Elie Wiesel responds

In light of the audio problems experienced at the annual campaign kick-off event on Sept. 10, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver contacted Prof. Elie Wiesel to ask a selection of the major questions from the evening. His answers are below.

JFGV: In Night, you write, “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever,” yet you clearly retain a strong Jewish faith. How and why, after all your experiences, have you been able to sustain your belief in God?

EW: There is no alternative. If I want to remain faithful to those who came before me, and I do, I believe in that faith ... then, of course, I have to live in a way not to bring shame to my father and mother, and my grandparents, my teachers of that time and later. So, therefore, it’s almost something that had to do with those who were close to me, more than with God himself, to have a Jewish way of life.

JFGV: Because of Night you are largely credited with having opened up public discussion of the Holocaust and forcing its memory into the open. Why it is so important to remember?

EW: Without it, it wouldn’t be who we are. I’m defined by what I remember and not by what I forget. And, especially, the Jewish tradition is based on Jewish memory. We must remember in order to celebrate our holidays and have faith in the future. It’s memory. The one word, it’s the key word defining the Jewishness of the Jew – it’s memory. And not to remember would be a betrayal of that memory.

JFGV: With so many books, movies and documentaries about the Holocaust now, there is concern about the potential trivialization of the subject. As the author of Night, as a survivor and as the champion of human rights around the world, can you share your perspective on this?

EW: I am concerned ... I remember at one point the show, that miniseries on NBC called The Holocaust, and it was so cheap, it was so false in every way. They didn’t even do their homework, I remember. I even tried to criticize it. I was asked by the New York Times to do a review and I wrote a devastating review, which created an uproar in Hollywood, especially. To this day, there are people in Hollywood who cannot stand me because of that. And I had to do it. Trivialization is almost worse than forgetting – to remember for the wrong reasons, to remember the wrong things. I am worried, yes. But what can we do? That’s history. If enough people do something, it becomes an event.

JFGV: Many of us who are not survivors are naturally curious about how survivors adapted to life after the camps. Can you comment on this reality?

EW: The question is, how did I adapt, how did we adapt, to death, much more than life. How did we adjust ourselves to see again, after the war, to see in death a scandal, rather than the norm. In the years inside that cursed universe of evil, death was the norm. You could see people dying literally in front of you, without even feeling anything. That was the norm – they came there not to live, but to die. And then, for the first time, after the war, we realized that death is not the norm but rather the exception to the norm. That the death of one person should bring us sadness, melancholy and pain, it was something that we had to learn.

JFGV: Engaging young people in our community is a priority for our federation, and we had more than 360 students and young adults with us at the event. You encouraged them to “Think higher and feel deeper.” You had another message for young people that evening. Can you talk about that?

EW: The Jew in me is what makes me write and teach and live. I cannot conceive of myself any other way. I am a Jew, which means I am from my parents and my grandparents. I go back to Rashi in my family. I believe, as a writer and as somebody involved in human rights, I bring a universal message to the world. I believe the more Jewish the Jew, the more universal is his or her message. And that is what I try to tell students and leaders. In order to be able to say something authentic, you must be authentic, which means authentically Jewish.

JFGV: Life is not made up of years, life is made up of moments. That’s another message that resonated strongly with the audience. Can you expand on this idea?

EW: Life is not made up of years, years come and go, but of moments, each moment that remains, moments that have an impact. So, when I think of years, there’s one moment that stands out – let’s say, the first time I met my wife, the first time I met my teacher, Shaul Lieberman, the first time I read a book, the first time I discovered a philosophy or something – the first time. And that moment becomes a moment that weighs on you and reaches you and becomes part of you. That is the moment. And, therefore, whenever I do something with effort, I hope that there will always be a moment. That when people were there that evening, and they left and said to one another, look, we heard a dialogue, a conversation between two friends, and there was a moment that I will not forget, that was a moment that will mean something to me in the years to come. That was my hope for that evening.

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