Professor David Peimer
Elie Wiesel: The Voice of the Romanian Holocaust

Professor David Peimer - Elie Wiesel: The Voice of the Romanian Holocaust

- Okay, so hi everybody, and hope everybody’s really well everywhere. And tonight, I’m going to focus on Elie Wiesel and going to do something slightly different. Obviously it’s in the context of Holocaust Memorial Day, and, you know, the profound horrors and tragedy of it. And to honour survivors and to honour the history and memory of not only Elie Wiesel, but of survivors and victims and the murdered, and in the thought of that, in that context, to try and get a sense of Elie Wiesel, a little bit about his life and understand the entire tragedy of the Holocaust through his eyes. I’m not going to try and claim to say the history of the Holocaust from the Romanian, from the overall historical Romanian perspective, but specifically through his perspective and his writing, the interviews with him, and a sense of what we know about Elie Wiesel. I also thought, you know, and in conversations with Trudy and others, not to go too much into his life, which I think a lot of people know quite a lot about, because it’s, I mean, it’s a remarkable, extraordinary life, extraordinary writing, and the amount of what he wrote and what he contributed to the history of the greatest horror perpetrated in human history, in my opinion. And obviously in Jewish history, but I think certainly in human history and how he has tried to grapple with the enormity of it and his own specific personal experience, a combination of the personal and the big picture of it all, which I find so profoundly moving in his life and in his work. So, looking at it through his eyes, through his writings, his books, one specific interview, which I’m really going to focus on more than anything.

And then the other thing which we thought to bring out today, something fairly new, which is the original of “Night” was in a sense, found and remade public, if you like, the 840 odd pages of the original version, the first version of that remarkable book “Night.” And what is in that, in a way, compared to what was in the final version. And I think it’s extraordinarily important, and it can only contribute to deepen our knowledge and understanding of his particular point of view, his particular experience from the personal, and then touching on some of the huge issues that the original book raises, and of course, which many people know in the questions. So we’re going to look at a couple of things, those things today, and no real answers. Just to pose questions and to open in a sense, or to try and further some of the ideas on this, the most extreme event in human history. So, just a quote to start with, “The memory of the Holocaust remains a burning and luminous scar on our very being until the end of time.” And I think that is really important how, you know, he’s working with the personal and the huge, the magnitude of the event. If we try to for a moment, as I’m sure many, many people have and follow better minds than me, to imagine that magnitude from all the angles, you know, of the murdered, of the survivor, of the perpetrator, the history, et cetera, all of it through one individual’s mind coming out of the town in Romania, in Hungary. The memory of the Holocaust remains a burning and luminous scar on our very being. It’s inside the being. It goes so deep now until the end of time, and he takes it all the way. And I think it’s absolutely spot on.

I don’t think that’s, yeah, I think that is, that hits the nail on the head for me, that phrase. And it also sets out the task, I think almost impossible task that he’s set for himself to be a witness, to bear testimony, to say what he thought about this event that obviously he went through, you know, and then pull us to remind us all the time of the sheer utter magnitude. And to never forget it, to never, ever forget, obviously. So, you know, will not be repeated. So a little bit, first, just briefly to remind ourselves about Elie Wiesel, just briefly, some highlights of his life and a little bit about “Night,” which is the main one I’m going to focus on. As we all know, he was born in a town, Sighet, forgive my pronunciation, in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains. In May, 1944, he was 15 or so, and sent with his family to Auschwitz as we all know. The very night that he arrives, his mother and sister are murdered on arrival virtually. And he and his father, obviously from that moment on in May ‘44, are in the camp and then are part of the Death March to Buchenwald, where, as I’m sure we all know, his father tragically dies. In April, 1945 and a little bit after, Elie Wiesel after he had recovered from Buchenwald, he moves to France and where he lived for 10 years, learning the French language. So he’s learning French and then later English. 1956, he moved to America, where he worked as a correspondent.

We all know the journalist. In 1976, he began teaching at Boston University. And then in 1978, then President Jimmy Carter nominated him to head the President’s Commission on The Holocaust. 1986 is when he wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Besides being a full-time professor at Boston University and, you know, having family and so on, and many, many other commitments, he wrote 57 books, which is incredible. And it’s remarkable the amount that he produced and what he wrote and the various areas of interest that he wrote about. He received 138 honorary doctorates, was Andrew Mellon Professor of Humanities at Boston University, as I said from 1976. Okay, if we could go on to the next slide, please. So this is a picture of Elie Wiesel as we know the images so well, picture of his father on the right. And then of course, “Night,” the one novel studied in many countries, certainly in the West, and read by so many everywhere. You know, possibly “Night,” “The Diary of Anne Frank,” possibly Primo Levi, standing out as in a way such testimony to this horror, this absolute evil horror. I just wanted to show a couple of these pictures, just so we start to humanise a little bit about trying to get a sense, as I said earlier of him, the book that he wrote, “Night” was originally 862 pages, and he wrote it originally in Yiddish. And then in 1956, published an abridged 254 page version with the title, “And The World Remained Silent.” It’s very important, I think that we all remember that’s the original title was “And The World Remained Silent,” very powerful, because he’s looking from the global perspective on the whole thing and what happened with other countries, what happened with people in other countries as Word got out more and more.

