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Translated by Marion Wiesel
A profoundly and unexpectedly intimate, deeply affecting summing up of his life so far, from one of the most cherished moral voices of our time.
Eighty-two years old, facing emergency heart surgery and his own mortality, Elie Wiesel reflects back on his life. Emotions, images, faces and questions flash through his mind. His family before and during the unspeakable Event. The gifts of marriage and children and grandchildren that followed. In his writing, in his teaching, in his public life, has he done enough for memory and the survivors? His ongoing questioning of God—where has it led? Is there hope for mankind? The world’s tireless ambassador of tolerance and justice has given us this luminous account of hope and despair, an exploration of the love, regrets and abiding faith of a remarkable man.
- Sales Rank: #295767 in Books
- Published on: 2012-12-04
- Released on: 2012-12-04
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.60" h x .50" w x 4.70" l, .37 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 79 pages
Review
“A successful husband, father, grandfather, teacher, and writer, [Mr. Wiesel] is an asset to humankind. He has turned despondency into a message of approval and optimism…Mr. Wiesel packages equal parts beauty and astonishing description in an impossibly concise manner. Few authors have possessed such capacity for succinctness and brevity with magnificent dexterity.”
-NY Journal of Books
“An absorbing, clear-eyed reflection on [Wiesel’s] own mortality and a candid account of a life lived…Open Heart is Wiesel at his most vulnerable and his most determined, and his thoughts and ideas have never been so lucidly conveyed.”
-The Rumpus
“The reader…becomes a quiet observer of Wiesel’s thoughts, which are plagued by the question: ‘Am I ready to die?’ His answer, clearly, is no…What seems like a quick and easy read actually delves deeply into the philosophical and makes you wonder: Will I be ready when it’s my time?”
—The Free Lance-Star
About the Author
Elie Wiesel was fifteen years old when he was deported to Auschwitz. After the war he became a journalist and writer in Paris, and since then has written more than fifty books, both fiction and nonfiction. His masterwork, Night, was a major best seller when it was republished recently in a new English translation. Wiesel has been awarded the United States Congressional Gold Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the French Legion of Honor’s Grand Cross, an honorary knighthood of the British Empire and, in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize. Since 1976 he has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
June 16, 2011.
“It’s your heart,” says the gastroenterologist after performing an endoscopy on me.
I am surprised: “Not my stomach?”
For some time now, acid reflux has been one of my nightmares. My longtime general practitioner also feels it has contributed to the various health problems that have afflicted me for the past several years.
My wife, Marion, and I have just returned from Jerusalem, where, every year, we spend the holiday of Shavuot with close friends. In keeping with the tradition to which I have remained faithful, friends and I spent the night in a yeshiva in the Old City studying biblical and Talmudic laws and commentaries dating from the Middle Ages.
This time, in Jerusalem, it had all gone well. No terrorist attacks. No border incidents. Even my cursed migraines seemed to respect the sanctity of this night, of this city unlike any other. But now, back in New York, suddenly my body revolts. The new piercing pain in my shoulders rises all the way to my jaw. I swallow a double dose of Nexium, the medicine I take for acid reflux. This time without success.
“No, neither the stomach nor the esophagus,” replies the doctor after a moment of silence. “It’s certainly the heart.” Ominous words, inducing fear and the promise of more pain. Or worse.
2
as soon as he receives his colleague’s message, my primary care doctor, a cardiologist, reaches me at home. On the phone, he appears to be out of breath; he speaks in a tense, emphatic voice, louder than usual. I have the feeling that he is trying to contain or even hide his nervousness, his concern. Clearly, he is unhappy to have to give me this bad news that will change so many things for me . . .
“I expected a different result,” he explains. “But now the situation requires some further tests immediately.”
“Yes?”
“Please come to Lenox Hill Hospital right away. I am already there.”
I protest: “Why? Because it’s the heart? Is it really that urgent? I have never had a problem with my heart. With my head, yes; my stomach too. And sometimes with my eyes. But the heart has left me in peace.”
At that, he explodes: “This conversation makes no sense. I am your cardiologist, for heaven’s sake! Please don’t argue with me! You must take a number of tests that can only be administered at the hospital. Come as quickly as you can! And take the emergency entrance!”
On occasion, I can be incredibly stupid and stubborn. And so I nevertheless steal two hours to go to my office. I have things to attend to. Appointments to cancel. Letters to sign. People to see—among others, a delegation of Iranian dissidents.
