Elie Wiesel in Buchenwald: The Moral Challenge to Learn, and Act

Today, Holocaust survivor, "Night" author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel joined President Barack Obama at the site of Buchenwald, one of Nazi Germany's terrible concentration camps, to speak out against indifference and humanity's inability to learn from its own worst moments. "Memory has become a sacred duty of goodwill," said Wiesel, but he worried that "the world hasn't learned."

Wiesel went back to his time in Buchenwald as a prisoner, described watching his father die there, and wondered what he would say to him now: "What can I tell him? That the world has learned? I am not sure."

Said Wiesel: "Had the world learned, there would be no Cambodia, no Rwanda, no Darfur, no Bosnia. Will the world ever learn?"

Seeing Elie Wiesel there at Buchenwald, returning as one of the world's great moral leaders to the place that forced him down that path, flanked on one side by Angela Merkel, the leader of the country that once put him there, and on the other by Obama, the first black U.S. President in a place representing the absolute worst evils of racism; that was an amazing moment. But moments must be followed up by more moments, and action.

"Mr. President, we have such high hopes for you... because you, with your moral vision of history, will be able and compelled to change this world into a better place." For his part, Obama said: "I will not forget what I have seen here."

Great. Awesome. Done. But now what? The Wiesel speech was all over the cable nets, and is burning up Twitter. The image of the kindly-faced elderly man with snowy-white hair blowing in the wind beside the solemn-faced U.S. President and German Chancellor was a great TV moment. But moments must be followed up by more moments, and action.

Hold that thought for a moment. Check this out, from the Elie Wiesel Foundation site:

To Our Friends:

We are deeply saddened and distressed that we, along with many others, have been the victims of what may be one of the largest investment frauds in history. We are writing to inform you that the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity had $15.2 million under management with Bernard Madoff Investment Securities. This represented substantially all of the Foundation's assets.

The values we stand for are more needed than ever. We want to assure you that the Foundation remains committed to carrying on the lifelong work of our founder, Elie Wiesel. We shall not be deterred from our mission to combat indifference, intolerance, and injustice around the world.

At this difficult time, the Foundation wishes to express its profound gratitude for all your support.

The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity

"This represented substantially all of the Foundation's assets." $15.2 million and 20 years of good works, of building something that not only makes a difference but stands for making a difference, every day -- gone.

Well, actually, that's not quite true - $15.2 million may be gone, but it doesn't represent all the assets of the Elie Wiesel Foundation - not by a long shot. The asset of Wiesel himself, standing there beside President Obama at Buchenwald, a living reminder of a very bad memory — one that he refuses to allow the world to forget.

More broadly, there's the asset of what Wiesel stands for: Fighting indifference to suffering worldwide — see above re: Bosnia, Darfur, Cambodia, Rwanda — and forcing people to pay attention. There's the asset of tireless activism by Wiesel and his wife, Marion; the programs set in motion by the foundation, like Beit Tziporah and the Darfurian Refugee Program to provide education and recreation for child refugees; and the overall message of ethics and tolerance and humanitarianism and standing up for what's right.

All of that was brought front and center today in an amazing, unforgettable moment. But when the moment fades, that's when the action has to begin.

So — if you want to take action — then you can take a moment....and donate to the Elie Wisel Foundation. The sacred duty of memory starts here.

One more quote from Wiesel:

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."

Don't be indifferent. It just takes a moment.

Update: Full transcript of remarks by President Obama, Chancellor Merkel and Elie Wiesel at Buchenwald earlier today available here.

Update #2: The Elie Wiesel Foundation is now on Twitter! Follow them here: http://twitter.com/eliewieselfdn and here: http://twitter.com/eliewiesel.

Comments

[basenji]

While Wiesel’s documentation of the Nazi Holocaust has earned him international acclamation and a Nobel Peace Prize, he is not always predisposed to yield the genocide victim’s spotlight. In 1982, for example, a conference on genocide was held in Israel with Wiesel scheduled to be honorary chairman, but the situation became complicated when the Armenians wanted in. Here’s how Noam Chomsky described the incident: “The Israeli government put pressure upon [Wiesel] to drop the Armenian genocide. They allowed the others, but not the Armenian one. He was pressured by the government to withdraw, and being a loyal commissar as he is, he withdrew...because the Israeli government had said they didn’t want Armenian genocide brought up.”

Wiesel went even further, calling up noted Israeli Holocaust historian, Yehuda Bauer, and pleading with him to also boycott the conference. “That gives an indication of the extent to which people like Elie Wiesel were carrying out their usual function of serving Israeli state interests,” Chomsky explains, “even to the extent of denying a holocaust, which he regularly does.”

