amputated. That was all I needed! Even in normal times, I was afraid of surgery. Because of the blood. Because of bodily pain. And now - under these circumstances! Indeed, we had really great doctors in the camp. The most famous specialists from Europe. But the means they had to their disposition were poor, miserable. The Germans were not interested in curing sick prisoners. Just the opposite.
If it had been dependent on me, I would not have agreed to the operation. I would have liked to wait. But it did not depend on me. I was not asked at all. The doctor decided to operate, and that was it. The choice was in his hands, not in mine. I really felt a little bit of joy in my heart that he had decided upon me.[/unquote]

Notice the book reads: "... if you wait longer, your toes will have to be cut off ... "
But two pages later, after the surgical procedure, the doctor says: "The sole of your foot was all full of pus. We just had to open the swelling."
Why would his toes have to be cut off first if the problem was in the sole of his foot? Well, Eric didn't translate that part yet.

Even more interesting, however, is that in Wiesel's memoir All Rivers Run to the Sea, Elie Wiesel tells this story as his knee, not his foot. Yes, that is absolutely true. Page 89: "Jan. 1945. My knee was swollen , and the pain turned my gait into a limp." Page 90: A doctor glanced at my knee, touched it. I stifled a scream. "You need an operation," he said. "Immediately." [...] a tall,kind-looking (doctor) tried to comfort me. "It won't hurt, or not much anyway. Don't worry, my boy, you'll live." He talked to me before the operation, and I heard him again when I woke up. [...] Page 91: My father came to see me in the hospital, managing to slip in among all the general disorder."
Father and son decided (on Jan. 18?) to leave the hospital and go on the march with the rest. No further commentary about the knee that had been operated on. EW was not leaving bloody footprints in the snow, as in Night. Who can offer an explanation for this?

P.S. I'm still waiting for Kingfisher's page 3 and 4. What can be holding that up? Unwillingness?

[Kingfisher]

קימער פון אונדז — און על אחת כמה וכמי׳ איך, א קינד נאך׳ א קינד וואס קלאמערט זיך אין דעם שיץ פון לעבן און פון דער זיו — האם נישט געפרװוט ױך פרעגן: אפשר איז דער טייװל שװארצער װי מען מאלט איטי אפשר זענען די יידן געפירט געװארן צו דער שחיטהי
קימער פון אונדז — אוץ על אחת כמה וכמה איך״ א קינד אן חוש פאר װירקלעכקײט — האט נישם פארגעשטעלט זיך, אז א טאג קען קי־ מען, א פארחושכמער טאג, אין װעלכן מען װעט אויך אונדז פארשיקן אין.אן אומבאקאנטער ריכטונג.
די אילוזיע- די פארשאלטענע טײװלאנישע אילוזיע האט דעראבערט אונדזער הארץ•
און טעג זענען זיך פארלאפן. טעג, װאכן, חדשים.
אין שטעטל האט מען שוין פארגעםן אז יענע יידן. א װינט פ־ן רי און באדויקונג האט געבלןךן און פארטריבן אלטע דאגות, אמאליקע ספקות. סוחרימ האבן געהאנדלט■ ישיבה־בחורים האבן געקװעטשט די באנק און אײנגעחזרט א סוגיהז חדר־ױנגלעך האבן געלערנט חומש״רש״י: אביונים זענען געגאנגען איבער די היתער, בדי אהײם צו ברענגען עפעס אויף שבת.
דאס אלטע, אײביקע. נארמאלע לעבן פון יידישן סיגעט.
איז מיטאמאל די יידישע גאס אויפגערודערט געװאדן: משהלע איז צוריקגעקומען. צוריקגעקומען — נ*ון דארט, פון דארטז
*
משהלע דער שמש — אזוי ראט מען אים גערופן, װייל קימעם איז נישט אימגעפאלן. אז ער פארמאגמ אויך א פאמיליע אץ א פאמיליע׳י נאמען, איז געװען א קלימטשיקער. אויסגעדארטער ייד, מיט א געל קאזע־ בערדל און א דינטשיק קינדעריש שטימעלע: א לוסטיקער פון דער נאטור. האכן אים בעלי־בתים ליב געהאט אץ אים אפט געגעבן נדבות אץ מתנות. אץ כשעת־מעשה, װען משהלע פלעגט מוזן אויסשטרעקן ױץ הענטל כדי צו כאקומען די נדבה, איז ער געװארן קלענער וױ תמיד, דינטשיקער וױ תמיד איו אפילו זיץ בערדל איז געװארן געלער װי תמיד.

