American Masters Honors Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel in New Documentary Premiering January 27 on PBS
Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire, an intimate portrait narrated in his own voice, explores how the author’s life as a Holocaust survivor inspired his work, including the bestselling memoir “Night.”
For decades, author, educator and humanitarian Elie Wiesel spoke against global injustice with his writing and activism during his venerable career. Known for his groundbreaking memoir “Night,” which was based on his personal experiences as a Holocaust prisoner in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Wiesel would go on to pen 57 books and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. As a professor at Boston University over thirty years, he influenced thousands of students, and his memoir “Night” is still read in schools around the world. Learn about how he fought “the sin of indifference” in American Masters – Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire, premiering nationwide Tuesday, January 27 at 9 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings), pbs.org/americanmasters and the PBS App. The film’s premiere on Holocaust Remembrance Day is part of The WNET Group’s Honoring Our Stories: Jewish Culture and Remembering the Holocaust initiative beginning January 26.
Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire begins with his early life in Romania and his family members tragic murders in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, followed by Wiesel’s liberation from Buchenwald by American soldiers and his migration to France. From there, he moved to New York, where he became a writer, teacher and lecturer. The documentary features his first-person narration, along with interviews, personal family footage, archival footage and hand-painted animations. Additionally, the film includes classroom scenes at Boston University, in addition to a contemporary middle school classroom in Newark, taught by Paris Murray of the Northstar Academy.
This documentary includes interviews with Wiesel and his family members. He married Marian Rose in 1970, who gave birth to their son Elisha, now the father of Elijah and Nova. In addition to the family, the film includes Lawrence Langer, Ted Comet, Mark Podwal, Ariel Burger, Rabbi Irving Greenberg, Ted Koppel and Annette Insdorf.
“My mother studied with Elie Wiesel in Boston and his books were in our home, and so the opportunity to make this film for me was quite personal both because of his beautiful stories of Jewish mystical leaders, and because of my families’ experience, which in some ways mirrored his,” says filmmaker Oren Rudavsky. “In a world which is so profoundly divided, and where people have forgotten how to speak civilly to each other, Wiesel is a role model and a healer which we need today more than ever.”
Born in 1928, Wiesel was raised in a Jewish family in Sighet, Romania with three sisters. In 1944, shortly following German occupation, Wiesel’s life irrevocably changed after he and his family were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. His mother and younger sister Tzipora were killed almost immediately, while Wiesel and his father were eventually forced to march to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. After the death of his father, Wiesel was liberated from Buchenwald on April 11, 1945. He was subsequently transported to France with other orphaned survivors known as the Buchenwald Boys. His sister Hilda discovered him through a photograph in a French newspaper and he eventually reunited with his sisters Beatrice and Hilda.
As a young man, Wiesel began his journalism career in Paris, where he used his writing talents to report on political and foreign affairs. During this time, he also led a children’s choir and studied at the Sorbonne. His writing of the memoir “Night,” “Jews of Silence” and “Four Hasidic Masters” would be the foundation for his career as a speaker, writer and university professor, beginning in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Although he frequently wrote about global events as a journalist, he was initially hesitant to recount his own experiences as a Holocaust survivor. It wasn’t until he began writing the book “Night” – first in Yiddish as “And the World Remained Silent,” then in a shortened version in French titled “La Nuit” and finally in the English translation – that he was able to speak candidly about the horrors he and millions of people endured during the Holocaust. “Night” and his subsequent books and public lectures led to his international acclaim. The film includes such seminal moments as his nationally televised speech to Ronald Reagan before the President’s’s impending trip in 1985 to a German cemetery at Bitburg, and his acceptance of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize.
Wiesel died in 2016 at the age of 87 in New York City and is remembered as one of the most prominent Jewish writers, activists, and educators of the last 60 years. The filmmaker of Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire is Oren Rudavsky, whose previous work includes directing, co-producing and co-writing the Emmy and Critics Choice Award-nominated American Masters film Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People, as well as the PBS POV broadcast Hiding and Seeking, and the Academy Award-Shortlisted and PBS film A Life Apart: Hasidism in America.