Why not welcome the Armenians, you wonder? Chalk it up to two conspicuous factors: the need to monopolize the Holocaust™ image and the geopolitical reality that Turkey (the nation responsible for the Armenian genocide) is a rare and much-needed Muslim ally for Israel.

[goodgirlroxie]

Re Wiesel's quote: "Had the world learned, there would be no Cambodia, no Rwanda, no Darfur, no Bosnia. Will the world ever learn?"

Had the world learned, there would be no Chile, no Bagram, no Abu Ghraib, no Gitmo. Indeed, will we ever learn?

Every day I am thankful that candidate Obama was elected to be in the White House during this clean-up phase post-Bush/Cheney. However, Americans have got to get real about our involvement in human rights atrocities.

Watch The Judge & the General, a documentary about Judge Guzman's investigation of the "disappearances" in Chile during Gen. Pinochet's reign, post-Allende coup. And then watch Taxi to the Dark Side, a documentary about the torture and murders of US-held detainees from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. You will find more similarities than not between these two political events.

I have faith that Obama's heart is in the right place, and that he will do whatever he can to begin a process for Americans of real self-examination about all of our history, and not just that part that makes us proud. But that self-examination begins with us, as I feel he would agree.

[Yermammy]

"But that self-examination begins with us, as I feel he would agree."

Then you would congratulate me bringing to your attention all the things Barack is doing to NOT investigate these past crimes? Like the states secret privileges used to throw out entire cases against torture and wiretapping. Or refusing (a bush appointed!) judge's ruling to allow habeas corpus at Bagram AFB. Or refusing ANOTHER judge's order to release photos of our mistreatme­nt/torture (rape/killings?) of detainees when Bush released the first batch (got hypocrisy?). Or the talking OVER Eric Holder (who remained silent throughout) at a meeting with civil libertarian leaders about investigating the crimes of the past administration. Or getting Harry Reid to get the Senate to reject said investigations. Or the secret amendment on secrecy that Obama WILL sign-
*Obama's support for the new Graham-Lieberman secrecy law*
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/01/photos/index.html

[goodgirlroxie]

Thanks for bringing those things to my attention. However, I hope it comes as no surprise to you that I am already painfully aware of these things.

I also hope you will congratulate me bringing to your attention the fact that it's up to all of us, as citizens, to hold Obama's administration to task for these things, to not just sit back and accept them as being politically viable, a reasonable course to take as being pragmatic.

Case in point: Health care reform. The only reason the Obama administration is beginning to listen to the call for a public option is because we are keeping enormous heat on them. At least his administration listens! A HRC administration would not be so open, nor would a McCain/Palin administration, obviously.

We have to do more than just complain. We have to keep the heat turned up through our legislative representatives, and through demonstrations involving our civil rights to free speech and assembly.

[charlietuna11]

mr. wiesel, has never to my knowledge spoken of the inhuman treatment inflicted on the palastinian. i have followed his career. i can tell you imphatically that mr. wiesel has very delective indignities. i'm not saying that the right wing govt. of bibi would listen to him but his voice just might provoke a serious discussion. i won't hold my breath.....

[Yermammy]

You're right. We haven't learned a thing. We house people without charge or habeas corpus rights and torture, rape and kill them (see Guantanamo, Bagram AFB (and others!)). The big difference between then and now is the Germans were held to account, investigated, prosecuted, sentenced and punishment carried out.
And we are NOT. Apparently, we learned how to commit war crimes... and get away with it.

[rad21]

Is Elie Wiesel an active participant of the Peace Now movement in Israel?

Where are the loud voices for justice today, based on what we learnt from yesterday?

Or do we use the events of yesterday to perpetuate more injustices today?

[LordMoon]

One of the most frightening concepts ever, our inability to learn from our worst moments in history.

What prevents mankind from learning, what is wrong with the consciousness of people?

Sadly it seems that this struggle has always been with us, and in each new generation, the struggle against hate, and violence goes on.

Will mankind ever overcome these obstacles in itself? What will it take? There always seems to be millions of people willing to die or to kill for some insanity somewhere.

and only a realatively few handful of people willing to live their lives by turning away from violence, but instead toward the best that humanity can offer?

[zekleslikpaw]

So which one it is, 'Nazi Germany's concentration camps', or 'Polish death camps'? I thought the death camps were 'Polish death camps'. They cannot be both, or can they?

[TXFF5000]

The phrase "Polish death camps" is anti-Polish bigotry used by some newspapers to slander Poland especially after Poles requested them to give the accurate description: Nazi German death camps in Poland.

Nazi German death camps were built by the Nazi Germans in both Germany and Poland.