Kimmer of us - and the one some more so, I, a child still, a child who settled in the protection of life and of the brilliance - Do not attempt too ask: Can the devil black as they Malt Island may have the Jews led to the slaughter
Kimmer of us - Oats on one some more so I "a child a sense for reality - has not presented itself, that a day can Key - one, a farkhushkhmer day, in which they will also us emerge into. A aumbakanter direction.
The iluzye - the accursed devilish iluzye has conquered our hearts •
And days are to templates. Days, weeks, months.
In town was already forgotten that those Jews. A wind in - the RE and oppression has geblnkhn and drove old concerns, former doubts. Merchants have traded ■ sitting - men have glaciers the bank and eyngekhzrt a sugihz room - oynglekh have learned khumsh"rsh "l: abiunim went over the others, bdi home to fetch something on Saturday.
The old, eternal. Normal life of Jewish siget.
Is mitamal the Jewish quarter rounded up: mshhle is returned. Back - F * and there, from there
*
Mshhle the sun - so exhort people called him, because kimem is not imgefaln. That he possesses also a family and a family 's name, was a klimtshiker. Extensive Jew, with a yellow goat - chin and a dintshik Indian Fern: a fun of the nature. Jochen him with - homes love and it often gave alms and gifts. And now - an act, when mshhle used must stretch oyts handle to khakumen the charity, it became smaller as always, dintshiker as always is even sit chin was yellow as always.


די גירוש־גזירה האט אויך אים געטראפן. עד איז געװעז — דובט זיך — א קאסעװער חסיד און זײבע עלטערן וזאבן אויך געשטאמט פון גאליציע. קײן אונגארישער בירגער איז ער נישט געװען. דעריבער איז עד טאקע פארשיקט געװארן צוזאמען מיט די איבעריקע פרעמדע ױדן קיין גאליציע. אין מיט אים — זײן גאנצע משפחה: אן אײביק־קראנקע סרוי מיט פיר־שינף קינדערלעך
אט, אױ ער צוריקגעקומען. א געשפענסט פון יענער װעלט.
װאס האט ער צו דערצײלן, משהלעד א סך זאבן. א טך מוראדיקע בשורות׳ האט מיטגעבראבט מיט זיך. דער קלײנער משהלע״ דער שמש.
ער האט דערצײלט װי אזױ דער טראנספארט איז אויפגענומען גע־
װארן דורך דער געשטאפא׳ גלײך נאכדעם װי מ׳איז אריבער די אונגא* ריש־גאליצישע גרענעץ. װי אזוי אלע יידן זענען געפירט געװארן אין א װאלד. װי אװי מ׳האט געמוזט אויסגראבן א גרוימן, ריזיקז מאסן־קבר. װי אזוי נעסטאפאניקעס האבן געלערנט זיך שיסן. װארפנדיק זויג־קינדער אין דער לופט... דער גאנצער טראנספארט איז דארם אומגעקומען. און ער, משהלע? מזל געהאט. א נס מן השמים. בלויז פארװונדעט געױארן אין פוס. די רוצחים האבן אים געהאלטן פאר טויט.
שעהךלאנג, טעג און נעכט פלעג משהלע ארומגײן פון שטוב צו שטוב״ פון מענטש צו מענטש און דערצײלן שרעק־מעשױח. מאלן פינצ׳ טערע גרויל־בילדעת איבעדגעבן פרטים װעגן דעם און יענעם. װעגן דער שײנער מלכה, װאס האט געגוססט דרײ שעה און װעגן זלמן דעם שנײדער, װעלכער האט זיך געכעטז בײם געשטאפאניק׳ ער זאל שיסן אים אײדער ער שיסט זײנע קינדער.
משהלע האט דערצײלם פאר יעדן, װאס האט געװאלט ױך צוהערן צו ױינע רײד.
ער האט זיך געענדעדט, משהלע. אוממעגלעך געװען צו דערקענען אין אים דעם אמאליקן שמש, דאס געלעכטערל איז פארשוװנדן פװ זײנע חסידישע אויגן, זיץ דינטשיק און קינדיש שטימעלע איז געיואת מרה־■ שחורהדיק.
אנשטאט מעשהלעך װעגז רבנים אץ בעלײמופתים האט ער דןןרצײלט קאשמארן.

