No one believed Moshe’s warnings. “They take me for a madman,” he told a teenage Elie Wiesel.

No one believed Moshe’s warnings. “They take me for a madman,” he told a teenage Elie Wiesel. 

Moshe told anyone who would listen what had happened to him after he was deported. He had barely escaped a mass killing in which he was forced to dig his own grave and shot at by the Nazis. But the town ignored Moshe’s pleas. 

“I did not believe him myself,” wrote Elie.

This cautionary tale was how Elie opened his memoir “Night.” In his other writings, Elie refers to Moshe as “the madman, the beadle, the beggar.” Moshe also played an important spiritual role in Elie’s life as a religious mentor. 

In mid-May 1944, 15-year-old Elie was deported with his family to Auschwitz. His arrival at Auschwitz marked the beginning of the night that turned his life into "one long night seven times sealed.”

Of the approximately 14,000 Jews deported from his town of Sighet, Elie was one of several hundred survivors. Later reflecting on Moshe’s significance in his life, Elie wrote, “He lived our destiny before any of us. Messenger of the dead, he shouted his testimony from the rooftops.”

Photo: Elie Wiesel 

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