Interview example:

1. Interview example: Elie Wiesel on Memory

2. JF: I wanted to focus a little bit on the relationship between memory and witness, which I think in some ways, is the essence of your work. I had a very interesting question—to me it is interesting—you grew up speaking Yiddish, and now I imagine you spend a lot of your life speaking English or French—EW: I write in French, but I speak English.JF: Okay, you speak English; you write in French, what language do you remember in?EW: It depends on the period. If I think of those years, of course I come back to Yiddish very often. My dreams too; I dream almost geographically. If I dream of my childhood, then I dream in Yiddish. If it is after the war, in France, it is in French. In English, I dream about America. It is very strange. I spoke to psychiatrists and psychologists and they cannot explain it, but my languages are very obedient and separate.

3. JF: What does it mean to remember in one language, and especially remembering the years before the Holocaust in Yiddish, but bear witness to it in another?EW: It is almost automatic. If I am in the United States—and I of course have devoted my public life in English as a teacher, or as a member in Washington in our effort to build a Museum and to maintain it—it is always in English, and there is no effort.JF: It just comes naturally?EW: It comes naturally, yes.