Wiesel’s 1973 Novel ‘The Oath’ is Worth Reading Again

PIKESVILLE, Maryland — The Romanian-American writer and professor Eli Wiesel (1928-2016), who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald, where his parents and a younger sister died, was an excellent writer who authored 57 books. His first book, Night, is a memoir of these experiences. His 1973 novel   The Oath is brilliant. Everything about it is fantastic. The Chicago Tribune wrote, “In his poetic style, he continues to be the most eloquent spokesman, not only for the Jews of silence, but for the whole human race.”

The plot is interesting, enlightening, and engaging, a delight to read. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 because of what he wrote about the horrors of the Holocaust, Russia, and other subjects.  He artistically paints his characters in his poetic style, as Rembrandt painted in oils and brought his subject to life with his paints. His Nobel citation reads: “Wiesel is a messenger to mankind. His message is one of peace and atonement, and human dignity. The message is in the form of a testimony, repeated and deepened through the works of a great author.”

He certainly deserved this Nobel Peace Prize. However, readers of this book and the other 56 will read many of them, as they led me to feel that he should have also won the Nobel Prize for literature because his books are so good.

The first hundred pages of the novel’s 286 tell of an old man who experienced the horrors that caused the oath of silence. His name is Azriel. He lived in the destroyed town called Kolvillag. He struggles with his promise not to speak of the tragedy while helping people during his travels. The two names and the oath are ironic in meaning more than their literal sense, or, sometimes, just the opposite.

Azriel is Hebrew for “a strong man of God,” and Kolvilag denotes “all villages.” While the oath demands silence, the book itself and Wiesel’s post-Holocaust writing life demonstrate the need to speak out clearly and loudly.

The novel introduces many people. In the first hundred pages, we encounter Azriel. In the remaining parts, we meet a madman, the primary person involved in the massacre in Kolvillag. The term “mad man” may be understood as insane, bizarre, or unusual. I prefer the latter.

We read about a missing, mischievous Christian boy. We encounter the leader of the non-Jews whom the Jews had helped, both he and his father, who preceded him as a leader, ignored his benefactors during the tragedy and horrors that accompanied it.

We see a non-Jewish official whom Jews bribed for years for help, who is essential to stopping the pogrom but is impotent. There is a rabbi who pontificates, an ugly Jewish woman who becomes an ideal wife when appropriately treated by the man she marries, a Jew who chronicles events, a Jewish lawyer who abandoned Jewish practices and married a non-Jewish woman who fails to help his co-religionists during the days they are brutally murdered, and many others.

We read about a dozen pogroms in over a dozen cities. The madman recognizes this history and calls upon his fellow Kolvillag citizens to take an oath to remain silent. Bizarrely, he argues that all the talk about the horrors in the past brought no relief, so perhaps silence will help.