The book is published in Argentina first and two years later, the shorter French version, which we all know, probably the 140-150 page, depending on the translation version, was published in, the final one in French, and then translated into English. We all know François Mauriac, the great French writer who met Elie Wiesel in 1954, when as a journalist Wiesel interviewed him. And as I’m sure we know the story, and during the interview where Marie Arouet was a profound, or strictly devout Christian, spoke about the children being deported and transported to the camps, et cetera. And then at some point in the interview, Wiesel saying to him, “I was one of them.” And then being called back, having a conversation, and Mauriac being the one, according to Elie Wiesel who really encouraged him to, to write about his experience to help get published. Mauriac is the one who suggests the title “Night.” Elie Wiesel speaks glowingly of François Mauriac, and his influence and his support with him. And Mauriac himself had won the Nobel prize for literature in 1952. So he encourages him also to make changes, to make the book more, to paraphrase a long story, to make it more accessible in a way to a wider, much wider audience possibly, or readership. And the title “Night” is suggested instead of “And the World Remained Silent.” Now, this is a combination today of a little bit of what I gave before, which was much more specifically on Elie Wiesel and the book.

A couple of years ago, the early stages of lockdown, and then Dennis and I did an interview with Elie Wiesel’s son, which was amazing and very powerful. He was so honest and such a moving experience to interview Elie Wiesel’s son, who was just brilliant and sharing with such raw honesty about himself and his father, the family and all sorts of other things that we spoke about. So that’s why this takes a slightly different tangent in looking at the book and that original 840 page version and what was in it, and remembering the context of writing 10 years, approximately 10 years after the end of the war. And he’s only 26, 27 when he’s writing it, you know. He’s about 16 at the end of the war. So we have to remember, I think that age is crucial. And when he is writing it in the mid fifties, he wrote it, he started writing it when he was, as a young journalist in 1954 on a ship journey from Paris, sent as an assignment to Brazil. And on the way, he basically sat in the cabin and just wrote, as he said, “I wrote feverishly, the pages piled up on my bed. I slept fitfully, I typed incessantly on my little typewriter. I ignored many of the other passengers.” There’s this sense of a feverishness just had to get it out so much there to say and to release in a way. Again, he was 26 and only a decade before is coming out with the most extreme experience possible. And in a way, hovering between life and death every moment in the camps. And in his own words, he decided to, and I’m quoting, “To break his vow of silence and to open the gates of memory.” And I think it’s such an important phrase to break his vow of silence and open the gates of memory. And I think that has stayed with him all his life. And I think if there’s anything to be passed on, it’s how does memory get passed on from generation to generation? How do we pass on memory?

How do we represent memory, not just history, but memory, which personalises it more. We may use some artistic literary qualities. We may use literature as opposed to historical document. We may use film, theatre, art, painting, et cetera. We may use all the tools of humanity to represent it. In essence, it’s capturing memory to testimony to bear witness yes, But it’s hard to represent memory in a way. And it’s going to change always. As cultures change, histories change and evolve. And what strikes me is that phrase of Elie Wiesel’s. He took a vow of silence for himself after the war, to open the gates of memory. He’s already finding as a writer, an artistic and literary way to try and absorb the enormity, the absolute extreme enormity of what he’s gone through and so many millions of others, in fact, the whole world. So, you know, we have “Schindler’s List,” we have Claude Lanzmann’s brilliant “Shoah,” the nine hour version. We have so many others. We have the TV series I mean, I don’t want to get into debates about which is a more, if you like, more effective or more profound or more accurate representation. Those debates are powerful and very important. But I want to really just focus on his work today. Because there are so many ways to represent this and you know, it has to ultimately be a way that takes memory and opens the gates in some way. In an interview, which I’m going to show very soon with Charlie Rose, it comes across clearly.

It’s interesting at the beginning of the interview, it’s a long interview, so I’m only going to show 10 minutes in total, and edited clips. Elie Wiesel starts at talking about the Kabbalah and studying the Kabbalah as a young boy, and how don’t touch it until, you know, in your thirties, forties, which everyone knows that injunction. And it’s such a sense of, he talks about the language of the Kabbalah, the poetry, the words right at the beginning of the interview. And it strikes me that it’s not about Elie Wiesel being a mystic, but it’s about him being imbued with a sense of the huge questions of life from a very young age, studying the Kabbalah, being sent to study these things at so young. And he talks about that at the beginning of the interview and not by chance I think very important. And I think that stays with him all the way through. So the language, which for me is so remarkable in “Night,” and the language in which in so many of his other books, you know, in “All Rivers Run to the Sea,” just so many of the others. There’s constantly this connection between something ancient, something poetic, something literary, and something factual, which is quite different from other approaches in a way. And it has its own particular evocative and wrenching power in its own way together with writing feverishly. He was a teenager when it happened and he’s only in his mid twenties coming out of it when he starts to write it. Okay if we can go to the next slide, please. Okay this is going to begin the interview with Charlie Rose, and it’s before I’m going to go into the long version of the 840 pages of his book. Just to get a sense, this is 10 minutes and it’s the longest I’ve ever shown anything I think on lockdown or anywhere. But I think it’s really worth it to hold it, because there’s something so profound for me in what he’s saying and something of how he’s trying to understand the contemporary context when he’s being interviewed, looking at the future, looking at the present, and of course the past. Okay, if we can show it please, Lauren.

CLIP BEGINS

• In your remembrance, in your remembrance, was there a sense of impending doom and fear that the Germans were coming and?

