From the Kingdom of Memory (22 page)
Read From the Kingdom of Memory Online
Authors: Elie Wiesel
So we tried. Perhaps if we were to tell the tale things would change. Have we failed? I often think we have. If someone had told us in 1945 that in our lifetime religious wars would rage on virtually every continent, that thousands of children would once again be dying of starvation, we would not have believed it. Or that racism and fanaticism would flourish once again. Nor would we have believed there would be governments that would deprive men and women of their basic rights merely because they dare to dissent. Governments of the Right and of the Left still subject those who dissent—writers, scientists, intellectuals—to torture and persecution. How is one to explain all this unless we consider the defeat of memory?
How is one to explain any of it? The outrage of apartheid which continues unabated? Racism in itself is dreadful, but when it pretends to be legal, and therefore just, it becomes even more repugnant. Without comparing apartheid to Nazism and to its Final Solution—for that defies all comparison—one cannot help but assign the two systems, in their supposed legality, to the same camp. What about the outrage of terrorism? Of the hostages in Iran, the cold-blooded massacre in the synagogues in Istanbul, Paris, and Vienna, the senseless deaths in the streets of Beirut?
Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations—not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will, justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children … and
the outrage of preventing men and women, marvelous men and women like Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir and Masha Slepak, Ida Nudel, Josef Begun, Victor Brailowski, Zakhar Zonshein, Juli Edelstein, and all the others, known and unknown, from leaving their country.
Yesterday afternoon, when I left this hall with its overwhelming emotional aspect, my wife and I went to our hotel and began calling
refuseniks
in the Soviet Union. That is what we did all afternoon. We wanted them to know that, especially on this day, we were thinking not only of our joy but also of their plight. We went on calling them, one after the other. At one point they began calling back. The whole afternoon was a dialogue of human solidarity. If ever your prize had concrete, immediate meaning, distinguished Members of the Committee, it was yesterday afternoon: to those Jews in Russia it meant that here in this place we care, we think of them, and we shall never forget.
As a Jew, I must also speak about Israel. After two thousand years of exile and thirty-eight years of sovereignty, Israel still does not enjoy peace. I would like to see the people of Israel, my people, establish the foundation for a constructive relationship with all its Arab neighbors, as it has done with Egypt. We must see to it that the Jewish people in Israel and all people in the Middle East enjoy some measure of peace and hope … at last. We must exert pressure on all those in power to come to terms.
And here we come back to memory. We must
remember the suffering of my people, as we must remember that of the Ethiopians, the Cambodians, the boat people, the Palestinians, the Miskito Indians, the Argentinian
desaparecidos—the
list seems endless.
Let us remember Job, who, having lost everything—his children, his friends, his possessions, and even his argument with God—still found the strength to begin again, to rebuild his life. Job was determined not to repudiate the creation, however imperfect, that God had entrusted to him.
Job, our ancestor. Job, our contemporary. Everything in our tradition tells us that Job was not a Jew, but his suffering concerns us. It concerns us so much that we have taken his language into our liturgy. His ordeal concerns all humanity. Did he ever lose his faith? If so, he rediscovered it within his rebellion. He demonstrated that faith is essentially a rebellion, and that hope is possible beyond despair, but not without ignoring despair. The source of his hope was memory, as it must be ours. Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.
I remember the killers and I despair; I remember the victims, and on their behalf and for their sake and for their children’s sake, I must invent a thousand and one reasons to hope.
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. The Talmud tells us that by saving a single human being—and there are two versions: one
version says a single Jewish human being and the other version says any human being—man can save the world. We may be powerless to open all the jails and free all the prisoners, but by declaring our solidarity with one prisoner, we indict all jailers. None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose it in all its hideousness. War leaves no victors, only victims.
I began with the story of the Besht. And like the Besht, mankind needs to remember—more than ever. Mankind needs peace more than ever, for our entire planet, threatened by nuclear war, is in danger of total elimination—a destruction, an annihilation only man can provoke, only man can prevent. It is all up to us. The lesson, the only lesson that I have learned from my experiences, is twofold: first, that there are no plausible answers to what we have endured. There are no theological answers, there are no psychological answers, there are no literary answers, there are no philosophical answers, there are no religious answers. The only conceivable answer is a
moral
answer. This means there must be a moral element in whatever we do. Second, that just as despair can be given to me only by another human being, hope too can be given to me only by another human being. Mankind must remember also, and above all, that like hope and whatever hope signifies, peace is not God’s gift to his creatures. Peace is a very special gift—it is our gift to each other. And so,
Ani maamin
—I believe—that we must
have hope for one another also because of one another. And
Ani maamin
—I believe—that because of our children and their children we should be worthy of that hope, of that redemption, and of some measure of peace.
I thank you.
*
Delivered on December 11, 1986,
in Oslo, Norway
.
Several of the essays collected here have appeared separately in other publications: “Why I Write,”
The New York Times,
April 14, 1985
(
originally published in
Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel,
edited by Alvin Rosenfeld and Irving Greenberg, Indiana University Press, 1978
),
translated by Rosette C. Lamont;
“To
Believe or Not to Believe,”
The Jerusalem Post,
September 15, 1985,
translated from the French by Judy Cooper Weill; “Inside a Library,” and “The Stranger in the Bible,” published as a pamphlet by the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, 1980;
“
A Celebration of Friendship,”
Through the Sound of Many Voices: Essays in Honor of W. Gunther Plaut,
Lester and Orpen Denny’s Publishers, Toronto, 1982;
“Peretz Markish,”
The Jewish Frontier,
August–September 1981; “Pilgrimage to the Kingdom of Night,”
The New York Times,
November 4, 1979;
“Pilgrimage to Sighet,”
The New York Times,
October 14, 1984;
“Kaddish in Cambodia,”
The Jewish Chronicle,
April 18, 1980;
“Making the Ghosts Speak,”
The Christian Century,
May 27, 1981;
“Passover,”
New York Newsday,
April 8, 1984;
“Trivializing Memory,”
The New York Times,
June 11, 1989;
“Testimony at The Barbie Trial,”
New York Newsday,
June 28, 1987;
“What Really Makes Us Free?”
Parade Magazine,
December 27, 1987;
“Are We Afraid of Peace?”
Parade Magazine,
March 19, 1989.
E
LIE
W
IESEL
received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, 1986. His Nobel citation reads: “Wiesel is a messenger to mankind. His message is one of peace and atonement and human dignity. The message is in the form of a testimony, repeated and deepened through the works of a great author.” He is Andrew Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and the author of more than thirty books. Mr. Wiesel lives in New York City with his family.
