The interview begins with the introduction of Elie. Oprah starts to ask questions. Within the Interview Oprah tries to press Wiesel on many issues pertaining to his time spent in Auschwitz as well as the camps. He gets defensive and states that he does not want to talk about those things that go on in the camp and to take himself back to that time. Oprah asks to what extent had his time with the Nazis and in the concentration camps had effected him and changed him. He replies with the fact that anyone that would have gone through that situation would have been changed drastically and that he was very lucky. Oprah then asks about what it takes to be normal after surviving such an event. Elie replies with saying that what is abnormal about that time is that he is normal now. He survived and lives on today and that is what makes him abnormal. So many people had died and he is one of the outliers, the ones who survived. Oprah then follows up with a question that Elie can not quite answer and that is, why did he not go insane? The answer to a question of this magnitude is that it is a mystery even to Elie himself. Once arriving at Auschwitz Elie immediately lost his mother and sisters but he vowed to stay close to his father, the only family that he had left. For a long time Elie could not believe what he saw in the camps. He tells Oprah that for a long time he questioned if he actually saw some of the actions that were going on in the camp, whether or not it was just a harsh nightmare. Within the interview a question comes up about what Elie thinks about the many people who claim to know nothing about the Holocaust or the millions of people that died as a result of it. Elie has a hard time answering this question just for the fact that he could not and can not think of a world without the Holocaust due to him surviving it. He thinks that it is inconceivable but believes that people need to be informed and have knowledge about that subject. At this point in time, years after the interview had taken place, everyone knows about the Holocaust or at least knows of it. The interview shakes up Elie to an extent and it shows that going back to these memories is a hard task that he is willing to do for the sake of informational needs. Several questions he has a hard time answering and others he answers above and beyond the expectations of Oprah herself.
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Alex FujaPart time nerd, Full time geek. Archives
June 2016
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