The expulsion - cutting has also it happened. Up was - bear themselves - a kasever devotee and his parents uzabn too general of Galicia. No Hungarian citizen is not it. Therefore is to indeed sent up along with the other strangers give to Galicia. In with him - his whole family: an age - sick Sri with four - ship children
Here, oh he came back. A ghost of that world.
What has he to tell, mshhled many things. A tkh terrible tidings had brought with them. The small mshhle "the sun.
He tells how the transport is included ge -
By the Gestapo, as soon as we went past the aunga * song - Gaelic frontier. How all Jews were led into a forest. As so we had spending a great, risk masn - grave. How nestafanikes have learned to shoot. Varfndik suction - Children in the air ... The whole transport is Dorm perished. And he, mshhle? Happy had. A sign from heaven. Only wounded in leg. The murderers have it considered dead.
Shehkhlang, days and nights would mshhle circle from home to home "of person to person and tell terror - meshoykh. Paint fints' Tourette horror - images pass details of the and that. About the Beautiful Queen, who was known for three hours and about Zalman the cutter, which was Hetzer at geshtafanik 'he would shoot him before he shoots his children.
Mshhle told for each, which had wanted him to listen to his words.
He had changed, mshhle. Impossible to recognize in him the amalikn sun, the laughter is gone fv his Hasidic eyes, sit dintshik and Indian Fern is geiuas Mara - ■ shkhurhdik.
Instead meshhlekh about rabbis and beleymufsim he dnnrtseylt Kashmir.

Not good enough to be much use. Eric's procedure works, but must be very laborious.

[Kladderadatsch]

Looking for sections to translate will not do it - we have to have the whole book. I have been making some inquiries and have learned that "someone" is working on a translation. This comes from a Yiddish organization, so it's very likely being done in conjunction with Elie Wiesel and/or his backers. This is not good. We have to have our own translation, totally objective. If anyone on this board has any connection to Yiddish speakers or would want to undertake this translation, let me know at [email protected].

Carolyn, I wonder if you'll find the smoking gun you're looking for. I did some test translations myself a few months back, after reading your articles on IH, and what I found was just that "Un di Velt" is terribly overwritten. In other words, Wiesel slashed huge amounts of filler out of the Yiddish text to create "Night," but the outline of the story, and the essential details, basically remain the same. That, at least, is the result I found.

I don't mean to be discouraging, and I don't mean that a translation might not be useful for other reasons. (As in, for example, the light it might shine on EW's real sympathies--Seidman did title her article "The Scandal of Jewish Rage," after all.) I'm just not sure that a complete translation will be of much use in determining the larger question of whether EW really is the author of the text. The discrepancies which you've found between the existing translations of "Night" and EW's statements elsewhere are already enough to establish that the text is not a "true" story in the way it's usually passed off to be. But that's not likely to matter much to EW or his defenders. It's just too easy to say, "Oh, a few details were changed here and there--poetic licence." They'll shrug it off.

In other words, you might go to a huge amount of trouble to produce a complete translation, and still be no further along in making the case that EW is a fraud.

