AN ARCHIVAL PHOTO SHOWN IN ELIE WIESEL: SOUL ON FIRE

Holocaust "storyteller" gets more a tribute than an analysis

Rudavsky's short film is part of the US television "American Masters" series. But was Elie Wiesel, its' subject, an "American master"? Rather, a wartime survivor from a shtetl in Romania, he was a spokesman of remembrance, for both the US and the world, of the Nazi effort to eradicate the Jews in World War II, a murderous effort that came to be known as "the Holocaust." That role sometimes made him seem strident or exploitive. But overall, perhaps he was a force for good, insofar as the new generations preserve any knowledge of the previous century. Perhaps we should not expect much of an "American Masters" episode. But as a portrait this film, though well made feels, insufficiently rounded and penetrating.

Its finest moments may be its use of flickering black and white animation early on as a way to depict the greatest horrors of Nazi oppression as a way to poetically express the inexpressible.

Wiesel's parents and one sibling died at the hands of the Nazis. He and his sister survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald as teenagers. When the camp was liberated in 1945, a group photograph was taken. It features emaciated inmates including Wiesel, a gaunt, angular and spectral young man but a lucky survivor. He and his sister were sent to a French orphanage and they were later reunited. He acquired a distinguished education in Paris and became a friend of François Mauriac and other French intellectuals. Some of his testimony here is in French, in footage whose provenance we don't know. What becomes clear is that he decided to make describing the suffering of the Jews in the War the focus of his life: to be a professional, full-time witness to the Holocaust.

From a social media discussion of Wiesel on Instagram initiated by awarded-winning Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, quoting from an eloquent statement by Wiesel he cites somewhat ironically as concerning Gaza. A contributor, identified as Ruby Moonshine, wrote, "He was my professor for a class at BU. He was a brilliant literary thinker, an interesting writer, a Jewish scholar and he was not a very nice man. Misogynist and impatient and a Zionist in every way, shape and form. He did not give a care about Palestinians at all. I learned in his class that the prophet has clay feet."

Wikipedia: "Wiesel also played a role in the initial success of The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski by endorsing it before it became known the book was fiction and, in the sense that it was presented as all Kosinski's true experience, a hoax."

The Guardian in 2000 recounted a moment when both Norman Finkelstein and Elie Wiesel both came to England.. The article headlines with (about Finkelstein). "His accusation that Zionist groups profit from hijacking the history of the Nazi genocide has made him a hate figure." But Finkelstein has been proven right. In 2000 Finkelstein published a book, The Holocaust Industry in which he wrote about this subject. He has asserted, in the Guardian piece's words, that "Wiesel is a hypocrite, responsible for the 'sacralization of the Holocaust ... for his standard fee of $25,000 (plus chauffeured limousine)', transforming it into an ideological tool used to shield Israel from criticism and serve the interests of the U.S. and Israel. Finkelstein refers to Wiesel as the "resident clown of the Holocaust circus." If this sounds extreme, be it noted that, as the Guardian piece recalls, "The idea of a Holocaust racket surfaced years ago when Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban quipped: 'There's no business like Shoah business' ('Shoah' is Hebrew for 'Holocaust')."

But Finkelstein, a strong critic of Elie Wiesel for his exploitation of the Hoocaust, is not heard from in this film.

Finkelstein has held in his book The Holocaust Industry and elsewhere that Holocaust survivors and their descendants could be used by the all-powerful American Jewish lobby to lend a kind of moral victimhood to an Israeli state engaged in criminal acts against the Palestinians. Over the intervening years, this has emerged as a self-evident truth, and the actions of the State of Israel are less and less possible to justify. Most recently, international bodies have judged the actions of Israel in Gaza to qualify as genocide. And all along the Holocaust has been used to justify anything. Back in his day Elie Wiesel spearheaded this kind of propaganda and was skillful in wielding it. But none of this is in Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire.

Wikipedia: "Wiesel was critical of Hamas; he condemned them for the 'use of children as human shields' during the 2014 Gaza War, and ran an ad in several large newspapers to express this message. The New York Times refused to run the advertisement, saying, 'The opinion being expressed is too strong, and too forcefully made, and will cause concern amongst a significant number of Times readers.'" It is telling indeed that the Times, which has been such a warm supporter of Israel, should find Wiesel's claims a step too far. The claim that Palestinians have used any people as "human shields" has been a longtime favorite of anti-Palestinian propaganda.

Wiesel's first and most famous book, Night is described, but only externally. We are told it was originally 800 pages in Yiddish, then greatly pared down and published in French (as La nuit); for a long time ignored, then gradually famous and an international bestseller. Of Wiesel's additional 56 books, details are lacking.

A voice in this film says when he asked Wiesel what he did, he replied that he was a "storyteller." He said this when - in an incident covered in detail in this film - Wiesel spoke up to President Reagan after being awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, and begged Reagan not to visit a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany. The film shows Wiesel receiving the Nobel Peace Prize the very next year, he brought his 14-year-old son Elisha up to the podium with him. The adult Elisha explains that, living as he did so much already in the shadow of his father, this was exactly what he did not want to have happen at the time.

An hour or so in, this film, which has shown Wiesel's white-haired widow frequently as a talking head, and now his grown son, begins to focus on his descendants, a vibrant family that has become devoutly Jewish. But seeing the family hanging out and celebrating Passover adds little to the portrait of Elie. Complex issues raised by the life don't get a chance for the detailed exploration they need.

In one fleeting moment Wiesel's widow acknowledges that her husband could never accept criticism of Israel or the behavior of the Jewish settlers on Palestinian lands. But this is an admission that passes unnoticed. The fact is, and this is imp0rtant, that Wiesel went from being a witness to being a propagandist. He got to speak to presidents in nationally broadcast moments, he got to receive a Nobel Prize, he got to receive that ultimate honor, to go on "Oprah." But he never came to terms with what Israel had become. This little film, for all its rich photographic documents and its many archival and current film clips in English, French, Hebrew, and Yiddish, unfortunately winds up being more more hagiography than honest, rounded portrait.

Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire, 87 mins., premiered at the Hamptons Oct. 5, 2024. It showed Aug. 29, 2025 at Telluride. Its limited release in the US was on Sept. 16, 2025 at IFC Center, NYC via Panorama Films. It opened at the Siskel Film Center in Chicago on Jan. 9, 2026. It screens in the Bay Area Jan. 27, 2026.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.