And the Sea Is Never Full: Memoirs, 1969-
Elie Wiesel
Language: English
Pages: 450
ISBN: 0805210296
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
As this concluding volume of his moving and revealing memoirs begins, Elie Wiesel is forty years old, a writer of international repute. Determined to speak out more actively for both Holocaust survivors and the disenfranchised everywhere, he sets himself a challenge: "I will become militant. I will teach, share, bear witness. I will reveal and try to mitigate the victims' solitude." He makes words his weapon, and in these pages we relive with him his unstinting battles. We see him meet with world leaders and travel to regions ruled by war, dictatorship, racism, and exclusion in order to engage the most pressing issues of the day. We see him in the Soviet Union defending persecuted Jews and dissidents; in South Africa battling apartheid and supporting Mandela's ascension; in Cambodia and in Bosnia, calling on the world to face the atrocities; in refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia as an emissary for President Clinton. He chastises Ronald Reagan for his visit to the German military cemetery at Bitburg. He supports Lech Walesa but challenges some of his views. He confronts Francois Mitterrand over the misrepresentation of his activities in Vichy France. He does battle with Holocaust deniers. He joins tens of thousands of young Austrians demonstrating against renascent fascism in their country. He receives the Nobel Peace Prize. Through it all, Wiesel remains deeply involved with his beloved Israel, its leaders and its people, and laments its internal conflicts. He recounts the behind-the-scenes events that led to the establishment of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. He shares the feelings evoked by his return to Auschwitz, by his recollections of Yitzhak Rabin, and by his memories of his own vanished family. This is the magnificent finale of a historic memoir.
manage not to be disoriented, to stay your course?” asks a journalist wiser than the others. “Think of the itinerary that has taken you from your forsaken little town to Auschwitz and from Auschwitz to Oslo…. Doesn’t that drive you mad?” Yes, it does. I think of it often and always with a feeling of embarrassment and disbelief. Who indeed has traced this strange path for the young Jewish boy who, lost more than once among the dead, found himself, one chilly December day, receiving the greatest
Moscow are mad, completely mad. Do they really believe that they can defeat the Soviet dictatorship with their songs and their dances? And the rest of us, do we seriously believe that we have the power to influence Brezhnev’s policies? But, I tell the audiences, the great Moses Maimonides was right when he said that the world survives thanks to its madmen. The liberation of Soviet Jewry has become my most urgent cause. A huge meeting takes place in Paris to protest UNESCO’s policy of
would allow the memory of their suffering to survive them. These courses were necessary, essential, but I would not teach them very long. Young professors take up where I leave off. • • • Three years later, I resign from City College and join the faculty of Boston University, where, to this day, I hold the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities, and continue to teach in the departments of philosophy and religion. As University Professor it is my privilege to choose not only my course topics
statements are ugly in both substance and form. What annoys him most in today’s France? That “the dividends of Auschwitz” are “collected” by certain Jews for political, literary, and other reasons. I don’t know which of Domenach’s writings will survive, but this “original” phrase will remain. One will say “Domenach” and will inevitably add: “Oh yes, ‘the dividends of Auschwitz.’” A warning to historians and theologians, philosophers and psychologists, novelists and poets: A Domenach is waiting
Standing before the Wall, thousands of survivors are praying. Prime Minister Menachem Begin has just delivered a rousing speech. He has spoken of the Jewish people’s need to be strong, to be armed. As far as he is concerned, that is the lesson to be drawn from the Tragedy. But then he said that it was God who wanted Hiroshima … going so far as to imply that the atomic bomb was a divine gift, for it allowed the Allies to win the war. As I follow him to the microphone I cannot help but express my