All Rivers Run to the Sea : Memoirs

Rating:
Summary: disagree with "mediocre" label
Review: I found this a very compelling read, lasting over several readings. It's true the author did not stick tightly to chronological order, but anyone who has read his fiction knows his style tends to be very esoteric and rather free-floating (I personally do not care for his fiction, which I admit I do find to go over my head). However, as a reader, I certainly got a feel for emotions he felt throughout different experiences in his life. I found the last scene describing his emotions before and during his wedding to be really profound. It's true that there is a lot of Jewish content in this book, which may cause some of his analogies etc. to be less accessible to someone from a different background. However, for someone who wants to read a first-hand Holocaust experience without very strong graphic details, I do recommend it. (As a side note, just last week I actually attended a speech by Mr. Wiesel, and he is really a personable, funny, self-effacing and sweet man, not the really sad and somber person you might expect from his writings. I was surprised by this, pleasantly so!)

Rating:
Summary: Remember
Review: I liked this book, but not for most of the reasons I read in other people's reviews. I believe they have overvalued it because of what the author has undergone, because he's written other, more stunning books, and because Wiesel is almost a monument in himself.

Having heard of his Holocaust speeches and read his famous early concentration camp account, _Night_, I was unprepared for the naivete and gentle self-mockery that pervade this book. Yes, it talks about his roots, his tussles with religion, his adventures and misadventures as a journalist and friend/antagonist of the great.

But what a surprise to see his repeated references to all the pretty faces that caught his eye and how badly he usually fared in approaching them: "I indulged in some serious flirting, by which I mean that I talked to them of things too serious to achieve the desired result." "I thought about all the girls in Versailles and all the unknown women in trains who didn't know how much I loved them, and about all the sins I lacked the courage to commit." "I knew if I lowered my guard I would be hit by one of those thunderbolts I never knew how to handle. So of course I lowered my guard." "I spoke to her of destiny, and of Dante for good measure. She told me not to be a fool."

It may strike some readers almost as monotonous, but I found Wiesel's willingness to speak of things all men experience, yet never include in their autobiographies, refreshing. The other reviews stress the IMPORTANCE, almost PONDEROUSNESS, of this book, yet that's not what I'm left with at all. Wiesel is also amazingly open and childlike. For instance, recovering from injuries suffered in a massive car accident, he writes:

"Confined to bed and condemned to immobility, one dreams, one thinks about and sees the world in a whole new way. A simple painkiller is worth more than a dozen wondrous poems. I was more grateful to the nurse who came to turn me onto my back or stomach than I would have been to the most ravishing of creatures granting me her all. The most astonishing world news affected me less than the doctor's smile."

This book shows the very human side of a "mere" journalist who in his time has become almost an institution.

Rating:
Summary: a beautiful exploration
Review: I was assigned to write a report about Elie Wiesel for English class. In this class, we had to read a book by the author and get information about their background, etc. I went to the library to find "Night Trilogy" but it was out, so I got the other books by Elie and read the covers and decided this would be a nice book to start with and follow it with "The Generation After". I must say I was hooked. After reading "Night", this book gives you even more insight into his life and makes his other works even more touching. A definite must read.

Rating:
Summary: My own small word
Review: I would strongly recommend that all readers on Amazon read the review whose title caption is ' Remember'. It is far more extensive and far better than the small remarks I am about to post.
Elie Weisel is the one human being who more than any other has helped the world understand the horror of the Shoah , the Holocaust the Nazi destruction of one - third of the Jewish people six million human beings.
For this he should always have a place in the historical consciousness of both the Jewish people and mankind.
His memoir is at times very moving .For those who know his other work and his masterpiece ' Night' there will be much familiar here, though here the story is enriched by greater detail.
I find myself whenever I am reading Weisel unable to really judge in abstract or purely literary terms. His significance as a human being, as a witness as one who has spoken to me in my own life is so great that my feeling is closer to reverence than anything else.
I read this book with the idea that any additional detail about his life and work, any additional understanding of his thought about Man's relation to G-d would be worthwhile. I read this work as I will read all his future works as an admiring student of a great teacher.
May he be blessed by many more years of great creative work.

Rating:
Summary: Remember
Review: In Elie Wiesel's beautiful book, Memoirs: All Rivers Run to the Sea, he again accomplishes what he has accomplished most perfectly in all of his previous works--translating the personal into the universal. Wiesel is also a master storyteller and he does his job flawlessly in this poignant and unforgettable book, relating his memoirs in a frame, both beginning and ending All Rivers Run to the Sea with a dream.

He beings with a dream about his father, and the haunting words, "Last night I saw my father in a dream." Of course, this is no ordinary dream, but a dream that reveals volumes about Wiesel's life and its ever-present themes. Imprisoned at both Buchenwald and Auschwitz, Wiesel, who shared the darkest moments of his life with his father, saw the man he never really knew die of starvation and dysentery, while his mother and youngest sister, the beautiful little Tzipora, were murdered in the ovens of Auschwitz.

In the second dream, Wiesel brings his memoirs to a close as he describes his joyous wedding day in the Old City of Jerusalem. Although a happy groom, Wiesel is by no means a traditional one. Retreating into a silent reverie, he tries somehow to include his parents and baby sister in the wedding festivities, thus rounding out the family circle he loved so much.

Between these two sad and haunting dreams, Wiesel, who often employs frames in relating a tale, tells us the story of the early years of his life.

Born in Sighet, Romania on 30 September 1928 to Shlomo and Sarah Feig Wiesel, Elie Wiesel lived the early years of his life happily, in the center of Jewish culture. Although his family was quite traditional, it was in Sighet that Wiesel began experimenting with more mystical lines of thought. Possessed with a passion for learning, he studied both Hebrew and Yiddish as well as delving into the ancient texts of the Jewish faith.

