Elie Wiesel returns to Sighet

by Belinda Copitch

We were on a “Jewish Journey” trip to Transylvania in Romania. Sighet, the largest town is the birthplace of Elie Wiesel.

We gather in Sighet central park to read from Elie Wiesel’s account of returning to his hometown as an adult. It is the account of any adult returning to his childhood haunts. Most South Africans reading his piece will recognise the melancholy of being reminded of their childhood places, the locations associated with activities and events. And yet he questions why this is; why he feels so emotionally bound to this place.

He wrote:

“Why is it that my town still enchants me so? Is it because in my memory it is entangled with my childhood? In all my novels it serves as background and vantage point. In my fantasy I still see myself in it.”

Childhood is a time when we are undergoing our identity development. Every place is a touchstone to our personality formation. We are cossetted by our family while putting out feelers to our friends and the wider community. We are exploring in the safety and support of our family and those closest to us. We are growing symbiotically with our environs. The place and the person become one. We are nobody without a history, without a geographic marker that says, “you are here”. To have that suddenly removed is scary at the best of times.

The pin on the map marking Sighet, an art installation in the centre of the town

I can completely empathise. I know this feeling of melancholy very well. In 1973, my family went to live in Israel. I was 14, and it was by far the most traumatic event of my life. EVER. I had close friends, a great social life, a boyfriend. I knew where to go to find my friends in the daytime during holidays; I knew where everyone would be hanging out in the evenings. I would frequently randomly bump into people whom I knew and stop to have a chat. Life at that age is about the people who surround us. I knew every house in the neighbourhood – who lived there and what they were like. I knew the people who waited at the bus stop with me every morning; I knew the friendly man who always gave my dog biltong treats. I knew which pavements were smooth enough for my skateboard and which to avoid. I knew every shop and its proprietors. I would play around on the rocks by the bay at the bottom of my road and would swim before school every morning in the tidal pool.

Life was good. Life, at this age, was good for Elie Wiesel too.

At 14, the rug was pulled from under my feet. No friends, no familiar places, foods, smells. I didn’t know how to get around and didn’t even speak the language. The highlight of my month would be when I would receive a letter from one of the 6 people I kept in touch with.

Many have said that 14 is possibly the most difficult time to make major changes. It is a time when one is just beginning to develop that childhood rebellion, exploring who “I” am in the absence of the family that brought me this far; a time when we are just breaking out of the family reins.

For Elie Wiesel, this must have been orders of magnitude harder than it was for me. The 14-year-old Elie was being transported to Auschwitz. Not an uncertain emigration, no letters from friends to await but … a death camp. Those friends would never ... could never send a letter. They were mostly gone. His life would become a cycle of rations, rules, incarceration, and labour. He would witness death, cruelty beyond description, emaciated human beings, people inured to the annihilation of their fellow human beings going on around them.

The above pictures are taken from a book I found in the foyer of a synagogue. They depict the daily reality of the artist, a prisoner in a death camp

Arriving at the camp

Now, as he wanders his hometown, the place he remembers is no longer there, the people mostly killed, the tradesmen, the bustling synagogues, the streets teeming with people … all gone. 

“Sighet no longer exists except in the memory of those it expelled”, he writes …  “I left Sighet, but it refuses to leave me”.