This American Life's Shalom Auslander and Elie Wiesel: It's All in the Timing

Writer and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel died on Saturday, July 2. On Monday, July 4, I heard writer Shalom Auslander using Wiesel in jokey Holocaust-related material in a podcast segment called "Paradise Lost" on This American Life. The episode had the theme of "Got You Pegged," about snap judgments gone awry. "This American Life" summarizes Auslander's segment like this:

Shalom Auslander goes on vacation with his family, and suspects the beloved, chatty old man in the room next door is an imposter—and sets out to prove it. This and other stories about the pitfalls of making snap judgments about others.

The timing seemed peculiar, to say the least. I realized this was a podcast and it might have been scheduled well before the airing, which was on July 1, according to the home page of This American Life. Especially on a holiday weekend, the archive would be a good place to find material.

Still, wry Holocaust observations two days after Wiesel died surprised me.

In the spirit of the podcast's theme of avoiding snap judgments, I checked This American Life's website and found that the episode originally aired on August 22, 2008. The confluence of material and demise was simply one of those crazy, unintended trapdoors that the universe occasionally sets in front of me.

What did the formerly Orthodox Auslander say, anyway, that snagged my astounded attention?
He relates a family trip to a Caribbean island for vacation. The elderly, chatty man in the next villa casually mentioned that his wife and parents were killed in the Holocaust, mostly at Auschwitz. The extended quote from the show gives the rich flavor of Auslander's darkly Jewish ruminations. He said,

I should have been compassionate, I know. I should have taken pad and pen and committed his story to paper for future generations. Instead, I seethed. Twenty minutes of genocide stories later, I went into our villa, closed the door sharply behind me and stood in the center of the room with my hands on my hips.
I threw my hands into the air.
Auschwitz, I said.
Pardon? (said his wife).
Auschwitz.
What are you talking about, she asked . . .
He's a survivor, hon, a Holocaust survivor.
I don't have anything against Holocaust survivors. Some of my best friends are Holocaust survivors. OK, that's not actually true, but I don't have anything against them. But if I want to relax and forget about life for a while, maybe hit a bar and get a drink, I'm not going to call Elie Wiesel. "Hey, Elie, how's it going? I had a tough day, want to come over and we'll watch Schindler's List? Bring beer!"

In typical circumstances, the Wiesel reference would have flown by me, a rebellious knock against Wiesel's somber image. But coming 48 hours after his death, the passage left me queasy. At first I thought I had Auslander pegged as somebody willing to score literary points off a death, but my fact check showed he did nothing of the sort. Anyway, the rebroadcast had been on July 1--the day before Wiesel died. Reality had simply arranged itself to make a line in a long-ago recording reverberate like a crashing gong.

On the other hand, a link from Auslander's website to a list of his "This American Life" essays has "Got You Pegged" at the very top. Perhaps Paradise Lost holds a special place in his heart or in listener popularity. I may even listen to his other presentations to hear what else Auslander has to say. I can tell by looking at his credits that our paths have crossed in some ways.