It was on 19 March 1944 that this idyllic boyhood with an intensely spiritual family came to an abrupt end. An unspeakable darkness fell upon Sighet's entire Jewish community as all of the nearly 15,000 residents were arrested and deported to Auschwitz, Poland.

Wiesel is chilling as he relates the horror and uncertainty of traveling in the cattle cars, of the painful separation of loving families and the violation and exploitation of human beings by...other human beings.

It was only after the liberation of the camps in 1945, that Wiesel discovered that his two older sisters, Hilda and Batya had survived. Although overjoyed at their reunion, the loss of his younger sister is something so painful, so beyond Wiesel's imagination, that even today, he cannot speak of it.

For a full ten years, Wiesel remained silent regarding his experiences in the death camps, wondering why he had survived while so many others had perished. He said, "In those years, it was very difficult to talk about the subject. I grew up in a mystical atmosphere, believing in silence, so I tried to use what I learned to purify the words, to purify language."

Relocated to France, Wiesel studied at the Sorbonne where he learned French, philosophy, literature and psychology while working at a variety of odd jobs. Eventually, he chose journalism as his career and he tells of his travels to Jerusalem, New York and many other places.

Although a dark and somber book, All Rivers Run to the Sea is not without its lighter moments. One of these occurs in New York after Wiesel was struck by a taxi, hospitalized and cornered by a somewhat overly-zealous attorney. As Wiesel lay in the hospital, immobilized, his French travel documents expired and he became a United States citizen.

Although it is Wiesel's own father who haunts his sleeping dreams, it is another Being who troubles his waking thoughts, a Being Weisel, through the teachings of his faith, calls God.

Evident in the quote taken from Ecclesiastes Wiesel chose as the subtitle of his memoirs, is the question that haunts his daily life: How could God, during the Holocaust, remain silent and watch the senseless death of six million human beings? Human beings, He, Himself, created?

Although Wiesel's observations have been brilliant, he has, by his own admission, failed to reach an answer. Like the Hebrew sage who wrote Ecclesiastes, Wiesel observes that, "All rivers run to the sea, yet the sea is never full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again."

Like the author of Ecclesiastes, Wiesel, in this book, makes a wide investigation of life, leading the reader from the happiness of his boyhood to the misery of his youth to the honors of his mature life (including the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize). And, like the author of Ecclesiastes, Wiesel finds no satisfying answer. For him, the joys of life are forever tinged with sadness; the specter of death is never far away.

In All Rivers Run to the Sea, Elie Wiesel makes full use of the piety and wisdom of Hasidism and his memoirs read like a novel of the highest order. Intended for those who have made, or want to make, their own investigation of life and its mysteries, most especially that of humanity's incomprehensible inhumanity, this is a superb tale of unvarnished truthfulness, humility and awareness.

Wiesel, in beautiful language that mingles sadness and joy, horror and triumph, writes for those of us who dare to look into the darkest moments of life, searching for a little light, a ray of the faintest hope. He writes, not so we know, but that we may hunger for more.

An incredible human being whose tragedy became the impetus for a life filled with the profoundest meaning, Wiesel, like Martin Buber before him, is ready to "hurtle down deep pathways, wander through invisible cemeteries, both seeking and fleeing solitude and receiving stories already told and those...yet to be told."

All Rivers Run to the Sea is more than just a supremely important book; it is one of the most important books in the literature of humankind.

Rating:
Summary: 6 stars?
Review: In this work, Wiesel relates a telling anecdote of his youth when the Vishnitzer Rebbe blessed his mother that her son should grow up to be a "gadol b'yisroel." In his humility, Wiesel concludes that this proves even a great tzaddik can be wrong. Mr. Wiesel, I respectfully disagree, as his blessing came true in the fullest sense. In All Rivers Run to the Sea, we enter Wiesel's formative childhood years. We meet his friends, teachers, and family and what a rich, beautiful experience it is! We are then taken through his years of suffering in the Holocaust. Be prepared to cry during this chapter. A diversion from the autobiography is the moving chapter, "G-d's Suffering: A Commentary." We then learn of Wiesel's life after the war. We meet his perplexing, brilliant, elusive teacher Shushani. Wiesel describes an incident in which he refused to engage in sexual relations with an attractive German woman after the war. I felt consumed with joy for Wiesel's overcoming this great test from on High. At the end of this work we learn of Wiesel's relationship with the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, R'Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994). Perhaps I'm biased, but this ranks among my favorite sections of this work. I can hardly wait to begin the second volume of memoirs.

Rating:
Summary: I'm reading this book just in the aftermath
Review: of watching the Morris film Dr. Death, and I can't help but wonder about the mentality and motives of Holocaust deniers. Read this book by Wiesel, read all his books, and educate yourself about the period.

Rating:
Summary: 6 stars?
Review: This is one of the times when I think we should be able to go higher than 5 stars. Elie Wiesel's All Rivers Run to the Sea gave us a more in-depth look to the concentration camp survivor. He really gives us a rich experience in weaving together the threads of his past, from his days in school to the horror in the concentration camps, right up to his days of being a journalist, and ending with him as a groom. You really get a feel for the type of person he is as well - a wonderful, compassionate, and intelligent man. If you've read Night already, you're definitely going to want to check this out.

Rating:
Summary: A profound autobiography/memoir...
Review: Usually, I do not read much in the biography/autobiorgaphy category, but M. Wiesel's work is excellent. In surviving horrors which still have no words, he has also been present & known some of the most interesting figures of the latter 20th century. I appreciate that M. Wiesel continues to question himself and motivations throughout his life. His thoughts on writing and the use of space/silence is wonderful to include within the memoirs-- especially as a companion to a first-time reader of his other works.