By Sara Haber and Yona Silverman

The ideas about remembrance in The Name:

        Aharon Megged in his short story, The Name, links remembering the past with the continuation of a name.  The name symbolizes what was. 

        When you forget what happened in the past, you lose all connection with what came before you, and you erase the past. Continuing a name is making sure that we continue what was in every generation, it connects us to what happened before and we make sure people are never forgotten. Connecting yourself to the past means remembering it. Family and religious ties mean remembrance.  A nation cannot survive without a past. We should not be ashamed of our past, even if it carries bad memories.  When we disconnect ourselves from the past we are finishing what our enemies did. They killed the people but we are destroying every thing that is left, the memories.  By remembering and understanding what came before, we can continue into the future.

Elie Wiesel’s ideas of remembrance in his speech:

        In Elie Weisel’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he discusses the importance of remembering and learning from the past. He says that we must keep the past alive, and fight those who are trying to forget. Because if we forget, then we are guilty, and we are accomplices.  We are completing what the Germans wanted to do. We are erasing the memory of the people who have been killed in the holocaust.

        He puts a focus on learning from the past.  The world keeping silent when people were being killed in the Holocaust is what allowed the Germans to do what they did.  We must never be silent. When we are silent, we forget the other’s suffering, and allow it to continue.  When we keep silent, it is as though we are committing the crime ourselves.  If there is one person in the world who is being hurt, then we are all guilty.                           

        Because of what happened in the Holocaust we must always remember and learn never to keep silent.

A comparison between Aharon Megged’s story The Name and Elie Wiesel’s speech:

        There are a lot of similarities between Aharon Megged’s ideas in the story The Name, and Elie Wiesel’s noble prize acceptance speech.

        Both Aharon Megged and Elie Weisel believe that forgetting is erasing what came before. For instance, in The Name, the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors do not name their child after a relative of theirs who was murdered during the Holocaust, because they don’t want to have to continuously remember that person and everything that happened to him.  However, by not doing so they erase his (their relative’s) memory.  Forgetting is like erasing the fact that the people before us ever existed, and finishing what our enemies tried to do to us. They both explain that no one can exist without a connection with the past, both the Jews and the entire human race.
 

        They differ in their opinions of what we should do with the memories of the past.   Aharon Megged puts an emphasis on continuing the past, by constantly remembering it.  Elie Weisel puts an emphasis on learning from the mistakes of the past, by never allowing those mistakes to repeat themselves. By doing this we are creating a better future.

An Overview of the Authors:

Elie Wiesel:

        Elie Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928.  Growing up in a small village in Romania, his entire life revolved around family, religious study, community and G-d. The Nazis destroyed his family, community and village in 1944. Wiesel has decided to dedicate his life to making sure that none of us will forget what happened to the Jews during World War 2.

        He survived Auschwitz, Buna, Buchenwald and Gleiwitz. After the liberation of the camps in April 1945, Wiesel spent a few years in a French orphanage and in 1948 began to study in Paris at the Sorbonne. He became involved in journalistic work with the French newspaper L'arche. Wiesel has published over thirty books, won the Nobel Peace Prize, been appointed to chair the President's Commission on the Holocaust, and awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement.

Aharon Megged:

        Aharon Megged was born in Wroclawek, Poland, and made aliya (moved to Israel) at the age of six to Tel Aviv.  He was a kibbutz member for 12 years. After leaving the kibbutz he worked as a literary editor and journalist, and began publishing in 1938.  He has been a member of the Academy of Hebrew Language since 1980.

        He has received the Bialik Prize, the Brenner Prize, the Agnon Prize, the Wizo Prize, in France, for Foiglman, Israel Prize (2003) and several other literary awards. In 2004, he won the Koret prize for Jewish fiction.

Photo courtesy of Institute for Translation of Hebrew Literature

International Project Reflection

        We have learned a lot from this project. We learned different aspects of what remembrance means to different people, and of its importance for the future.  We think this project has been on the whole successful because we were able to understand the ideas behind the two different authors' work, and we were able to correct our work on our own.  We would also enjoy reading what our friends have written, and learning more about their topics.

        Communicating with a different culture in Canada made the project more interesting. We would look forward to communicating more often with the students from Canada, and learning more about their culture.

        We had enough help from the teacher, but in the future we would like to be able to choose our own topics for the project. 

Bibliography

Aharon Megged.  Jewish Virtual Library, 2005. 3.16.2006 <http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/megged.html>

Elie Wiesel Bio. University of Virginia, 25.1.2006

<http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/HOLO/ELIEBIO.HTM>

Megged, Aharon. The Name.

Wiesel, Elie. Noble Prize Acceptance Speech. 10.12.1986