Anyway, I didn't come along just to be a naysayer. Like I said, I did some translations a while back, before I knew that others were working on the problem. So I'll post my results here, if only so that others don't waste their time on the same material. Following Eric's example, I'm uploading the pages as images--that looks like the easiest way to display them here, without people having to download. If anyone's interested, I can pass along the original Word files.

The text is in three columns: Yiddish original, translation, and the text of "Night" in Marion Wiesel's translation, for comparison. I've highlighted in yellow the material that EW cut in producing "Night." There are also a couple of places, highlighted in blue, which show additions EW made to the text in "Night." Most of these are pretty trivial, but there is one that I'm sure everyone here will find significant. (It doesn't prove anything about authorship, however.)

Un di Velt, pp. 96-97

Un di Velt, pp. 167-171

[Carolyn Yeager]

Kimmer of us - and the one some more so, I, a child still, a child who settled in the protection of life and of the brilliance - Do not attempt too ask: Can the devil black as they Malt Island may have the Jews led to the slaughter
Kimmer of us - Oats on one some more so I "a child a sense for reality - has not presented itself, that a day can Key - one, a farkhushkhmer day, in which they will also us emerge into. A aumbakanter direction.
The iluzye - the accursed devilish iluzye has conquered our hearts •
And days are to templates. Days, weeks, months.
In town was already forgotten that those Jews. A wind in - the RE and oppression has geblnkhn and drove old concerns, former doubts. Merchants have traded ■ sitting - men have glaciers the bank and eyngekhzrt a sugihz room - oynglekh have learned khumsh"rsh "l: abiunim went over the others, bdi home to fetch something on Saturday.
The old, eternal. Normal life of Jewish siget.
Is mitamal the Jewish quarter rounded up: mshhle is returned. Back - F * and there, from there
*
Mshhle the sun - so exhort people called him, because kimem is not imgefaln. That he possesses also a family and a family 's name, was a klimtshiker. Extensive Jew, with a yellow goat - chin and a dintshik Indian Fern: a fun of the nature. Jochen him with - homes love and it often gave alms and gifts. And now - an act, when mshhle used must stretch oyts handle to khakumen the charity, it became smaller as always, dintshiker as always is even sit chin was yellow as always.

The expulsion - cutting has also it happened. Up was - bear themselves - a kasever devotee and his parents uzabn too general of Galicia. No Hungarian citizen is not it. Therefore is to indeed sent up along with the other strangers give to Galicia. In with him - his whole family: an age - sick Sri with four - ship children
Here, oh he came back. A ghost of that world.
What has he to tell, mshhled many things. A tkh terrible tidings had brought with them. The small mshhle "the sun.
He tells how the transport is included ge -
By the Gestapo, as soon as we went past the aunga * song - Gaelic frontier. How all Jews were led into a forest. As so we had spending a great, risk masn - grave. How nestafanikes have learned to shoot. Varfndik suction - Children in the air ... The whole transport is Dorm perished. And he, mshhle? Happy had. A sign from heaven. Only wounded in leg. The murderers have it considered dead.
Shehkhlang, days and nights would mshhle circle from home to home "of person to person and tell terror - meshoykh. Paint fints' Tourette horror - images pass details of the and that. About the Beautiful Queen, who was known for three hours and about Zalman the cutter, which was Hetzer at geshtafanik 'he would shoot him before he shoots his children.
Mshhle told for each, which had wanted him to listen to his words.
He had changed, mshhle. Impossible to recognize in him the amalikn sun, the laughter is gone fv his Hasidic eyes, sit dintshik and Indian Fern is geiuas Mara - ■ shkhurhdik.
Instead meshhlekh about rabbis and beleymufsim he dnnrtseylt Kashmir.

Not good enough to be much use. Eric's procedure works, but must be very laborious.

I thank you very much Kingfisher! It is helpful, showing the general subject matter on the page. I think this Mshhle is Moishe the Beadle, the storyteller, and it seems, if this is page 3 & 4, that not as much attention is given to him in the original as in Night. But that is yet to be seen. We'll get a better and a full translation eventually.