• Not until they came. See, we in this little town, we didn’t know what was happening in the world. Everybody at one point knew earlier about Auschwitz except Hungarian Jews. That’s why occasionally I’m so angry. And tonight, you know, is a very special night, Charlie. This is a commemoration anniversary of the Kristallnacht. The Night of the Broken Glass. For the first time, you know, hundreds of store, Jewish stores were ransacked, synagogues burned, Jews killed. There was a watershed really in the Nazi attitude towards Jews. And somehow we were abandoned. The Hungarian Jewish community could have been saved because we were deported as highlighted here. March 19, the Germans came in, we were deported May 17th, two weeks or three weeks before D-Day. The allies really had bombed the railways to Auschwitz. Thousands and thousands of Jews would’ve been saved. At that time, the Germans were burning 10,000 men, women, and children every day, every night. That hurts.

• You went to Auschwitz on a cattle car?

• Yes, that was the way all Jews went, except a few Jews who were lured by the Germans. They had their own psychology. Their warfare psychology, how to lure people. So let’s say from Italy or from Greece, they took them in ice cars, in passenger cars, well trains. But we were in cattle cars.

• And you were told what by your father?

• We could have them too. We were in the ghetto first for two months. And we had a marvellous mate, a Christian woman, marvellous woman called Maria. She lived in a village, and she came into the ghetto and she pleaded with us, “Come with me. I have a hut in the mountains. Come, we have enough. All of you, the entire family.” Had we known about Auschwitz, we would’ve gone with her, but we didn’t know.

• [Charlie] What did you think?

• We thought what? We were told that we were-

• And you were told what by your father?

• We could have them too. We were in the ghetto first for two months. And we had a marvellous mate, a Christian woman, marvellous woman called Maria. She lived in a village and she came into the ghetto, and she pleaded with us, “Come with me. I have a hut in the mountains. Come, we have enough. All of you, the entire family.” Had we known about Auschwitz, we would have gone with her, but we didn’t know.

• So what did you think?

• Oh, we thought what, we were told that we were only going to Hungary to a kind of family camp in Hungary, because the front was coming nearer and nearer. The Russian front was 20 miles away, 30 miles away. And we were told that because of the front, they are simply taking all the Jews away into camps. Hungarian camps in Hungary. Had we known about Auschwitz, no doubt. So this poor Maria, who I remember with great gratitude, she was a marvellous, admirable human being. And she didn’t win. But Auschwitz won. No my mother, three sisters, two older ones and one younger one, and my mother and the younger one and my grandmother were taken that night, the very first night.

• Never saw them again?

• No. Gassed that night.

• [Charlie] First night.

• Very first night. And what I try to say here, there been a few words, you know, that the pain that I, we didn’t even say goodbye to each other. I see when I close my eyes, I see them always walking, walking.

• [Charlie] Walking away.

• Walking away in the crowd. I see my little sister, whom I love more than I can say. When I speak about that, I cry. And I saw them walking away. We found out soon after of course.

• [Charlie] You found out?

• Yes because that very night, the inmates who were in charge of receiving us and breaking us in so to speak, they told us, see, the flames, the cemetery of the entire people was in those flames. Inside Auschwitz, we became so close because we had no one else. I was all he had. And he was all I had. And one of the reasons I’m sure why I live is because I was afraid that if I died, he would die. Same thing for him. He wanted to live because of me. And when in Buchenwald., finally he did die. I did not continue to live. It wasn’t life. That’s why in my first memoir “Night” a few pages, about three months, because I didn’t feel alive.

• [Charlie] Numb.

• I was paralysed. My life was the life of a paralysed person. Everything in me was paralysed. My thought process was paralysed. The brain was paralysed, my soul was paralysed. I functioned without knowing what I was doing because he wasn’t there. About humanity, what kind of humanity is this that allows such tragedy, such crimes to be committed? And what about-

• Never answered that have you?

• I have no answer. All the questions I had there really remained open. What about culture?

• Today?

• Of course. What about culture? The killers were cultured persons, educated persons. Some of them had PhDs. When I discovered, you know, the ISIS commanders who were the worst because they did Babi Yar and they killed with machine guns, not even with gas. Some of them had doctoral degrees in arts, in medicine, in theology. I couldn’t believe it, but they did it. So what is culture? Why be educated? Why go to the soborn? Why study?

• Because education is supposed to be a civilising influence on you. It’s supposed to give you a sense of your connection with the trend, the evolution of civilization.

• It was supposed to be a shield.

• Yes.

• Civilization.

• And a grounding.

• And a grounding. And God of course, I was much too religious not to question God. So I had all that. And at the same time, in one of the houses at one point already, I became a choir conductor too, you know, and I fell in love with every girl I met.

• The mission that you feel in 30 books and all that you have the attention you have received. What drives you in part is to make sure that memory of the Holocaust remains what?

• Remains a burning and luminous scar on our very being. Now, until the end of times. How? I believe that the goal of teaching of writing is to sensitise the reader, to sensitise the pupil, to sensitise each other. I would like to create sensitivity, a heightened sensitivity, a heightened awareness of the other in those who read me or those who hear me. Otherwise, memory could be a static memory.

• So at some point we say there was a terrible war between 1940 and 1945 in which millions of people were killed.

• 6 Million Jews were massacred.

• Including 6 million or, and then at some point it’s no longer 6 million Jews, it’s 20 million people were killed, and there were terrible inhumanities committed. And there’s no mention of Jews and there’s no mention of-

• Forgotten.

• Auschwitz. And all of a sudden it fails in the memory other than.

• A sentence, in humanity to man.

