Elie Wiesel died Saturday at the age of 87. He was a prolific author, a Nobel laureate and, most famously, a survivor of the Holocaust. He deserves to be remembered.
Of far more importance, however, is that we keep alive the memory he lived to perpetuate. For as Wiesel said, to forget the Holocaust would be to kill the victims again.
Born in Romania, Eliezer Wiesel was 15 years old in May of 1944 when he and his family were taken to Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in Poland. As the Red Army neared, in January of 1945, he was moved to the Buchenwald camp in Germany where his father died after being beaten. While his two older sisters survived, his mother and younger sister perished in the camps.
Wiesel went on to live in France and the United States. His first book, Night, recalled his time in the camps. It has become one of the defining texts of the Holocaust.
Wiesel became a much sought-after lecturer and teacher. He wrote many books and was active in public affairs. President Jimmy Carter appointed him chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, which led to the creation of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
He never wavered. When Ronald Reagan presented him with the Congressional Gold Medal, Wiesel chastised the president for a planned visit to a German military cemetery where dozens of members of the Nazi SS are buried.
“That place, Mr. President, is not your place,” Wiesel said. “Your place is with the victims of the SS.”
His outrage was not limited to the Holocaust. Speaking at the dedication of the Holocaust Museum, he faced President Bill Clinton and upbraided him for not doing more to aid victims of violence in the former Yugoslavia.
But central to Wiesel and his mission was the understanding he gained firsthand.
In Night, while a boy is being hanged he hears a man ask “For God’s sake, where is God?”
“And from within me, I heard a voice answer,” he wrote. “This is where – hanging here from this gallows.”
Never forget.
