Community Participation Week #1
Boston University 11/15/10 Elie Wiesel teaches a class on Literature of Memory (CAS RN 571)
Photo by Kalman Zabarsky for Boston University Photography
In the days leading up to the In Memory of Elie Wiesel: A Day of Learning and Celebration tribute event, we are expanding our analysis of Wiesel’s work and legacy by sharing thoughts by those who knew Wiesel and his work best. Our messages come from faculty and colleagues from Boston University, public servants and community leaders. We hope that these messages will convey Professor Wiesel’s impact beyond just his written work.
#1 Our first tribute comes from our Center Director, Professor Michael Zank.
“The last time I met with Elie Wiesel, about a year before his passing, I showed him a book I had found on my mother’s shelf. The title was ‘Gezeiten des Schweigens.’ Elie thought it was the German translation of LA NUIT, but it was actually the translation of LA VILLE DE LA CHANCE (1962), which appeared in English with the title THE TOWN BEYOND THE WALL. I don’t remember when I first read NIGHT but when I recently re-read it in Marion Wiesel’s translation, I could not but hear Elie’s voice in it, a voice Marion had completely internalized. The text is stripped of all didacticism, all philosophical rumination. But it is not a mere memoire either. Wiesel poses questions. His observations are questions. Most readers pick up on the scene about the hanging of a child where one prisoner asks the others, ‘where is God?’ But this question finds an answer. ‘He is here, hanging at the gallows.’ (I am quoting from memory now.) The more disturbing question, in my opinion, is one that finds no answer. It is one he asks of himself. It is the question of whether he failed his father. His father, Eliezer, is a constant presence in NIGHT. It is a book, in my reading, about a son and a father. Did Wiesel become Wiesel because he felt he had failed his father? What about us? Would we have acted more courageously? In my view, the book is Wiesel’s lament for his father, but also for his own innocence. No wonder Wiesel remained preoccupied with the story of the Akedah, to which he returned time and again.”
#2 Dr. Michael Grodin, Director of the Project on Ethics and the Holocaust and Professor of Jewish Studies here at BU.
“Elie was a mentor, teacher, collaborator and dear colleague. His support of my own scholarship on the role of medicine and ethics during the holocaust has resulted in the establishment of an International Center on Ethics, Medicine and the Holocaust. He was always available to add insight, encouragement and passion. He, along with my dearest Rebbe Rabbi Joseph Polak, implored me that no matter what my work in academics entailed that I must continue to maintain my clinical role as a psychiatrist working with survivors. This sage advice has allowed me to listen to the stories and hear the memories.”
#3 Dr. Steven Katz, former director of the EWCJS and currently chair of Jewish Holocaust studies.
“It is a great honor to say a few, very inadequate words about my close friend and colleague for nearly 45 years, Elie Wiesel. Others will no doubt write about his extraordinary political and humanitarian accomplishments, and still others about his massive list of publications, including NIGHT. But here I want to offer just a few personal remarks. It was not easy to be Elie Wiesel. He was never free from his past, and in the lived present he was often overwhelmed by the evil that continues to be so appallingly evident in our world. One of my most intense memories is the 50th Commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz. Elie and I were both part of the official visitors delegation. After the ceremonies we walked through the camp with the elderly Chief Rabbi of Poland who was also a camp survivor. He told us how he would get up early each morning to run to a nearby hut to trade a portion of his bread ration for a chance to put on a pair of tefillin that had been smuggled into the bunk. Elie and I were both profoundly moved by the story and Elie, in particular, became very quiet and sad. And so we walked for quite a while in silence. On other occasions, when we learned of new and horrific tragedies all over the globe and tried to digest their implications, he would say in private conversation, “We have learned nothing.” But he took great consolation from his family, the State of Israel, and his teaching. He was a consummate teacher who was sincerely concerned with his students, and they adored him. Awed initially, they came to see in him a mentor who was interested in them beyond the exams and seminar questions. In a quiet way he did many kindnesses for his students, especially his graduate students. He also always welcomed and helped young scholars who were seeking his advice wherever they came from. Inside and outside the university world he was sought after day and night by all sorts of (non-student) individuals and groups, as a result of which he was very cautious about strangers. He once told me that he received at least ten invitations and requests every day. These included, after his exceptional encounter with President Reagan, regular meetings with American presidents. He would frequently sit with Hillary Clinton at her husband’s “State of the Union” address, and was invited to the White House by George W. Bush, and then by President Obama. The latter asked him to lunch one day when he was having difficulties with the American Jewish community over issues related to Israel. The next day I asked him what it was like to have lunch at the White House. He replied: ‘You cannot eat while the President is talking, and you can’t eat while you are responding, so it’s not much of a lunch.’ There were those who were critical of him, and many who did not understand the good reason for his reserve and reticence. And there were those who were jealous. In Israel, in particular, there was consistent criticism, driven first and foremost by his decision to live in America, while among survivors there were those who resented his success. But if he knew you, if he trusted you, if he respected you, he was a remarkable, generous and caring friend. His willingness to help was unlimited. No matter where he was in the world he would return a phone call, answer a question, write a letter, help raise funds — though, in fact, he hated fundraising. He was curious about all things Jewish, a great listener when one had information or a tale to tell. Whenever I returned from the regular meetings of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, that he had played a major role in creating at the invitation of the Prime Minister of Sweden, he was always eager to hear my reports of what took place, where difficulties had arisen, and the way forward that had been decided. He always offered advice and help if needed. He had strong opinions on who the “good guys” and who the “bad guys” were, and was always willing, if he felt it necessary, to make the good fight. He knew everyone. He was close to Kofi Anan, the General Secretary of the United Nations, and I remember an interesting dinner we had together one night in New York City. The connection to Kofi he used wisely, but very carefully, to advance Jewish and Israeli interests at the U.N. He was close to Vaclav Havel (President of Czechoslovakia) and was thoughtful enough to send Havel a note introducing me to him when I was due to be in Prague for a meeting dealing with Holocaust reparations. Then, too, the leaders of the political world called regularly. I remember being in the midst of conversations in his office at Boston University when, on a number of occasions, his secretary would interrupt to tell him that there was a call from Angela Merkel, or Benjamin Netanyahu, or Vaclav Havel, or the Swedish Prime Minister. His archive at Boston University contains nearly one million items, including tens of thousands of personal letters. This represents, I am told, a larger archive than David Ben-Gurion left in Sde Boker. He was wonderful company wherever we were together around the world. He always strongly conveyed the sense that you mattered to him and he valued your friendship. He will be greatly missed—by myself and many, many others.”
#4 Roger Brooks is President and Chief Executive Officer of Facing History and Ourselves, and is the Elie Wiesel Professor in Judaic Studies (emeritus) at Connecticut College.
“Wiesel’s Mirror.
One of my formative literary images is found at the end of Elie Wiesel’s memoir NIGHT. ‘One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength; I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.’ That image could never leave any of us. After the Shoah, all history is a broken-mirror image; it absorbs our entire being. As Jews we cannot help it. We think of the Holocaust daily, we question God’s absence constantly. Perhaps, as the post-modernists suggest, God has died. And we humans? We were thought in Genesis to be created in the image and likeness of God; but if God has died, has something in us died too? This death of self, this identity-loss is not a personal matter, but one of religious community. We no longer ask much about Judaic life. We are too busy living in the here-and-now: asking how to act politically, how to survive existentially, but not how to live with the inheritance of so many generations. For that chain of tradition, once broken, is set aside; it seems no longer able to support the structures it once held. Post-modern theologian Mark Taylor, like Elie Wiesel, ends his book Erring with a mirror image. Where Wiesel did not recognize himself, Taylor sees only an empty mirror: ‘The longer one reflects on this reflection, the more puzzling it becomes…. We ourselves seem to have disappeared in a play of mirrors….The far-reaching implications of this empty mirror are not fully realized until the emergence of the radical departures that characterize much of twentieth-century art. Distortion and disappearance, first of the human face and then of the entire human form in cubist and abstract painting, reflect the absence of the individual….’ All of us can respond to the post-modern empty mirror by simply ceasing to look. Far better, I think, to do what Elie Wiesel suggested through his life: treat the empty mirror as a canvas, and re-make ourselves so as to create a new reflection.”
#5 Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts.
“In Boston, we know the great Elie Wiesel as our adopted son, making the Commonwealth his home as he taught at Boston University. He came to Boston the same year I was first elected to the United States Congress, and his words and presence have guided me on the path of public service ever since. In his classes at Boston University, he taught students how to think, how to bear witness, how to learn from the past with compassion, and how to use that understanding to make a better future for all of us. Elie Wiesel spent thirty-five years teaching history and philosophy to our young people because he believed that, “Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.” Throughout my time in Congress, I have looked to Elie Wiesel as a guiding light– pointing ever forward toward a more just and fair future. I strive every day to serve Massachusetts and the country by making sure that the laws of this land hold us to the venerable and aspirational ideals that Elie set forth. Elie lives on in all of us who remember the values and lessons he shared during his decades in Boston. I carry Elie in my heart every time I speak on the Senate floor and every time I cast a vote for a better world. May his memory continue to be a blessing to us all.”