Polish Catholics like Michael Preisler were put in them.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-465080/Auschwitz-officially-named-German.html

[Hank007]

Remember, this is the same guy who personally made the case to Bush that Sadam's WMD posed 'an existential threat' to Israel's security, getting us to invade Iraq while the Israeli forces sat it out.

[Aranxa]

"but he worried that "the world hasn't learned."

Obviously, it hasn't. Otherwise we would be having these discussions of Israel, Dafur, or anywhere. Ask a kindergartner how you treat another and consider where in your maturation you lost that insight.

[hglassberg]

Elie Wiesel. What can we say? He's here, he was there, he's on tv, he was with Bernie Madoff, Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, Bill Clinton. He's been everywhere. He writes, he talks, he writes some more, he talks some more. He says things we agree with. Actions should follow words. He's broke, he can't pay for his actions. But what actions? What should he tell his Dad? What should we tell our Dads? What is there to tell them? That violence doesn't work? Israel was founded on it. So were the States. That man shouldn't be cruel to other men? We buy sneakers from companies paying workers starvation wages to make them. That nations shouldn't commit genocide. Elie should read the adventures of Gengis Khan. He should look into the rationale of Bomber Harris. Come on, Elie. If you want to inspire us, enough with the cant. Say something we haven't heard a thousand times before. Better still. Refuse to say anything at all.

Yrs sincerely,

The Playdo Institute
Handel Glassberg, President

[DCvote]

what are you guys talking about? clearly (if you listen) in his speech today he spoke about peace for Israel and it's neighbors.

[Realization]

Said Wiesel: "Had the world learned, there would be no Cambodia, no Rwanda, no Darfur, no Bosnia. Will the world ever learn?"

Bravo to that. The basic moral principle is that something like the Holocaust should never be allowed to happen to any people, anywhere, at any time.

However, I have tired of hearing of the Holocaust because it is most often used as a tool of promotion by Israel or Israel's supporters. It is overused. The Holocaust should be mentioned as one example and it should be clear that there were others besides Jews. That is not the way in which it is portrayed.

And, as I recall, there were those who fought strongly for the Stockholm Conference on the Holocaust to refer only to Jews and not the others. That does not reach the moral level necessary. And Israeli treatment of Palestinians, who many like the settlers (radical religious fundamentalists) consider, in effect, subhuman. Israeli actions rob the Holocaust of meaning.

[mozartssister]

"Israeli actions rob the Holocaust of meaning."

Well said! I too have stood on the ground at Bergen Belsen and Dachau, and used to have enormous sympathy for Israel . . . not any more.

I would be curious as to Mr. Wiesel's stance on Israeli actions in Palestine.

Since the latest round of mass slaughter of Palestinians, and the usual denial, unrepentence, justifications ad nauseum, I have been very angry at the Israeli government and its supporters. Or I was, at least, until I took a long hard look and faced the fact that we are no better. My government is no better in what they have done around the world, and my people are no better for not standing up and refusing to be a part of it any more.

It's so easy to point to the faults of others, and ignore our own. And it is always easy to justify our own inhumanity when we're focusing on ourselves as victims. That's the real bond we all share, from Kabul to Birmingham to Tel Aviv to Peking to . . .

[PoliticalAnimal]

If you are really true to Mr. Weisel's ideal, you will fight nonstop to ensure that Gitmo and Baghram and the other torture centers in the American concentration camps are closed and that everyone responsible for this nightmare against humanity will be brought to justice.

Never again? Really? Only in America you say?

[Hedonist]

To compare Gitmo to the Holocaust is obscenely ignorant.

[Marshall Lucky]

This is the same Elie Wiesel who resigned from the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial rather than include any mention of the Nazi campaign to exterminate the Gypsies. He also tried to sabotage the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide because it was going to include the Armenian Genocide.

I guess these cases prove that Wiesel was "indifferent" to the mass murder of Gypsies and Armenians, which is the opposite of compassion, right?

[Hedonist]

Actually, he has spoken out about the Armenian Holocaust:

"“Read this heartbreaking book. Armenian Golgotha describes the suffering, agony, and massacre of innumerable Armenian families almost a century ago; its memory must remain a lesson for more than one generation,” said Ellie Wiesel."

http://www.asbarez.com/2009/03/13/early-praise-from-elie-wiesel-and-others-for-grigoris-balakians-armenian-golgotha-a-memoir-of-the-armenian-genocide/

[krax]

"I support Israel ­ period. I identify with Israel ­ period. I never attack, I never criticize Israel when I am not in Israel."

- Elie Wiesel

Tribalism trumps justice when it comes to Wiesel.