• [Charlie] It was a time of man’s inhumanity. The most obscene inhumanity of all time.

• No, I would like the faces that I have seen, the fires that I have watched from a very near distance should not be extinguished. Neither the faces nor the fires. I would like the tears that I have shed, that I have seen others shed, should not be lost in the sand of the desert. Fanaticism. Fanaticism, whatever really happened, bad, bad things that happened now in recent years that you try to trace them back, you will see it is always fanaticism. It’s not only religious fanaticism, it’s ethnic fanaticism in Boston.

• Fanaticism started in which you have written about eloquently and it is fanaticism that started World War I and fanaticism started World War II.

• Always fanaticism.

• [Charlie] Do you think there’s fanaticism in this country?

• Absolutely.

• [Charlie] From the right, from the left?

• From the right, even from the left, but maybe from the right. And these are very dangerous people.

• Driven by religious-

• [Elie Wiesel] Racism.

• And racism.

• Racism, there is racism.

• [Charlie] Antisemitism, racism.

• Always. Whenever people hate, they always find a place to hate a Jew too.

• [Charlie] To blame.

• First the Jew also. They hate rich, put in a few Jews. They hate the black. Put in a few Jews too. They always hate Jews.

• Why is that?

• But not only Jews. Because we are the scapegoat. Some say cause we were the conscience 3000 years ago of humanity because because we are alive, they cannot understand logically our people should have disappeared. There wasn’t a time, there wasn’t a matter to when Jews were not in danger since 3,500 years. And they can’t understand, “What are you doing here? We don’t want you, go away,” and we stay.

• And contribute. “Elie Wiesel Memories: All Rivers Run To The Sea.” Thank you.

• Thank you.

• Pleasure. When we come back…

CLIP ENDS

• Okay, thanks Lauren. If we could go to the next slide, please. So for me, this is so profoundly moving and so profoundly insightful, and this is just 10 minutes, nine, 10 minutes edited from a 33-minute interview. I just feel that the words, the sheer humanity, the sheer ability with his words, his language, just trying to understand, trying to find ways to express it. And has to not only give historical facts which are crucial, vital, but also find a way where the story can be told, the memory can be captured, can be represented, and can be expressed in a way through memory. As he talks about, you know, it is through memory, through some education, even though education’s meant to be the shield, you know, to protect from such evil, as he mentions. But it doesn’t mean that one stops it. And it’s just such a, for me, a powerful way of understanding. The other things that he told, you know, the anger that he feels at the beginning at Hungarians, the anger even at his father, and I’m going to come later with the 840 page first version where he talks about the optimists and the naivety, et cetera. But also why were people not told? Why didn’t they know? And so on. There’s again, the first title “And The World Remains Silent.” First title of the book, the original title. The anger at God, the anger at, you know, what is education? How do we educate people? What are we doing with education?

You know, what is it really trying to do now? His mission as he speaks about it at the end there, you know, to do anything to avoid and I really think his phrase is accurate, static memory 'cause when memory becomes static in the humans in our psyches, it becomes frozen in time, and it becomes just, you know, something happened there and then whenever, and I know on Holocaust Memorial Day, where people I just meet or met or et cetera, it’s a sentence or two, gone. And how does one stop it from being in a sense, static memory, which really means, you know, becoming frozen in time, like other memories or, you know, things can possibly become? How to tell the story and the memory in a way which keeps evolving as societies do. So in that spirit, this is Elie Wiesel with a gentleman called Dr. Yoel Rappel. And he is the founder and director of the Elie Wiesel Archive at Boston University. I’m sure quite a few, I’m sure many people know. And he worked for many years with Elie Wiesel as his personal assistant professor at Boston University and in Israel and elsewhere. And very interesting that, that Elie Wiesel asked him to, in a sense become the director of the archives. And he spent seven years and he, and in 2009, Elie Wiesel asked him to manage his archive specifically. And in his own words, there were over a million documents. And it took seven years to try and arrange and plan you know, get some sort of, I suppose, order or structure into it. And then he knew that there was the original manuscript of “Night” and spent approximately two and a half years trying to look for it and finding it. The archive was buried for decades and decades.

And he quotes Elie Wiesel saying to him, “I don’t know where it is, but I would be very happy if you can find it.” In other words, “I’d be very happy if you can find it, if you can edit and make it known.” So this archived version is really interestingly different to the original. And I think it can help us to just take out a couple of main points from the original of “Night,” you know, to deepen a way of trying to ensure that memory does not become static. Not only about academic research, that’s for sure. And I’m going to just quote a couple of key phrases in a way from that, you know, the 840 pages that Dr. Rappel found here, or he also took out. On anti-Semitism that he talks about at the end of the interviews and anti-Semitism today. Now this has done a couple of decades ago, that interview, but being so aware, we all know the beast has reared its head again in our times. This is Wiesel. “Once I thought that anti-Semitism had disappeared, today, it’s clear to me that it never will. It might get weaker, but it will continue to exist, because there are not many countries, where people are not embarrassed to be anti-Semitic.” He has such a turn of phrase and thought, it’s paradoxical thinking, it’s profound for me. It’s almost ancient Greek. It’s almost Socratic. Because there are many countries where people are not embarrassed to be anti-Semitic today.