Strange, all this time I am not really worried, though by nature I am rather anxious and pessimistic. My heart does not beat faster. My breathing is normal. No pain. No premonitions. No warning. After all, hadn’t I just three days ago gone through a complete checkup with all kinds of tests, including a cardiogram, administered by my physician, the same one who is now ordering me to the hospital? There had been no indication of a coronary problem: no chest pain or feeling of oppression. What has changed so abruptly in my body to destabilize it to this extent?
All right, I’ll go to the hospital, since both doctors insist. I don’t take anything along. No books, no spare shirt, no toothbrush. Marion says she wants to accompany me. I try to discourage her. In vain.
3
a team of specialists is waiting for me in the emergency room. The very first blood test instantly reveals the gravity of my condition. There is a definite risk of heart attack. The doctors exchange incomprehensible comments in their own jargon. Their conclusion is quick, unambiguous and unanimous: An immediate procedure is required. There can be no delay.
Marion whispers in my ear that we are fortunate; she has just learned that the surgeon who will perform the angiogram is the one who operated on her two years earlier. I remember him, a handsome, strikingly intelligent man. I had been struck by his kindness as much as by his competence.
“I hope,” he tells me, “that we will be able to do for you what we succeeded in doing for your wife: to restore a normal flow of blood in the arteries by inserting a stent.” But then he adds, looking grave, “I must warn you that we may have to intervene in a more radical way. We will know very soon.”
I am drowsy and fight against sleep by trying to follow the brief professional exchanges in the operating room. Actually, I don’t understand a word. About an hour later, I hear the surgeon saying, “I am so sorry, I don’t have good news for you: Your condition is such that the insertion of a stent won’t suffice. You have five blocked arteries. You require open-heart surgery.”
I am shaken. Sure, I know that these days open-heart surgery is regularly performed the world over. Dr. Christiaan Barnard’s face appears before me; I had met the famous surgeon at a conference in Haifa and we had engaged in a long dialogue on medical ethics, comparing Judaic and Christian points of view. I had looked at his hands, wondering how many human beings owed them their survival.
But now the words “open-heart surgery” are meant for me. And they fill me with dread.
“You’re lucky. A colleague of mine, an expert in this type of surgery, is at the hospital right now. I have spoken to him. He is ready to operate on you.”
“Doctor,” I ask, “have you told my wife?”
“No, but I will do it right now.”
In a moment he is back: “I’ve seen Marion. As well as your son, Elisha.”
The fact that my beloved son is already at the hospital does not surprise me. Since his earliest childhood, he has always made me proud, always been there for me.
“What do they think?”
“They agree; we have no choice. But the decision is yours alone.”
“May I see them?”
Marion and Elisha are not good at hiding their anxiety. Their smiles seem forced. And how am I to hug them without falling apart? Marion, holding back her tears, tries to reassure me: “The doctors are optimistic. The surgeon they propose is world-renowned.”
“It will go well,” says Elisha. “I know it, Dad. I am convinced of it.”
I remain silent.
“Shall we go?” urges the attending physician.
The nurses are ready to push the gurney toward the OR. I steal another glance at the woman with whom I have shared my life for more than forty-two years. So many events, so many discoveries and projects, unite us. All we have done in life we have accomplished together. And now, one more experience.
As the door opens, I look one last time at our son, the fine young man who has justified—and continues to justify—my life and who endows it with meaning and a hereafter.
Through the tears that darken the future, a thought awakens a deeper concern, a deeper sorrow: Shall I see them again?
Most helpful customer reviews
68 of 70 people found the following review helpful.
Elie Wiesel delivers a message of hope and tolerance in Open Heart.
By Charles S. Weinblatt
Elie Wiesel has produced many excellent works of fiction and nonfiction. Most of them are in whole or in part related to his experiences as a Holocaust survivor. Open Heart is very different.
This book is equal parts memoir, treatise, and affirmation of faith as Mr. Wiesel faces sudden death from cardiovascular disease and open heart surgery.
At age 82, in June of 2011, Wiesel is rushed to a hospital with severe coronary artery disease. He has several blocked arteries that only open-heart surgery can resolve. Suddenly faced with the prospect of death, Mr. Wiesel reflects upon his life, his experiences during the Holocaust, and his life since the Shoah.
As he is wheeled into the operating room, he reminisces about the terrifying agony of his imprisonment in the Holocaust, his survival, and the glorious wonders of life, love, family, and work left undone.
