Elie Wiesel

Friends of mine, Marita & Victor Styrsky, are having a kosher dinner with Elie Wiesel tonight. He is speaking at a celebration to honor Israel for Christians United for Israel: on Sunday night. Knowing this I began reading a speech he gave in 1971 at a conference entitled the German Church Struggle and the Holocaust. That title is also a book I have owned for many years.

But I had not read Wiesel’s chapter. It was beautiful. He is after all the author of many books, his best being Night. He is also a recipient of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize.

Most of the western world knows that Wiesel is a survivor of the Holocaust. Some know that he insists there are really no words, if you are a survivor, which can be used to describe the horror. Some know that he goes on to write and speak about what cannot be written or spoken, because it must be done.

After writing about studying with a famous Rosh Yeshiva while he was in Auschwitz and several other faithful acts of those Rabbis and Jews who endured the horror , Wiesel makes an amazing statement.

“Within the system of the concentration camp, something very strange took place. The first to give in, the first to collaborate—to save their lives—were the intellectuals, the liberals, the humanists, the professors of sociology, and the like. Because suddenly their whole concept of the universe broke down. They had nothing to lean on. Very few Communists gave in. there were some, but very few. They had their own church-like organizations—a secular church, but very well organized. They were the resisters. Even fewer to give in were the Catholic priests. There were very few priests who, when the chips were down, give in and collaborated with the torturer. Yet there were exceptions. But you could not have found one single Rabbi—I dare you—among all the kapos or among any of the others who held positions of power in the camps.”

So as a hat-tip to Marita and Victor, and as a plea to remember Israel, here is Wiesel speaking in 2008 at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This is the Series: Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies. This is about an hour and 30 minutes and worth taking the time to listen.