What does it mean when we say it’s mainstream and it’s okay? It means that people don’t feel embarrassed. They don’t feel a hint of shame to be overtly anti-Semitic. The role of shame, it’s embarrassment. That’s what actually is happening when we say it’s become mainstream. He also talks about without antisemitism, there never would’ve been Auschwitz. In one phrase, he pulls the two together. So as in the interview, you know, just any event that happened, an aberration or is it the consequence of anti-Semitism or is it an aberration of human civilization? No, Wiesel links it directly as he does at the end of that interview. Of course it’s linked, but it needs to be told in an un-static way. To go on with Elie Wiesel, I thought that by keeping alive the memory of the Shoah, people who espoused anti-Semitic feelings would feel embarrassed. But I was wrong. Anti-Semitism still exists in so many countries, and it’s no longer shameful to be anti-Semitic. Well, if it’s no longer shameful, it’s something to be proud of. Not just neutral, it’s something to be proud of. It’s something to identify, going back centuries, whether through deicide, whether through the killing of Christ, whether through the blood libel, whether through fanaticism, whether through ideology, whether through portrayals of Jewish people in all different ways, communism to capitalism, rich whatever, whether control the world, the protocols, all whatever, whether the scapegoat theory, which he mentions here, which is Sartre’s idea as well, or combination of those, it’s no longer shameful to be anti-Semitic.

It’s so profound for me that he was writing this so long ago, 'cause that’s what it means to be mainstream. There’s a pride, almost an arrogance. And then he goes on to say, and this is an interview separately to, separate to the original book. The Shoah must not just be another incident in the history of the world, as Arthur Miller wrote and feared. Because exactly the point that he makes in the interview here with Charlie Rose, is it going to just become another incident? If we imagine 50 years, a 100, 150, 200 years, hence, how will it be told? How will the memory not have become icy, stolen, static, frozen? That’s just part of the history of the world. No, it’s got to be held as something that was so obscene, so evil, so horrific. It is so huge. And it isn’t like another genocide. I really believe it profoundly. It’s not Rwanda, it’s not elsewhere. And I’m not for a second saying that any of those are any less evil and horrific, but it has its own uniqueness. And I think that is crucial in the way of keeping that memory burning. Yoel Rappel also writes or takes out one of the unpublished chapters from the original of “Night.” And in it, Elie Wiesel, this is of course 840 pages. Elie Wiesel describes a date that he had in a Paris nightclub with a French student. Her name was Cataline in 1955.

And in it, this is Elie Wiesel writing, he’s talking to the fellow student. She’s, they’re on a coffee date, whatever together. “During my childhood I died far too many times.” And then he carries on writing. “Later, I regretted what I had told her. I had no right to impose my past on her.” She asked me, “Have I ever loved anyone?” “Yes, Catiline, I loved my father, my mother, sisters, teachers, my friends, the neighbours, horse, the sky, the smiles of children, children who didn’t smile, I loved. But have I ever been in love? No. And afterwards I was not capable of it. I could no longer believe in love.” You don’t for a second think this is sentimental. I think it’s so profoundly important, because he is talking about a subtle, nuanced distinction, you know, of the love for the father, the mother, others, the neighbour, et cetera, et cetera. But this feeling, the sense of compassion, the sense of just human decency, all these words captured in that word love, decency, acceptance, understanding, respect, compassion, all of these things captured in that four letter word. No, he goes on. “My life had robbed me of my family, my friends and childhood, and most of all robbed me of my illusions. And nothing in return, not a god, not hope. Memories are dead. This is all in the conversation with the other French student. In the beginning we had belief, foolish belief. This is similar to what he was saying in the interview with Charlie Rose here, where, you know, they had belief that as he said, going to some camp organised, you know, by the Hungarians et cetera, be okay. And the foolish beliefs and the terrible illusion. We lived with the illusion of God, of soul.

This was the source, not the cause of so much of our misfortune. And when I was looking again at "Night,” which I’m sure we’ve all read many times, there’s such a powerful sense of its ultimately illusions gone and in the most humane ways what he’s saying in that interview and what he says in these 840 pages, is that have no illusions. And I don’t think we can have illusions. If there’s something to learn in how to make sure the memory is not frozen is that illusion has to be removed, the mask of illusion, the curtains which are comfortable or comforting, but they are illusions, they are masquerading. And it’s not just about the cold ruthless truth, it’s about not succumbing to illusion. It’s one of the ways to help, in a way keep that memory weaponized hopefully. He went through five different versions of “Night” between 1947 and 1964 until the final one. On that, thank you for the next one, on the note of illusions, this is from 1924, the New York Times. “Hitler tamed by prison.” So 1924, it’s only nine years before he becomes Chancellor. Adolf Hitler, once the demigod of the reactionary extremists was released in parole from imprisonment at Fortress Landsberg Bavaria today, and immediately left in an auto for Munich. He looked a much sadder and wiser man today than last spring when he, with Ludendorff and other radical extremists appeared before Munich Court, charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government.

His behaviour during imprisonment convinced the authorities that like his political organisation known as the Völkischer, was no longer to be feared. It is believed he will retire to private life and return to Austria, the country of his birth. This isn’t even written in Germany, this is written for New York. This is written for the Western or the English speaking world, illusion after illusion after illusion. I think that in capturing that memory, we need to be so aware. This is nine years before you know this guy becomes chancellor. So if we can go on onto the next slide, please. Thank you. These are some pictures. This is the picture of him with his son. There’s the picture we all know at the back and the other pictures of him, which we all know as well. The opposite of love is not hate, which is indifference. And I’m sure many people know this phrase of Elie Wiesel’s. I think the way to represent memory and the way to find, and we’re going to have to constantly change in different cultures, different historical eras as time goes on, different generations will have to find their ways. And not only the technology of the times, but the thinking, the idea behind it. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. For me that’s always remained such a profound thought because, you know, you’d think it’s love or it’s compassion or it’s kindness, forgiveness. We must always takes sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. It’s not good enough to be neutral.

