In its review of the 1985 edition of The Fifth Son, the New York Times calls Eli Wiesel the “most-heard voice of the Holocaust, a voice that is humanist and universal even as it is Jewish-minded and special…the author makes all of us ‘children’ of that generation, all of us who were not there, in the sense that he outlines for us the burden of guilt, of revenge, of despair.”

The three emotions mentioned by The New York Times are depicted powerfully and poetically in this novel.

In 1985, he received the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal for being the voice of the Holocaust.

The Holocaust is the non-human brutal murder by Nazia of six million Jews between 1939 and 1945, later copied on October 7, 2023, by Hamas. The brutalities of the Nazis and Hamas far exceeded to most vicious behaviors of the most-fierce animals.

The “children” mentioned by the New York Times are the fifth sons; all of us, even those unborn before 1949, are burdened.

The Passover Haggadah is read during the Passover meal and is called the Seder. Seder means “order” and “arrangement.” It is the arrangement of thoughts needed to recall the horrors of Egyptian slavery during Moses’s days and the exodus from Egypt, which is symbolic of all freedom.

We read in the Haggadah:

“Blessed is God who gave the Torah to His people in Israel; blessed is He. The Torah speaks about four sons: one is wise, and one is contrary; one who is simple and one who does not even know how to ask a question.”

Since the time of the giving of the Torah, we can speak of a fifth son, one impacted by the Holocaust, one who carries the burden of guilt, revenge, and despair, all of us, sons and daughters.

In this novel, we read about a father who was and still is somewhat practical and philosophical. He experienced remarkable events before, during, and after the Holocaust. Yet, he is incapable of telling his son about his experiences.

He spends time on the Meditations of Paritus by Renee Descartes (1596-1650). I see this as irony. The point of Descartes’ Meditations is to establish a foundation for knowledge by doubting all beliefs and ultimately concluding that one can only know one’s existence as a thinking thing (cogito, ergo sum). Descartes saw this as a foundation for building further knowledge and science.

Although unexplained by Wiesel, I see Wiesel telling us that the father is spending his post-Holocaust life trying to find meaning in the horrors of the Holocaust, an impossible task.

We read about his wife, who was with him during the horrors of the Holocaust and dealt with her memories differently than her husband. She lost her mind and had to be hospitalized until she died.

And there is their son, one of the many fifth sons. He goes through life trying to discover what his father knows and what his mother knew, and he feels he must know and learn what he must do with what he learns.

His father has two friends with him in Germany during all that transpired. One is a mystic, a man who sells shadows. He is working to bring about the messiah. The other is not that religious, not in the ordinary way, but an advocate for the return to Israel. He helps people escape the Ghetto into which Jews were placed.

The father is very close to the mystic even though he is not a mystic himself. The two do something that even after living through the Holocaust and coming to the U.S., they cannot talk about it to their friend who joined those he helped escape to Israel. Why?

I think Wiesel gave us these three different men, as well as a rabbi who taught that revenge is against Jewish teachings, to teach us that all kinds of people, those who could cope and those who could not, a sample of humanity, were sentenced by the Nazis to die.

And there was The Angel. Another irony. He was not an emissary from God.

He was the Nazi SS Commandant. A man who saw himself as an actor. He saw life as a joke and stood on its stage as a jester performing acts that delighted him. He was his own audience. He loved playing; that was fooling the Jews.

He murdered thousands.

Wiesel does not give The Angel a German name. He names him Richard Lander. This is brilliant. Wiesel is telling us that evil is not limited to the Nazis. An American can even produce it.

While Wiesel died in 2016, before Hamas’ brutal attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, and before the mobs who defend Hamas’ behavior with their violence in the streets in 2024, Wiesel’s brilliant book warns the fifth sons today of the bestialities that still exist.

Great literature such as this one is resurrected after the death of its author and continues to live.