Mr. Wiesel comprehends the gravity of his abruptly serious health issue, which frightens his wife and son as much as himself. He gazes into his past, filled with trepidation, gloom, and death.
Virtually everyone he loved as a young man had been murdered by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. It was the darkest portion of his life and of humanity's existence. Unexpectedly he is once more threatened with losing everyone he loved.
A devout Jew, Mr. Wiesel wonders how God could allow millions of His children to become Holocaust victims. He considers, as had so many of his peers in Nazi death camps, how God could have turned away. Where is God, Elie Wiesel wonders? How could He abandon us? How could He allow so many generations of devout families to be murdered?
Admitting that there are no easy or swift answers to such questions, Mr. Wiesel proffers cryptic responses, such as, "It is not for us to decide how or why God acts." Or "God exists within the questions as well as the actions."
In the end, Mr. Wiesel can deliver no coherent meaning from the Holocaust. He seeks a different direction for salvation. During his recovery from heart surgery, his little grandson asks, "If I loved you more, would you be in less pain?" Mr. Wiesel realizes at that moment that "God is smiling as He contemplates His creation."
Mr. Wiesel proclaims he is part of a generation abandoned by God and betrayed by mankind. He reflects how humans have attained "perfection in cruelty." He wonders how humans could have attained such a dichotomy of normalcy, "for the killers, the torturers, it is normal, thus human, to act inhumanely. Should one therefore turn away from humanity?"
These ethical bombshells remain for the reader to scrutinize, while no logical conclusion is apparent from the author. He later resolves "It is up to each of us to choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and will to oppose it."
Speaking from experience, he tells us "even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. It is possible to feel free inside a prison. Even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor. In one instant before dying, man remains immortal."
Mr. Wiesel believes in man in spite of man. He believes each of us can use words to wound or to console, to curse or to heal, to comprehend or disregard, just as "Illness may diminish me, but it will not destroy me." He proffers that, "the body is not eternal, but the idea of the soul is. The brain will be buried, but memory will survive it."
"Such is the miracle," is how Wiesel closes his thoughts. A tale of despair becomes a tale against despair. He finds singular beauty in the smile and love of his grandson that his misery over the Holocaust is diminished.
Yet what are we to believe about Holocaust survivors who have no loving family members? Can such despair be overcome when the survivor has no adoring grandchildren?
Elie Wiesel delivers a message of hope and tolerance in Open Heart. A successful husband, father, grandfather, teacher, and writer, he is an asset to humankind. He has turned despondency into a message of approval and optimism.
Mr. Wiesel packages equal parts beauty and astonishing description in an impossibly concise manner. Few authors have possessed such capacity for succinctness and brevity with magnificent dexterity.
At 82 and ill, Mr. Wiesel remains a powerful ambassador of tolerance and hope, for humanity will always require this message, a bright light in the darkness of despair, a signpost on humanity's road toward destruction and "turn to tolerance and survive."
This is Elie Wiesel's eternal message. We are each a spark of light in the darkness of destruction.
Reviewer Charles S. Weinblatt is the author of the popular Holocaust novel, "Jacob's Courage."
34 of 36 people found the following review helpful.
The Opening of a Heart
By doug
In this slight memoir focused on his cardiac event, "Open Heart," Elie Wiesel opens his heart which opens his soul and in turn his mind to his readers and students. With touching transparency and vulnerability, Wiesel reveals himself and the deeper inner dialogue with his life. His carefully chosen words and personal reflections invoke the preacher of Ecclesiastes, the conscience of Job, and the passions of Jeremiah. Wiesel's loyal readers and students savor his existential quests in his first memoir,and his novels and plays but all the more we celebrate the rich, instructive, and edifying teaching in this manner of communicating what matters in life; a communication so accessible, so real, so tender, and so profoundly personal. His writings will continue to invite humanity into ever more purposeful striving for justice and peace, for unconditional inclusion and the radical containment of hate, but "Open Heart" has a fresh, new cadence, a fresh, new intimacy, and a deeply personal summons to choose life and blessing, gratitude and love. The wake up that came from Wiesel's cardiac event is told in such a way as to awaken us to a conscious embrace and awareness of the lives we live. Thank you and bless you, Elie Wiesel. Doug Huneke
18 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Eli Wiesel matured
By R. Hanna
As a former high school English teacher I had taught Wiesel's "Night" years ago. Also, I have tried to keep in touch with his growth and career. His confrontation of likely death is insightful and moving.
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