TO SPEAK THE UNSPEAKABLE: THE MESSAGE OF ELIE WIESEL

As young Eliezer learned the alphabet in preparation for Talmudic studies, his teacher said, “When you grow up you will understand how much pain these letters contain. And how much joy. And majesty.” In books like “Night,” “The Silence of the Jews,” and “All the Rivers Run to the Sea,” Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel tested the limits of those letters to convey the immensity and awfulness of what he had seen as a prisoner of Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Buchenwald. The task, he admits, is beyond mere words. The camera follows Wiesel on a survivor's pilgrimage; back to the Carpathian hometown from which he and his family were wrenched when he was 15; where Jews once buried their possessions, hoping to return and dig them up after the war; an on to the concentration camps and crematoria, from which no return was intended. This is not just a personal lament or historical elegy. As Europe fractures into nationalist hatreds and militias, Weisel's warnings must be heeded more than ever. In Hungarian, Yiddish, Hebrew, Romanian, and French with English subtitles. – Charles Cassady