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12 Dreams and Dialogues Wie­ sel’s Holocaust Memories Ellen S. Fine Iwill begin my reflections about Wie­sel’s memories by recounting some early memories of him. A few summers ago I had an interview with an extraordinary eighty-­ five-­ year-­ old woman, Gaby Cohen, a French woman of Alsatian origin who lives in Paris.1 We see each other every year when I go to Paris. She is a close friend of Wie­ sel’s and has become a dear friend of mine as well. She was known to Wie­ sel right after the war as Niny Wolf. Niny was what was called an éducatrice, an educator and counselor in charge of the boys at the maisons d’enfants, homes or orphanages in France to which surviving children from the camps as well as hidden children who had lost their parents were sent in June 1945. These homes were set up by l’Oeuvre de Secours aux En­ fants (l’OSE), a Jewish rescue organization origi­ nally founded in Russia, and established in France in the 1930s to help refugees and specifically children. Wie­sel was one of the 426 boys from Buchenwald, ranging in age from eight to sixteen years old, who came to France under the auspices of l’OSE. He was sent to vari­ ous homes—­first to Ecouis in Normandy, then to Ambloy, when the group was divided between the observant and nonobservant Jews, then on to the homes of Versailles and Taverny.2 I asked Niny about her first impressions of the sixteen-­year-­old Wie­sel, who called himself “Leiser” at that time. She said that on one hand, he was very curious about things and aware of what was going on around him. On the other hand, he had a sad and dreamy look (un regard triste et rêveur). Niny watched him stare into space or look up to the clouds. He seemed to be elsewhere. She felt from the beginning that he was someone special and stood apart. The other boys listened to Wie­ sel; he helped the younger ones with their religious studies. He attended study circles and sat in on lectures by Jewish intellectuals. Seriously committed to his own education, he hoped eventually to attend a university. Niny was like une grande soeur (a big sister) to the boys, emotionally replacing their mothers, sisters, and entire families. She admired the rare human quality they 137 138 | Ellen S. Fine displayed; they had experienced unspeakable horrors and yet were capable of functioning , studying, and living together in a community. She watched how they had emerged from life in the camps to be able to participate in a fairly normal daily routine in these homes. She treated the boys with a great deal of attention, respect, and tenderness, and they responded with devotion, affection, and love. She has kept as precious documents the notes and poems they wrote to her, in­ clud­ ing those written by Leiser. In his memoir All Rivers Run to the Sea,3 Wie­ sel tells how along with his friend, Kalman Kalikstein , who later became an accomplished professor of physics, wrote “impassioned mediocre Yiddish poems to her [Niny’s] glory.” “Kalman loved her, and so did I. In fact, we all did, though none dared to admit it . . .” he says.4 “How many boys saw her in their dreams?” he asks.5 “Niny meant something in my life. Naturally she didn’t know it.”6 In fact, Niny probably did know. They developed a strong bond that they have maintained to this day. Niny was profoundly marked by her encounter with Wie­ sel and mes garçons, as she continues to call the boys who are now grown men and with whom she still has contact. “I am a part of this history. I have never left it. It continues to dwell deeply inside of me,” she told me.7 Witness to the early postwar years of Wie­ sel, Niny Wolf—­ Gaby Cohen—­ was a formative part of his past and of his memories. The portrait of the young survivor as dreamer serves as an introduction to my study of an aspect of Wie­ sel’s memory that has not yet been explored. His different forms of literature—­novels, short stories, essays, and testimony—­have been studied extensively but the dreams, that are present in his writing, particularly in his memoirs, have not been examined in depth. We will do a close reading of...

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