[Carolyn Yeager]

Looking for sections to translate will not do it - we have to have the whole book. I have been making some inquiries and have learned that "someone" is working on a translation. This comes from a Yiddish organization, so it's very likely being done in conjunction with Elie Wiesel and/or his backers. This is not good. We have to have our own translation, totally objective. If anyone on this board has any connection to Yiddish speakers or would want to undertake this translation, let me know at [email protected].

Carolyn, I wonder if you'll find the smoking gun you're looking for. I did some test translations myself a few months back, after reading your articles on IH, and what I found was just that "Un di Velt" is terribly overwritten. In other words, Wiesel slashed huge amounts of filler out of the Yiddish text to create "Night," but the outline of the story, and the essential details, basically remain the same. That, at least, is the result I found.

I don't mean to be discouraging, and I don't mean that a translation might not be useful for other reasons. (As in, for example, the light it might shine on EW's real sympathies--Seidman did title her article "The Scandal of Jewish Rage," after all.) I'm just not sure that a complete translation will be of much use in determining the larger question of whether EW really is the author of the text. The discrepancies which you've found between the existing translations of "Night" and EW's statements elsewhere are already enough to establish that the text is not a "true" story in the way it's usually passed off to be. But that's not likely to matter much to EW or his defenders. It's just too easy to say, "Oh, a few details were changed here and there--poetic licence." They'll shrug it off.

In other words, you might go to a huge amount of trouble to produce a complete translation, and still be no further along in making the case that EW is a fraud.

Anyway, I didn't come along just to be a naysayer. Like I said, I did some translations a while back, before I knew that others were working on the problem. So I'll post my results here, if only so that others don't waste their time on the same material. Following Eric's example, I'm uploading the pages as images--that looks like the easiest way to display them here, without people having to download. If anyone's interested, I can pass along the original Word files.

The text is in three columns: Yiddish original, translation, and the text of "Night" in Marion Wiesel's translation, for comparison. I've highlighted in yellow the material that EW cut in producing "Night." There are also a couple of places, highlighted in blue, which show additions EW made to the text in "Night." Most of these are pretty trivial, but there is one that I'm sure everyone here will find significant. (It doesn't prove anything about authorship, however.)

Fantastic, Kladderadatsch! What great work. I will pay you to do the whole book this way. I'm not looking for a "smoking gun" (although I imagine we'll find some); I am looking at the whole tone and tenor and already the translated Un di velt does not sound like Elie Wiesel's writing. However, that's subjective, I know.

That the storyline in the two books is basically the same is proof that EW took his story in Night from this book. So that is not a bad thing, as people here seem to be making out. The question is: does it really fit Elie Wiesel at the time? From what little we know so far, Un di velt sounds like something written right after the liberation, fresh in the memory of a very resentful, angry and political Zionist Jew -- just as Naomi Siedmann gave as her impression -- and probably worked on for several years. Night can be written 10 years later, filtered through time, but not the Yiddish work (I suspect). Yet EW says he wrote it in 1954, without notes, from memory ... and in a mad rush to boot.

Kladderadatsch, I'm aware of the reservations you express about the project. I can see them for myself. But, it has become likely that I know more about Elie Wiesel than any other revisionist at the present time. I haveall the parts, aspects, details in my mind so I know how new information fits in. I'm not in the least worried or discouraged about what I'm doing. In fact, I'm encouraged ... especially by your skill in translating. I will send you a personal message and we'll go from there ... I hope.

Thanks again for posting this! It will give the other posters something to think and talk about.

[SevenUp]

There is no shortage of Yiddish-English translation services, so, for crying out loud, why not get a few price quotes and have the thing translated. Enough of this endless speculation about something that can be discovered by a serious person with $500.00 in a week. If $500.00 won't do it, take up a collection, I'll contribute.

[Carolyn Yeager]

There is no shortage of Yiddish-English translation services, so, for crying out loud, why not get a few price quotes and have the thing translated. Enough of this endless speculation about something that can be discovered by a serious person with $500.00 in a week. If $500.00 won't do it, take up a collection, I'll contribute.

