Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

January 18, 2024

Elie Wiesel Goes to Disneyland

“I don’t know if Heaven is real. But I do know that there is a paradise on earth for children.”

In 1956, Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir, Un di velt hot geshvign (“And the World Was Silent”) was published in Yiddish. At the time, he was earning his living as a journalist, writing regularly for the Forward, America’s leading Yiddish newspaper. He traveled to California in 1957 and wrote an article for the paper about his visit to Disneyland. The next year his memoir would be published in French form as La Nuit, and two years later it would appear in English as Night, earning him worldwide fame.

SaveGift