The Jews of Silence: A Personal Report on Soviet Jewry

by Elie Wiesel

Book Overview

In the fall of 1965 the Israeli newspaper Haaretz sent a young journalist named Elie Wiesel to the Soviet Union to report on the lives of Jews trapped behind the Iron Curtain. "I would approach Jews who had never been placed in the Soviet show window by Soviet authorities," wrote Wiesel. "They alone, in their anonymity, could describe the conditions under which they live; they alone could tell whether the reports I had heard were true or false--and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805208267
• ISBN13: 9780805208269
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Schocken Books Inc
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

They would not be severed from their people

This book, is a classic testament to the brutal persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union during the dark days of Communist opression. With both poetic and potent eloquency Wiesel describes the atmosphere of fear and silence, that reigned among Soviet Jewry during the 1960's when this book was written. The attempts to force Jews to abandon their faith and identity, and to cut ties with their brothers and sisters in Israel, by the malignant and brutal Communist tyrants. then there was the daily disparagement of the State of Israel and the maligning of Zionism by the State Media (something we see in may countries around the world today). Indeed even though Communist tyranny in Russia has collapsed, the crusade of hate by the Left, formulated by Soviet propagandists has only got more vicious and irascible, in recent years. In South Africa, for example, a hard-core Stalinist Cabinet Minister, (of Jewish descent) trained and educated in the old Soviet Union, daily comes up with venomous and ruthless attacks on the Jewish State and it's supporters, and is directing a campaign of ethnic hatred against Israel and it's Jews. But the Jews of the Soviet Union refused to forget who they were, or to give up their faith or their love for the State of Israel. Reffering to the violent anti-Israel propaganda formulated in the Soviet Union, the author explains : "The purpose of such propaganda is to make Israel seem hateful to the general populace but to the Jews as well, to undermine the esteem in which they hold the Jewish state, and to convince them finally to relinquish an idea which has failed, a vision of redemption which has somehow been made profane..." But this form of psychological warfare, directed against the Jewish dream, and designed to divide Jews of the diaspora from their own people in Israel, failed in Russia. Jews all over the world need to reject it, wherever it raises it's ugly head. As Wiesel describes 'there are Jews who will under no circumstances let themselves be severed from their people'.

A book that helped change history

This report by Elie Weisel on the Jews of Silence helped increase greatly Western interest in the Russian Jewish community. It helped rally the Jewish world in support of the emigration movement. And eventually it helped in the liberation of the Soviet Jews from their prison. Over one million were to come to Israel in the decades ahead. It is rare that a book has so much influence. A courageous witness like Elie Weisel deserves great credit for this historical ' miracle'.