Throughout his nearly two-hour speech, Arnost Lustig kept his audience both laughing and in a state of sad awe while describing his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp.

Lustig, a professor of film and literature, screenwriter, and author of 13 books – including “Night and Hope” and “Lovely Green Eyes” – spoke about his experiences to an audience of about 60 people Tuesday night at Douglas Hall.

Lustig was brought to NIU to speak about the Holocaust at an event sponsored by the University Honors Program.

“I hate serious discussion. I want to be clever, but that is impossible,” Lustig said. “You would not laugh if you read my books.”

English professor Steve Franklin introduced Lustig as the greatest of Holocaust writers; one who transformed his experience in Nazi Germany into the most remarkable literature of our time.

Lustig spoke about his experiences living in a Nazi concentration camp, working as a screenwriter during the Soviet occupation and as a freedom fighter in Czechoslovakia. He also talked about literature, life, faith, joy, politics and how they all meet.

“Literature is imitation of life,” Lustig said. “It pretends that the writer sees and understands everything. We need story to share the experiences of others, to have beauty, meaning and stability.”

Lustig said in literature you cannot lie, and that literature must have truth. It’s a crime to lie in literature, he said. That’s why the Nazis and totalitarian regimes never had good writers, he added.

Even after horrors such as living in Auschwitz, having his father killed, seeing his mother’s dignity stripped away in the Nazi camps and being exiled from his home, Lustig still sees life as a miracle.

Lustig’s parting request from the audience was that within the year, they would read one of his books; perhaps so the reader, too, could understand his experiences, pains, joy and appreciation for life.