And certainly at our times, I don’t think we can be. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. He’s got this amazing way. It’s almost a Kafkaesque of parables, which I think comes from understanding the Kabbalah and his very early education, if you like in his early young years. It’s so similar to the aphoristic and parable way of reading Kafka and many others. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. In one sentence, he gets it and expresses it. Was Auschwitz a consequence or an aberration of civilization? Proposing these ideas and these questions, what he’s trying to do is he’s constantly trying to weaponize memory. He’s trying to say, never let it become static. Got to find new ways of putting words together, new ways of educating, new ways of telling this thing, not repeat the same exact way again and again with the ideas, with language, with the tools. Give us the tools, we’ll do the job if I may paraphrase Churchill. So he, in the book, in the original, he rails against his faith in God, he rails against, I was already an old man combining the disaffection with the tragic reflections of Job, became a stone, a hard cold stone in the face of my childish illusions. I learned in Buchenwald a man could only know man in extreme conditions, when he has thrown away all masks and stands naked.

Again, it’s the echo again of taking away any illusion. “In Buchenwald, I saw the true face of man, the face of a human animal, which is worse than a true animal.” He’s also critical of the world for forgetting The Holocaust so quickly. And he writes, in the original, “10 years after Buchenwald, the world forgets. Germany is a sovereign nation and its army has been resurrected. Ilse Koch, the sadistic woman of Buchenwald has children and is happy. War criminals walk the streets of Hamburg, Munich, the past is being wiped out, forgotten. Has the story of the 6 million Martyrs become a legend?” He’s posing all these profound things for us. He writes about what he calls the disappearance of Jewish solidarity during the Shoah. Those are his words, “The disappearance of the Jewish solidarity during the Shoah. Why didn’t Jews throughout the world fight for their brethren even after they knew they were being gassed?” As he talks in the interview, couple of weeks before D-Day is when Hungarian Jews start to be transported a short while before. And he goes on in the book in Washington, London, they already knew in 1948 what was going on.

The American Jewish community knew why did people make no effort? Would heaven and earth have been moved? So I think there is something so powerful in these posing questions. And they’re disturbing questions, they’re profound questions, terrifying. But if there’s one way to try and understand, so it doesn’t just become museum after museum or physical memorial in a way, is it? It’s got to be in the mind. Kafka wrote that the point of art, that art must be like an axe to cut the frozen heart. Art is an axe to cut the frozen heart. And there’s something that links for me in that together with Wiesel talking about not being a static memory. And of course Kafka is talking about very different things and writing about different things. But there’s a similar understanding. It’s interesting that he lashes out also at the Hungarians. He lashes out at God. We believed in miracles and in God and not in fate. And we fared very badly, not believing in fate. If we had believed in fate, we might have prevented catastrophes instead of believing in God. I stopped praying. I was angry at God. I said, God does not deserve me praying for him. Why sanctify him? For what? For the suffering he reigns on our heads for Auschwitz and Birkenau. He will not stand as the accused before the divine judge. This time we are the judges and he the accused. He goes on in all these ways. He talks about his own father and the others, parents of his time, and I’m quoting him here. “As eternal optimists, professional optimists. They buried the future, if we had known, but if we had known only a little of the truth, dozens of Jews or more could have successfully fled, would’ve broken the sword of fate.

We would’ve fled and hidden in the mountains with farmers. We didn’t know a thing. Why was the world silent? Why was everywhere silent when they knew it was happening?” He talks about his Christian Hungarian neighbours, who watched the Jews of his hometown being deported. And he writes, I’m quoting, “All the residents stood outside their homes, their faces filled with happiness, happiness, at the misfortune they saw in their friends of yesterday, walking and disappearing into the horizon forever. I learned the true face of the Hungarian. It is the brutal face of an animal. The Hungarians were more violent towards us than the Germans themselves.” He talks about in the book the desire for revenge that he felt in 1945. “At the end of the war, I refused to return to my homeland. However, I’m sorry I did not return home in order to take revenge.” These are such profound and important questions and thoughts. And he at one point went with Dr. Rappel to Sighet. At the time when they went, there were 24 Jews living in Sighet, time that had a good few thousand before. It now apparently has a thousand tourists approximately that come to Sighet every year, which has very ambiguous resonance meanings for me, which are possible, which I’m sure we can all imagine. The time that he went with Dr. Rappel, the mayor was there, the chief of police and others, because there had been some horrible graffiti put on his old family house. And the mayor had said, “No, this is the town of Wiesel.” The ironies, the changes, the moving of history. We have to be so aware of that, commercialisation of it, the fickleness of history as with his neighbours.

