I have been told, more than once, that I am not good at getting to the point. I have also been told (mostly by my mother) that I am a great story teller. In either case, this is my attempt.
“INTERVIEWER
For ten years you waited until you were ready to write about the Holocaust in your first book, Night.
WIESEL
I didn’t want to use the wrong words. I was afraid that words might betray it. I waited. I’m still not sure that it was the wrong move, or the right move, that is, whether to choose language or silence.
INTERVIEWER
Why do you say that?
WIESEL
Maybe if we had kept quiet then—this is what I try to say in The Oath—maybe we wouldn’t have this fashionable phenomenon. The Holocaust would not have become a fashionable subject which I find as offensive, if not more so, than what we had before: ignorance of the subject.
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