Yesterday Ed Lasky examined the curiously petty criticism launched at Elie Wiesel by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and as Bookworm noted, NPR. It looks like a smear campaign by the left. What else could explain an attempt to cast the biographical book Night as a novel, in other words discrediting it as a real depiction of actual events (the Holocaust) on these terms:
The New York Times takes Wiesel to task for niggling discrepancies between the newly translated (by Weisel's wife) edition of the book and previous editions. One of the discrepancies noted concerned Wiesel's age. In the previous translation, the narrator (Weisel) tells a fellow prisoner that he is 'not quite 15'. But the scene takes place in 1944 which would have made Weisel 15 'going on 16' (in the words of the Times). In the new edition, when asked, he replies '15'.
A reader who prefers anonymity points out the origin of this confusion in a translation:
In the U.S. we reach the age of one year old when twelve months have passed since our birth and two years old when 24 months have passed and so on. In Europe, at least in my parents generation (approximately Weisel's), age was calculated differently making people a year older than the method we use.
Anyway, the differing methods of calculating age would explain the discrepancy noted above, as the super fact checking editorial staff at the the NYT should have known.
Talk about majoring in minors.
Only a desperate effort to discredit a major figure can explain such a dubious argument. The New York Times has a lot to answer for.
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