He said after his first visit in an article that he wrote in 1964, “All of my books flow from the spring that is called Sighet. All goes back to that original town.” It’s such why that’s where he had his early education, his family, the childhood years. As we grew older, it’s burned into us so powerfully. It helps as a way to again, help, I’m going to use the phrase weaponize memory, how to make it come alive. Let’s remember back those early days because everyone can identify with that. And that’s by chance that he starts the novel, the book with it. Campaigning against anti-Semitism. The mayor, a guy called Scoobli at the time, according to Dr. Rappel, talks about the mayor saying, “We are the city of Elie Wiesel and it’s necessary to keep his memory alive.” Is the mayor saying that just to be politically correct? Is he saying it 'cause he profoundly believes in it? Does it matter? Either way it’s keeping the memory alive. We keep the memory of him and from that, we can maybe extrapolate so many others. So I want to just say that at the end, pulling this together has been, it’s a profoundly terrifying, horrifying, and emotional experience. And I mean for everybody, obviously, and for me, there’s something about the sincerity, the tragedy, the necessity that he has to keep trying to find ways to express the testimony, the witnessing in terms of Jewish people and in terms of human history. You can get that sense in that interview. You know, for human history to try and for humanity to try and absorb it in its real truth.

And so many ideas and so many ways to try, so many things to approach it with from art to literature, to music, to sound to songs, to different cultural expressions all over. In the end, maybe there’s no real wrong or right, maybe all that matters is the constant need and hunger to never let memory become in his word static. Never let it become refrigerated in that sense. And I thought I’d just end with Albert Camus because I love Camus’s work and I remember being a little kid and it was Camus’s work, amongst others that spoke to me so powerfully, much more than Sartre and others, because I think he had no illusions. I think Camus saw what was happening in Stalin’s Soviet Russia and Soviet Union. He saw the left, he saw the right, he saw so many things Camus. He understood, no illusions, and yet can still say there is more to celebrate than to denigrate in man. And one of the ways to celebrate, not in the naive meaning of the word celebration or the colloquial meaning of the word celebration, but to profoundly understand, to recognise is that memory is worth it and is necessary because it reminds us of what it means to be human. Otherwise we can become the man with the iron heart quite easily. Okay, thank you very much. I’ll hold it there for today and go into questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Arlene, in the 1980s, I had the privilege to hear him in person, at the 92nd Street Y. Thank you Arlene. Powerful.

Q: Sam, was the original 840 pages of “Night” abridged as the longer version been printed?

A: I know that it’s in the archive. Actually, and I know that Dr. Rappel would be the person that we would contact probably through the Wiesel Centre.

Martha, “Night” is not a novel, it’s a memoir. Yeah, you’re absolutely right, Martha. Thank you.

Lois and Stan. During the summer of '79, my wife and I spent three weeks in the USSR touring and visiting many Refuseniks. We were prepared by the Council for Soviet jury in New York. One of our assignments was to inform the Jewish community of Kiev, of Elie Wiesel’s visit.

Oh, okay. They wanted Jews present at Babi Yar to meet with Elie Wiesel. Thank you. Very powerful.

Rita, “Night” by Elie Wiesel is a full audio book. That’s very helpful. Thanks Rita.

Emmanuel. In 1980 I worked on two films about Elie Wiesel. Fantastic. This is the extraordinary quality of Lockdown. Extraordinary. That so many humans and so many people are connecting in so many different ways. “All Rivers Run To The Sea” from Lockdown. And it’s an extraordinary resource, you know, that we can all share. Rita, thank you. I know, but it’s not easy to watch 10 minutes of the film, you know, can get a little bit tiresome, I think Rita, but with this, because these are in a way trying to crystallise his main thoughts in one.

Emmanuel, I used to meet him at the Sergo, filmed him in 2000 in Jerusalem. In 2017, I filmed the naming of West 84th Street in his name. In January, I was invited to the naming of a square in his honour in Jerusalem. Also the placing of the Basca Jerusalem at the Hebrew University. Fantastic, thank you Manuel.

Q: Romain. Is Elie about inability to love?

A: Well I think it’s, you know, perhaps rediscovering, but the real meaning, not just the Romeo Juliet meaning, you know, the real meaning of compassion, forgiveness, understanding in a way, compassion maybe.

Sam, two documentaries available on DVD “Elie Wiesel Goes Home.” Thank you so much. Yeah, they are brilliant. So many brilliant works here that others have worked on. You got a huge amount. I mean, the importance of him is so huge and so powerful. Through his writing, through his interviews, through the conversations, the way of thinking. And I do believe there’s something of the Kafka, the parable, the Kabbalah, the way of paradoxical understanding, the way of using language is so powerful, which is essential when one’s trying to render memory accessible to people.

Rita, thank you. The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity side. Thank you.

Nanette, always wondered if wanting to protect my family, I would’ve joined the SS. I would not kill and would’ve hopefully shown some humanity. I hope so. Also, I would’ve killed but would’ve accepted it. I do not think people have improved. But maybe in today’s world, maybe people are more informed. That remains one of the most profound and disturbing questions imaginable. And there is the story of the lady, I forget her name, but there’s a play about it called “Blonde Poison.” And she was a submarine, what they used to call it anyway, in Berlin to hunt down Jews, Hungarians who were Jewish. And the Gestapo said, “Well, we’ll save your family if you hunt Jews,” you know, a nightmare of a choice to even imagine. But it happened.

Romain, no illusions. I think his ability to question is linked to his ability to love astonishingly surviving atrocities. Yeah, I agree. And rediscovering a faith in it in a way. Because what’s powerful about the original version of the book and that date with that French student, he says, it’s over. It’s an illusion. Love, what’s love? It’s ridiculous. So I think it’s in a way to rediscover that maybe.