I don't want a translation by a Yid. Do you? My suggestion is to keep quiet about this or they will be coming out with their own version very quickly. Once their version is established as "official" it will be hard to unseat if it contains errors. And you know how they can argue for "what words mean." Let's keep this to ourselves for now. Don't go getting price quotes from translation services!

[Mkk]

There is no shortage of Yiddish-English translation services, so, for crying out loud, why not get a few price quotes and have the thing translated. Enough of this endless speculation about something that can be discovered by a serious person with $500.00 in a week. If $500.00 won't do it, take up a collection, I'll contribute.

I don't want a translation by a Yid. Do you? My suggestion is to keep quiet about this or they will be coming out with their own version very quickly. Once their version is established as "official" it will be hard to unseat if it contains errors. And you know how they can argue for "what words mean." Let's keep this to ourselves for now. Don't go getting price quotes from translation services!

What are we meant to do then? The only possibility I can think of is to find a Yiddish speaking revisionist like David Cole (except, speaks Yiddish, obviously)

[SevenUp]

I think we should note that the published English version of 'Night' is a holohoax denier's dream, for at least these six reasons ...

1. It contains the completely absurd line .... "Babies were thrown in the air and the machine gunners used them as targets."

2. It makes the absurd claim that the Nazis killed the Jews at Auschwitz by tossing them live into burning pits, one for adults, one for children.

3. There is no mention of gas chambers.

4. Wiesel mentions, in the short book, taking showers on six separate occasions, in some cases explicitly for disinfections (check with amazon.com's Search Inside the Book feature for shower.

5. Wiesel relates that he was hospitalized an operated on for an infected foot.

6. Wiesel relates that when the Soviet army approached the camp he was in the hospital, was given the choice of awaiting the Soviets with his father, or evacuating the camp with the Nazis, and he chose to go with the Nazis.

1 and 2 in the list demonstrate the absurd Jewish lies that make up the holohoax, but not the official absurd Jewish lies, no one now claims to believe this idiocy, not even the USHMM.

3,4, and 5 demonstrate that the holocaust is a hoax and that the Nazis were not exterminating Jews in gas chambers at Auschwitz, but were instead trying to keep them healthy.

6 wraps it up and shows that the whole extermination hoax is absurd.

What more could deniers ask for?

And yet, the book is recommended reading in schools. Millions (?) have read it and for them is has CONFIRMED the holohoax lies. There is something going on that we are missing.

In any case, translating 'Un whatever it is' will no doubt provide more grist for the deniers, but, we are surfeited already. It will not be the end of Elie Wiesel, if past history is any indication it may earn him another Nobel for the new set of absurdities.

That's why I'm saying more research, while interesting, is not the issue.

[Kladderadatsch]

Carolyn, thanks for your note. I'm not ready to commit to anything just yet; I'm going to have think about it. It's a huge amount of work you're talking about, and as I said, I'm not sure that there really will be that much of a payoff in terms of useful material. And arguments like the one from Seven Up just above make a lot of sense to me too.

However, I thought I'd experiment a little more (to see how much of it I could stand for one day, really) and so I spent this afternoon doing another test sample. It's the same passage as Kingfisher did using machine translation above; I hope he won't mind. (It really does come out clearer when a human does it.) And whatever may be true elsewhere, the beginnings of the two books are clearly pretty different, so I figured that might make for a good place to compare. I have to admit, I thought the results were pretty interesting.

No point highlighting this time--there's just too many differences. "Night" is in italics.

"Un di Velt" pp. 7-12

[Carolyn Yeager]

Carolyn, thanks for your note. I'm not ready to commit to anything just yet; I'm going to have think about it. It's a huge amount of work you're talking about, and as I said, I'm not sure that there really will be that much of a payoff in terms of useful material. And arguments like the one from Seven Up just above make a lot of sense to me too.

