by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

April 9, 2009

Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel told an overflow crowd at Drew University Monday that he is a strong believer that a two-state solution will bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

“There must be a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel side-by-side,” said the author and educator. “That is the hope for the entire Middle East. It will come.”

But, Wiesel said, he did not want that hope “to be based on someone else’s despair. I know it is true that the Palestinians are suffering and have suffered.”

He urged the United States to strengthen Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “so he should be strong enough to make peace with Israel. Abbas’ problem is not Israel; Abbas’ problem is Hamas.”

Wiesel acknowledged that Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has declined to endorse a two-state solution.

“I know Netanyahu is known as a right-winger and a hawk. But no matter who is prime minister, he or she must move to the center, and the time will come — I hope soon,” said Wiesel.

In a far-reaching talk before more than 2,000 people at the Simon Forum on the university’s Madison campus, Wiesel spoke of the continuing plague of genocide, his outrage at American racism, his religious convictions, and his reflections on Passover.

In response to a question by NJ Jewish News before his speech, and afterward by an audience member, Wiesel described admitted swindler Bernard Madoff as a “scoundrel.”

Wiesel’s own foundation, established after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, lost the $15.2 million it had invested in what turned out to be Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

“I don’t want my name to be linked to his,” said the writer. “I want my name to be linked to literature, to philosophy, to human rights, to culture — but not to Madoff.”

But as he ended his hour-long impromptu remarks, Wiesel spoke of the many donations his foundation received after it was victimized. One small contribution came from a young woman.

“She sent us $18, and said, ‘I hope next year I can send you more if I still have a job.’ This is so heartwarming,” said Wiesel. “The American people — their generosity is unequalled in the world.”

Wiesel appeared at Drew through the George Karpati Lectureship, which sponsors authors and scholars of Jewish studies, Eastern European history, and Holocaust studies. The series is funded by Noemi Neidorff, the daughter of lecture series namesake George Karpati; Neidorff’s husband, Michael; and Alicia Kornitzer Karpati, George Karpati’s widow.

Wiesel devoted a portion of his talk to the upcoming Passover holiday and his lifelong search for an explanation for the Holocaust.

“We read in the Haggada that God says, ‘I kill the firstborn among the Egyptians,’…and I ask, ‘My God, what kind of boasting is that? God boasts that he killed children?

“My way of explaining it is: This is a way of God saying, ‘Only I can kill children. You can’t do it. I can do it.’ No one has the right to kill children,” said Wiesel.

But he noted that during the Nazi Holocaust, “the very first targets were the children and old people. Usually at war, those who fought in the front lines were men in their 20s, 30s to protect the children and the old people at home. For the Jewish people in that war it was the opposite.”

Many deaths in the Holocaust could have been prevented, he said.

“Had Roosevelt, had Churchill, had the leaders of the Free World openly spoken on radio and said to Germany, ‘We know what you are going to do. Stop it,’ at least we would have known,” he said. “Had we known where we were being led away to, I am ready to swear on whatever is sacred, at least half if not more of the community would have gone to the mountains. We didn’t know.”

Wiesel said he is often asked whether he still believes in God after his experience in Auschwitz.

“When it comes to God’s presence and his silence, I have no answer, and I would not expect any answer,” he said. “Having said that, I do believe in God, and the Jew that I was is still in me, although I am not as pious as I used to be before.”

Race and Obama

After he arrived in the United States, in 1956, Wiesel said, he visited the South and “saw racism not only at work but being the law. It was the law to be racist in the South, and for the first time in my life I felt shame. I never was ashamed of being Jewish, but there I was ashamed of being white. I had the same feeling when I went to fight apartheid in South Africa.”

Although he avoids involvement in politics, Wiesel said, he took great pride in Barack Obama’s becoming America’s first African-American president.

Before the speech he told reporters that he had met Obama just once, before the presidential campaign.

“I went to his office in Washington because he wanted to see me. I spent an hour. I was impressed with his intelligence, with his curiosity, and with his sensitivity,” Wiesel related.

Asked by a reporter before the talk to share his thoughts on Obama’s recent visit to the Muslim nation of Turkey, Wiesel said, “The president of the United States is in a real situation to impact history. Whatever he does for the cause of peace is good. I think he will do good things.”

Asked by a Drew University student reporter about how the memory of the Holocaust will be passed on after the survivors are gone, Wiesel said, “The documents will remain. Testimonies will remain. Everyone who reads them becomes a witness.

“Students do not realize the power they have,” he said. “Remember, the civil rights movement began on campuses. The Vietnam War ended on campuses. The campuses here ought to be organized around the tragedy in Darfur.”

Asked about books, movies, and plays that satirize the Holocaust or treat the subject in a lighter vein, he said he did “have problems with that, yes. On the other hand, I do not want the young generation to become a morbid generation. But I don’t like that the Holocaust should be used for entertainment. The Holocaust is not a museum.

“On the other hand, I’m a writer. I believe in books more than anything else.”

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