SOURCE: "Victims of God," in The New Republic, Vol. 171, No. 12, September 21, 1974, pp. 26-7.

In the following essay, Wiesel offers appreciative commentary on Peretz's Selected Stories.

Do you know I. L. Peretz? You don't? Well that is regrettable but understandable. He did, after all, write in Yiddish, and Yiddish literature, begotten of suffering as a weapon against suffering, seems doomed to a tragic fate: not only is it little known—it is poorly known. Its exponents are ignored after its readership has been murdered. Have you read Aharon Zeitlin, H. Leivick or Jacob Glatstein? Great poets all. And Chaim Grade, do you know him? Yet he is one of the finest living Yiddish novelists—if not the finest. But that's how it is and there is nothing one can do: injustice is not limited to life alone—it also exists in literature; success is not necessarily proof or guarantee...