However, I thought I'd experiment a little more (to see how much of it I could stand for one day, really) and so I spent this afternoon doing another test sample. It's the same passage as Kingfisher did using machine translation above; I hope he won't mind. (It really does come out clearer when a human does it.) And whatever may be true elsewhere, the beginnings of the two books are clearly pretty different, so I figured that might make for a good place to compare. I have to admit, I thought the results were pretty interesting.

Dear Kladderadatsch,

This is so good I hate for it to end. I can only hope you will get interested enough to continue. You are perfect at it. I've always wanted the first few pages of the book, now I have it. Very, very interesting, too. The author doesn't yet talk about his family, yet in Night the father is already brought in a lot, and Hilda and Bea. If the sisters don't appear in the Yiddish book, that will be a big smoking gun. Two paragraphs from where you stopped, in Night Hilda is mentioned again as being the age to get married. Is that in the Yiddish book?

Moshle the Handyman has a wife and 4 children, and is not a teacher of Cabbala. In Night he is mainly a mystic who introduces Eliezer into such thinking. This religious fanaticism being a lifelong passion of Wiesel's, he is compelled to bring it into his story. It will be interesting to find out if the Eliezer in the Yiddish book is so religious. He describes himself as "a child who rejoiced in the beauty of living and in the sun" but Elie Wiesel liked being indoors studying the Talmud even as a child, said he often played sick or was sick so he could stay in bed, and he spent all his spare time at the synagogue.

I do think beginning at the beginning and going through, not leaving anything out, is the way to do it. Picking and choosing passages is not. Interesting information is found everywhere! And we need the sequence.

As to what SevenUp wrote, I assume you're aware that these things have been said for years now and have not made the impression we need. As long as EW is believed to have actually been "in the camps at the age of 16" and "lost his parents and precious little sister" he can tell all the lies he wants. People think he's justified. I have accumulated a great deal of evidence that he was NOT there, and this book is very important. This IS the direction to take.

All the best and many, many thanks. I will go over this more carefully than I have so far, and I hope I will be reading more soon.

[Kladderadatsch]

Carolyn, just to answer your question about Hilda, yes there is mention of a certain older sister being of a ripe age for matchmaking, just down the page where you said it would be. I think you'll find it interesting:

Is there anything in Wiesel's other writings about Hilda also being named Deborah? Can you get to "Hilda" from "Deborah" as a diminutive or nickname? What about Bea? I don't know. But it does seem very odd, no doubt about it.

Just editing to say that I made a small but important change to the translation. The text does in fact say "my oldest sister," not "my older sister." So it can't be Bea.

[Carolyn Yeager]

Carolyn, just to answer your question about Hilda, yes there is mention of a certain older sister being of a ripe age for matchmaking, just down the page where you said it would be. I think you'll find it interesting:

Dos iz geven 1 Corrected.GIF

Deborah.GIF

Is there anything in Wiesel's other writings about Hilda also being named Deborah? Can you get to "Hilda" from "Deborah" as a diminutive or nickname? What about Bea? I don't know. But it does seem very odd, no doubt about it.

I could hug you! I knew this would be interesting. There is no way to get from Deborah to Hilda or vice versa. However, the fact that this narrator has an older sister and also a younger sister keeps us still on the fence. They will have a store; M. Grüner said his parents ran a grocery store too! Were all the Jews in Sighet shopkeepers? It seems so. Wiesel's other sister's name was Batya (I think she changed it to Bea later ... meaning the family did not call her that). FYI, Hilda & others have said Tzipora's formal given name was Judith; they just called her Tzipora (a rather common Hasidic Jewish name) OR for some legal reasons Tzipora could not be put on a Romanian birth certificate (?). So now we have to find out who else is in the family, and then study up on this name business. That's why I've thought the beginning of the book is the most important.

I will say this, which carries little weight, I know: The writing style just does not sound like Wiesel in his books and other writings ... not even in his memoir which would be the closest to it. This author is not mystical/dreamy in the way EW is, and I bet he's going to be much better with facts. But it's too early to tell. This author sounds older too, even if he is writing of himself as a young boy. I'm so intrigued.