Reviewed by John Greenya

After the Allies liberated 17-year-old Elie Wiesel and his two older sisters from the concentration camp at Buchenwald (where his mother, father and younger sister had died), it took him 15 years to write his first book, Night. Since then, in an almost unprecedented flood of volumes, the world-renowned humanitarian has poured out his heart in a valiant attempt to counter man’s inhumanity to man.

And then, in June of 2011, his own heart almost poured out of him.

Back home in New York City from a holy day (Shavuot) visit to Jerusalem, Wiesel felt a pain he attributed to a sharper-than-usual attack of acid reflux. But when he called his cardiologist and described his symptoms, the alarmed doctor ordered him to get to Lenox Hill Hospital immediately – and to go directly to the emergency room.

So what did Professor Wiesel, a Nobel laureate, the wisest of wise men, the Great Writer, do? “On occasion, I can be incredibly stupid,” he writes in this thought-provoking little book, “and stubborn. And so I nevertheless steal two hours to go to my office. I have things to attend to. Appointments to cancel. Letters to sign. People to see …”

At the hospital, the tardy patient is met by a team of specialists. At first, the surgeon thinks a stent might be sufficient, but when they discover five blocked arteries, their only course of action is open-heart surgery. And it has to be done immediately.

“ ‘Shall we go,’ urges the attending physician? The nurses are ready to push the gurney toward the OR. I steal another glance at the woman with whom I have shared my life for more than 42 years. So many events, so many discoveries and projects, unite us. All we have done in life we have accomplished together. And now, one more experience. As the door opens, I look one more time at our son, the fine young man who has justified – and continues to justify – my life and who endows it with meaning and a hereafter.

“Through the tears that darken the future, a thought awakens a deeper concern, a deeper sorrow: shall I see them again?”

The last five words of that quote do double duty: They establish the conflict inherent in this tiny tale, and they give the book’s title a second and much deeper meaning.

In the remaining almost 70 pages, Wiesel demonstrates yet again what he stopped needing to demonstrate many books and decades ago: that whether it’s recollected in tranquility (as Wordsworth preferred) or under the great stress of imminent loss of life, he writes beautifully and movingly — poetically — about human emotion.

As he has done so many times before – in novels, plays and essays, not to mention lectures – he questions whether he did enough for his family: “Suddenly I sense the presence of the dead.  Have they come to take me with them? Or just to accompany me? Or, why not, to protect me?   And yet, long ago, I did not protect them. I relive the last moments of our shared existence on the train. And then, on the infamous ramp built expressly for the new Hungarian transports. I see my little sister, Tsipuka, so beautiful, so innocent. I see her from afar, clutching my mother’s hand. I was not with them, at the end.”

But then he recalls something odd, that as a child he suffered greatly from migraines. However, on his first day in the concentration camp they disappeared, only to return on his first night of freedom. “No professor of medicine, no neurologist, in Paris or in New York, has ever been able to explain this phenomenon to me. My body decided to be incomprehensible.  Like the soul, it remains a mystery.”

As usual, Elie Wiesel continues his dialogue with the Almighty, questioning Him about, well, everything. When he wakes up and is told the operation went well, he thanks the surgeon, and then writes, “At that moment, did I think of thanking God as well? After all, I owe Him that much. But I am not sure that I did. At that precise moment, only the surgeon – His messenger, no doubt – moved me to gratitude.”

Whatever the opposite of memory lapses might be, Wiesel has them. Some take him back to the early days of his studies, others to his marriage, and then he moves on to joyful ones, such as when his grandson was born. It’s all very beautiful and very moving, and also funny and sad, but above all human. But then the author is Elie Wiesel.

This is a little book for the ages.

John Greenya, a Washington-based freelance writer whose books include Silent Justice: The Clarence Thomas Story; Blood Relations: The Exclusive Inside Story of the Benson Family Murders; and The Real David Stockman, has been reviewing books since the 1960s.