From Library Journal
Any festschrift to Elie Wiesel chances blasphemy: it may read like a hymn to God. Since Night (1958), this bearer of witness to humankind's capacious inhumanity has received as many hosannas for his agony as plaudits for his writing. And he suffers them with apparent modesty. But no danger: these tributes are mortally uneven--ranging from a researcher's prep notes for a TV interviewer, to an apology by a German who thanks him for teaching her the true Christ, to Wiesel's own praise of Yiddish. Evil to Wiesel is absence of feeling. Challenging evil--as vowed to his mirrored corpse at the end of Night --has been holy work allowed him by chance. One cannot but be moved by this life of justifying a sometimes guilty survival through holy confrontation or by the gratitude of those graced by its light. For public libraries.- Alan Cooper, York Coll., CUNYCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Cargas may be best remembered for his 1976 book In Conversations with Elie Wiesel, and earlier this year, he wrote Voices from the Holocaust--one of those voices being that of Wiesel. Now comes this tribute to the Nobel Peace Prize winner. Included in this imposing book are two Cargas interviews with Wiesel; three pieces by Wiesel (on Yiddish, on saying Kaddish for his father, and on Jerusalem); three poems by Wiesel; a piece by Cargas on Night, Wiesel's memoir of Auschwitz; l2 poems of the Holocaust by Louis Brodsky; a philosopher's "reading" of Wiesel by John Roth; and essays by theologian and philosopher Emil Fackenheim, theologian Dorothee Soelle, and professor of religion Franklin Littell. George Cohen


About the Author
Harry James Cargas taught for twenty-four years at Webster University (St. Louis) and published twenty-six books, including A Christian Response to the Holocaust and Conversations with Elie Wiesel. He served on many boards, including the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, International Philosophers for the Prevention of Nuclear Omnicide, Canine Assistance for the Disabled, the Catholic Institute for Holocaust Education, and the Anne Frank Institute. He was the only Catholic appointed to the International Advisory Committee of Yad Vashem. For six years he served on the executive committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal