Elie Wiesel at Buchenwald

Elie Wiesel - someone who regular readers of this blog will know I hold in very high esteem - accompanied President Obama and German Chancellor Merkel to Buchenwald today to pay tribute to the tens of thousands of men, women and children murdered there during the Second World War. While Merkel and Obama presented very good remarks, I think Wiesel more than any other person there was able to put it all in perspective in very powerful and emotional terms. I don't see how anyone could listen to this, particularly the portion about his father, and not be moved.

In recent years, Wiesel has become more and more concerned that the world has learned nothing from the lessons we should have learned from the atrocities of the past. As a father, I think it is my duty to make sure my children know and understand what humans have done so tragically wrong throughout history and help them to know that they can be a part of ensuring it never happens again. As Wiesel has said, "Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other."

May our children and grandchildren, here and around the world, all learn to pass on the gift of peace and never forget the consequences of what happens when peace, fellowship and understanding are abandoned.

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Something for My Daughters

One of the things that I inherited from my family from the moment of my birth was a great love of and appreciation for both my family's own history and the importance of overall world history. Now that I have two daughters of my own, I want to be able to pass something on to them when they're grown that's representative of my personal interests, the period in history into which they were born, and the men and women who were important in the development of that history.

As a part of that, and reflective of my recent reading of Wiesel, I recently wrote him a letter and, among other things, asked for something from him that I could give to MB and E as a remembrance of that part of history which he has passed through and which he has worked tirelessly to keep people from forgetting. As I said in my letter, "As the father of two small daughters ... I am very much looking forward to the day where I can share these books with them and explain that, even in the midst of the tragedy and fear that often grip the modern world, there are men and women of great dignity and honor who continually work to bring about peaceful and positive change."

Today, I received back some bookplates personalized for each of them (pictured here, minus their names). I was very grateful for this small gesture on his part, and it will undoubtedly make the copies of his books that I give them when they're grown that much more special. I can say that Wiesel's responsiveness to my letter overwhelms me; here's someone who mingles and associates with political and religious leaders from around the world, and he answers a letter from some unknown guy in Northern Virginia. Two of the people for whom I have a great deal of admiration: Elie Wiesel and Desmond Tutu, and both took the time to write me back. I think the fact that they not only listen to what the average person says, but take the time to respond and seem to genuinely value and appreciate those words, says just as much about the quality of their character as anything else they've done in their lives.

So Where are You?

All anyone has to do is scroll down through several of my recent posts to find that I'm going through a big Elie Wiesel phase. One of the wonderful things about his writing is not so much the powerful message he conveys or the stories he tells, but the beauty with which he writes and the way he makes me think. Today's post is an excerpt from And the Sea is Never Full, one that really made me think and ask myself the question, "Where am I?" After reading it, I hope you'll consider the same question.
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A Chronicle has it that the celebrated Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady was locked up in a St. Petersburg prison after being denounced by a foe of the Hasidic movement as an agitator against the Czar.

One day the warden came to see him in his solitary cell, and this is what he said:

"I am told that you are a rabbi, a Master. So explain to me a passage I fail to understand in the Bible. It says in the Book of Genesis that, after having bitten into the forbidden fruit, Adam fled, so that the Lord had to ask him: 'Ayekha, where are you?' Is it possible, even conceivable, that the Creator of the world did not know where Adam was hiding?

Whereupon the rabbi smiled and answered: "The Lord, blessed-be-His-name, knew; it was Adam who didn't know."

And Rabbi Shneur Zalman went on: "Do you believe the Bible to be a sacred book?"

"Yes."

"And that it speaks to all mankind, of all times, therefore also to ours?"

"Yes, I believe that."

"In that case, I shall explain to you the real meaning of the question God asked of Adam. Ayekha signifies: Where do you stand in this world? What is your place in history? What have you done with your life, Adam? These are fundamental questions that every human being must confront sooner or later.

"For every one of us, the book of life goes back to Adam. It is he who embodies the mystery of the beginning. But it is to each of us that God speaks when He says Ayekha."

What Has Changed in 60 Years?

How we can we -- not as individuals or as a nation, but as a people -- ever forget what we have done to each other in years past, and what we continue to do to each other to this day? How can those few on the fringe, with so much overwhelming proof to the contrary, deny those very things that we have done to one another?

A. and I watched a documentary this afternoon as a continuation of my reading and learning about Elie Wiesel, Elie Wiesel Goes Home, a film which covers his return home to Sighet (in what is now Hungary) and a visit to Auschwitz with a fellow survivor and close friend -- both of which occurred in mid-1996. The main portion of the documentary is sandwiched between footage from the 1993 opening of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington and from his acceptance speech at the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. It was extremely interesting, but what made it so incredibly powerful and emotional for me was the footage from the 1940s that was played along with some lovely traditional music from Eastern Europe and William Hurt reading excerpts from Wiesel's works. Some of the images may have been familiar, but the combination of sight and sound was overwhelming; I got particularly emotional during a sequence of photographs of small children at Auschwitz, accompanied by Hurt reading this passage from Night -- a passage which I had read several days ago but which has now taken on a whole new meaning for me after having heard it and seen those children:

An SS came toward us wielding a club. He commanded:

"Men to the left! Women to the right!"

Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the moment when I left my mother. There was no time to think, and I already felt my father's hand press against mine: we were alone. In a fraction of a second I could see my mother, my sisters, move to the right. Tzipora was holding Mother's hand. I saw them walking farther and farther away; Mother was stroking my sister's blond hair, as if to protect her. And I walked on with my father, with the men. I didn't know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever. I kept walking, my father holding my hand.

Watching this segment, I thought of my daughters. And then I thought of the sons and daughters, grandchildren, sisters and brothers -- all of the children who were the age my daughters are now and who never had the opportunity to grow up. If people knew then what was going on, why wasn't more done? Wiesel has written (combination of quotes here): "The free world, including Jewish leaders in America and Palestine, had known [about the Final Solution] since 1942, but we knew nothing. Why didn't they warn us? ... If other Christians had acted like her [a neighbor who had tried to offer refuge to some of the Jews in Sighet], the trains rolling to the unknown would have been less crowded. If priests and pastors had raised their voices, if the Vatican had broken its silence, the enemy's hands would not have been so free."

The two questions with which I started this post are the questions that were running through my mind at the end of the film. I've been raised with the phrase "never forget" buried in my mind somewhere, a phrase that applies to so many things. But I can't help but wonder how the world turned a blind eye to the Holocaust when it was happening, and how there are so many things to which we're turning that same blind eye today? I've always thought that the most important things in our lives are the things which we experience and which impact us directly, but with the world growing smaller each day, won't nearly everything impact us directly one day? Because of 24-hour, instant news, the problems in places like Darfur and Rwanda aren't as far away as they used to be. More voices are being raised about these problems now than were six decades ago -- but we can do more, should do more, and (I hope) will do more.

Watch this documentary. Even if you think you've heard it all, seen it all, or read it all, watch this documentary. The combination of sounds and images will make you consider the past -- and our present -- in a whole new way.

Still Here -- Just Not Much to Say

The silence here over the past week is pretty indicative of the fact that there just hasn't been much to write about. I will say that there are some potentially exciting new opportunities on the horizon with regard to employment, so I'm looking forward to seeing where these new roads lead. I've also been dealing with a combination of not being able to sleep at night and being exhausted all day; I'm hopeful this, too, will pass [soon].

I'm well into the first volume Wiesel's autobiography and have found it to be an amazing and powerful read. I've been amazed with the amount of regret and anguish he still feels over several events from his life (particularly from his childhood), and he does such an incredible job of writing vividly that it's been very easy for me to feel the pain he still feels: not really knowing his father until after they were taken to Auschwitz; wishing that he had taken advantage of those extra times to play with his little sister when she asked instead of sitting under a tree reading his books, and how that all came back so painfully at the instant she, along with his mother and grandmother, were taken straight off the transport and to their deaths; and many others along those lines. He also talks at some length about the struggles he experienced -- still experiences -- with his faith in God, his anger with God, his disappointment in what he perceived as God's inaction at times of crisis, and his overwhelming anger and sorrow that the people who knew what was happening to the Jews in Europe (the pope, world leaders, even other Jews) didn't do more to bring attention to that horror. I still have 2/3 of the book left to read, but I would already give this book a 5 out of 5 for its emotion, its sincerity, and the powerful, overwhelming story it tells.

Reading Selections Change Course - Again

It's a good thing that I don't have to be as decisive about my reading as I do a lot of other things in my life, and as such I didn't feel the slightest bit of guilt when I headed to the library today to pick up a few things. I'm sure these quick changes are representative of how quickly my mind jumps around, but I will say that I've gotten better in recent months about starting a book and actually finishing it (as evidenced by my recent reading of The Road).

Half of today's read was the result of a guest op-ed in today's Washington Post about the recent honors accorded Salman Rushdie ("Knighthood for a Literary Lion"). Despite all the coverage of Rushdie in the past twenty years, I had never taken the time to try and read any of his books. After reading the piece in today's Post today, however, I decided to give Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children a shot; after a cursory flip-through of each book, it appears they're going to be challenging, but I'm looking forward to that.

The second half of today's new read was more the result of being compelled to head to the biography section. I intended to see if there was anything available on Orson Welles, whose career has interested me since my recent viewing of the movie RKO 281, the story of the creation of Citizen Kane and the interplay between Welles, William Randolph Hearst, and Hollywood executives (highly recommended, by the way). Instead, Elie Wiesel's All Rivers Run to the Sea -- the first volume of his memoirs -- jumped out at me.

Wiesel is someone who has fascinated me for quite some time, but I have never taken the time to read any of his work. I'm not sure why; perhaps it's because I tend to get so emotionally involved in what I read that I wasn't sure I would be prepared enough for the level of grief, pain and sadness I would be exposed to in his writing. Perhaps it was because that period of history didn't hold any interest for me until now. Or perhaps, I wasn't ready for it then, but I've been led to it now - and the timing means there's a reason I'm supposed to be reading this (and everything else before me right now).

As I move through the book, I'll probably post random thoughts; I'm sure it would engender some great discussion.