Martha, Martha “Rappel was not his personal assistant at Boston University. I was for 27 years.” That is extraordinary Martha, and thank you. I take back everything and thank you so much for saying this and for enlightening me. That is so powerful and profound. And if you would email, that would be fantastic. Thank you so much for saying it. It was read in some research as I was doing it for today, reading about Rappel, but they probably, they’ve got it mixed up, obviously. Thank you so much for that Martha.

Rita thank you.

Q: Adrian, did he mention burying the watch before he was deported?

A: I think he went back to find it. Yeah, that’s in that original.

Lorna, I was commissioned to translate Elie Wiesel from French to English, but it fell through in the interview, the English, okay. Very important.

Q: Linda, in “Night,” he rejects religion altogether. What made him become a devout Jew again?

A: I think that’s going to be needed for another whole long time. And what devotion means, what devout means, his own understanding of it.

Anne, “In that interview, Elie Wiesel raises the question, why be educated or cultured?” In that interview he raises the question. Yeah, I remember reading that Eichman could be moved to tears by Beethoven sonatas. Yeah, they all could. I mean, Hydris was a, you know, going on, I mean so many of them in terms of the great classical composers, Beethoven and others. It’s not about Beethoven or any of them. It’s about them. I don’t think that the way education is handled, certainly in our times, that it has much to do with compassion, morality, ethics, or anything. I think we have to question if that’s illusion or how real that is in our times.

Rita, thank you for that. Very powerful.

Gail. Hope you’re okay there, thank you. Enjoy Berg. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. Thanks very much, Gail. That’s Kafka. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. It’s just such a resonant image from Kafka that for me, links to that idea of what he’s trying to do with memory.

Susan, Elie was a dear friend of mine. Thank you. He so missed his voice. Susan, that is so powerful. Thank you. And maybe if you can be in touch, that’d be amazing.

Susie. Thank you. Elie Wiesel’s words yeah.

Julian, in 1968, he came to South Africa, spoke to his Jewish students at Wits, who asked about Apartheid. Yeah. Thank you.

Emmanuel. Yoel Rappel would like to know how to reach you. Thank you so much, Emmanuel. Could you, I can’t write it down right now. I don’t want to interrupt this. It’ll take time. But if you wouldn’t mind Emmanuel, just emailing that to Lockdown, to Lockdown University and they’ll pass it on to me. That’d be amazing. I’d really appreciate it. Thank you.

Julian. He said not to be Jews of silence about Apartheid. Yep. Selitz. said worth keeping a memory of SS alive for three and a half thousand years. Yep.

Linda, my mother’s maiden name was Bloomer Wiesel, if I pronounce it right, born in Hungary where Elie Wiesel was born. When I heard him speak, I asked if they’re related. He said yes. He said, my uncle. The same thing. Very powerful Linda. Thank you.

Q: Renee, mentioned Hungarians, as Sighet became Hungarian during the war. But what did he say about Romanians?

A: Well, he, I think is reflecting his period. And you know as we know that with the history and the geography, it shifted and moved. But let’s just hold that for the moment.

Q: Maria, do we consider him Hungarian or Romanian?

A: Important question. I’m going to leave that for the historians, because I think they can be more accurate about those certain facts in a way. I want to look more at the, if you like the ideas, the thoughts, the writing.

Martha, you might get a Yiddish version from the Yiddish Book Centre in Amherst. Thanks so much, Martha. That’s really appreciated.

Rita. Some people watch it, some people lived it. Yeah.

Marla. Yeah okay, Maria sorry. Yeah. Okay. BC was soft spoken, but I could feel the simmering rage. What strikes me when you look at that original, the rage is huge. I think it was Mandela who had the phrase, or was it Steve Biko? I’m trying to remember. The more radical the thought, the softer the tone. I think it might have been Biko. Powerful. Thanks Maria.

Roberts. Thank you. Robin not romantic love Eros, but spiritual love. Even God’s love. Yeah. Good way of putting it Robin.

Q: Carol, do you believe the Holocaust museums do justice to the memory, not just the static history? Could they be doing more to the presentation to add more heightened sensitivity?

A: Yes, I do. I’ve only seen a few of them. So let me just say for a moment, I’ve seen very few of them. And memorials, not only museums. So I can only talk from a few, I can’t talk from many others that I haven’t seen. But I’d be wary, you know, I’d be wary. I think in the end it’s what gets transmitted into the mind and the human heart through memory. That’s the power.

Abigail, his return to life and religion and love was influenced by as many visits to the . I read there was quite a bit about that, which I held often 'cause it wasn’t time for today. You’re absolutely right. You said to him to marry and have a child. Yep.

Samuel, you studied with him. It’s amazing. Thank you so much.

Catherine, “My grandfather refused to leave Aachen. Despite my mother wanting to get him here in 1938, he never believed would come to that and perished in Theresienstadt in 1942. This is just so powerful and moving from everybody. I cannot express my appreciation enough. And the resource that Lockdown and that Wendy and Trudy have created is, this is the real remarkable stuff about it all.

Q: Samuel. And remember Martha being his personal assistant?

A: Absolutely. Martha, if you would be so kind as to be in touch, that would be incredible. Thank you.

Q: Bob, could politicians be screened for their level of empathy toward people and animals?

A: Yeah, that’s an idea. And it took a long time after the war for Elie to decide to have a child. When Alicia was born, it was one of the happiest days of his life. The ability to love again and to rebuild his family. Alicia told me his father’s only request was for him to marry a Jewish girl. Thank you.

Okay, so to hold it there, and thank you so much everybody, and hope you are well as, just take care. Thank you.