Sir Ben Kingsley on Elie Wiesel

Great Lives

BBC

History, Documentary, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Actor Sir Ben Kingsley tells Matthew Parris why he regards Elie Wiesel as his great life. A writer, a Nobel laureate, a holocaust survivor, Elie had to endure the worst horrors of mankind and survive the darkest of crimes. In the Holocaust he lost his mother, his father and his youngest sister. He once said: “To forget the dead would be to akin to killing them again a second time”. Sir Ben Kingsley regards Wiesel as was one the great voices of the holocaust and says he should never be forgotten. This was a promise he made to Wiesel. To help tell Elie’s story, the expert witness is Robert Eaglestone, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought and an expert in Holocaust Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. Producer: Perminder Khatkar First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2016.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Great Lives is a download from Radio 4.
0:02.8	We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear.
0:05.0	A writer, a Nobel laureate, a Holocaust survivor.
0:08.9	He had to endure the worst horrors of mankind
0:12.3	and survive the darkest of crimes. In the holocaust he lost his mother, his father and his younger sister.
0:19.0	He once said, to forget the dead would be akin to killing them again a second time.
0:25.0	Ellie Visell is this week's great life and championing him is the actor Sir Ben Kingsley.
0:32.0	Sir Ben Kingsley.
0:33.0	Sir Ben, why Ellie Visele?
0:36.0	I think because I promised him.
0:38.0	When I was last with him at a dinner given by the Holocaust Memorial Museum,
0:43.7	and I had the great honor of introducing him.
0:48.1	In my introduction, I told the story of how during the filming of Schindler's List I kept a copy of a photograph of
0:59.2	Van Frank in my pocket and I used to take it out of my pocket and look at her and say I'm doing
1:07.9	this for you. And I concluded my speech, which was full of anecdotes and love of Ellie,
1:16.0	and said, and next time I walk onto a film set,
1:20.0	I shall say to you, Ellie. I'm doing this for you.
1:24.3	And I'm happy to say to you that I'm doing this for E.
1:29.0	He has very recently died just this summer.
1:33.0	It happens that this is the most recent, as it were, great life we've ever done.
1:40.0	Normally there are many years elapse before it seems appropriate but in this
1:46.1	case it just seems right to do it now. I wanted to choose him because of the urgency
	...

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