by Elie Wiesel
In 1992, Secretary of State Larry Eagleburger and I discuss the need to establish an international tribunal to judge crimes against humanity. Who knows but that it may discourage a leader, an officer, a uniformed assassin. For this type of crime there is to be no statutory limitation, no right of asylum. A person accused of crimes against humanity risks arrest anywhere at any time. The State Department favors the idea, but Europe is wallowing in hesitation. Finally there is agreement. We make up a first list. Karadjic and Mladic are on it.
We are now at the beginning of August 1995. “It’s over,” an American journalist tells me. “It’s finished,” a French diplomat chimes in. Nothing more to do. Sarajevo is lost. And so is Bosnia. The sad conclusion is that, as with Czechoslovakia in 1938, the leaders of this world have once again betrayed a nation whose independence had been recognized internationally. For Bosnia, ravaged and martyred, and to the shame of us all, the page will soon be turned.
And yet. We must carry on. All the humanitarian organizations are aware of this. We must not become resigned; the criminals never do.
Let us look around. History evidently learns nothing from its own lessons. The tragedy of Somalia is not limited to Somalia. The shame born of the war in Bosnia is spreading beyond the borders of former Yugoslavia. The reports of UNICEF disclose that one child dies of hunger or illness every second. And India, that great country dominated by spirituality, will it send its vindictive demons back to their caves? And what is really happening in the collective unconscious of the former Soviet Union? What will replace the notion of egalitarian Communism? How can one silence the hatred that opposes Azeris to Armenians, Romanians to Hungarians, the haves to the have-nots; the rise of racism in Eastern Europe, of xenophobia in Germany, of fanaticism in the Middle East, and of anti-Semitism everywhere? Blood is flowing and the world does not change. Watchman, what of the night?
I am rereading these notes in the beginning of 1996. How many transformations has the former Yugoslavia gone through since last year? How many cease-fires and armistices have been signed and betrayed? Still, the siege of Sarajevo has been lifted, as has that of Srebrenica. Is it because all sides are exhausted? Surely it is the result of Clinton’s decision to send twenty thousand American soldiers to preserve the peace agreement, signed, thanks to Richard Holbrooke, in Dayton, Ohio. And then there are in the background the battalions of NATO and of Russia, which are also ready to assume their responsibilities.
The international tribunal in The Hague is gaining importance. Its emissaries have done good work. They have found the mass graves, unearthed the mutilated corpses. Witnesses have named and testified against the war criminals. It has taken a long time but finally international arrest warrants have been issued against Radovan Karadjic and Ratko Mladic.
To what extent is Slobodan Milosevic implicated personally? His story is not finished. Sarajevo has been replaced in the news by Kosovo; a tragedy straight out of the Middle Ages is unfolding there. Tens of thousands of uprooted families are fleeing their destroyed homes and burning villages on foot, on broken-down tractors, and in buses. More than ever before, the civilized world feels the need to intervene.
Television interviews, questions by audiences, articles, and a millennium lecture at the White House provide me with opportunities to offer comments. For kind people, good people want to know: What about the loss of civilian lives? It is Milosevic, not NATO, who bears the responsibility for their tragic deaths.
In May, Milosevic was charged by the international tribunal at The Hague with the ultimate offense—crimes against humanity—and indicted. And though it will not bring back his victims, he must be judged and condemned. The future of peace in the region depends on it.
I wrote the following essay for Newsweek. It appeared on April 12, 1999.
President Slobodan Milosevic is a criminal. Those who still believe that there are nonviolent ways to stop his inhuman actions against Albanians are naive. They forget the nature of the century we live in.
Some of the images seem to belong to the not-so-recent past. Summary executions, collective punishment, forced expulsion of tens of thousands of families, frightened children separated from their parents, endless lines of desperate refugees: following Sarajevo and Srebrenica, Kosovo has entered the long and bloody list of tragedies that bring dishonor to the outgoing 20th century.
Some observers call it genocide. According to the original 1951 United Nations definition, it is. Yet I have problems with its application to Kosovo. In my view, genocide is the intent and the desire to annihilate a people. This is not the case here. Massive violations of human rights and the murder of political opponents, as horrible as they may be, are elements of genocide-in-the-making, but they do not constitute genocide. Still, they are evil enough to inspire anger and the will to stop them.
As early as 1992, media coverage of the war in Bosnia mistakenly compared Serbian “ethnic cleansing” to the Holocaust. The Holocaust was conceived to annihilate the last Jew on the planet. Does anyone believe that Milosevic and his accomplices seriously planned to exterminate all the Bosnians, all the Albanians, all the Muslims in the world? Some reports referred to “Auschwitz” in Bosnia. I saw the prison camps at Banja Luka; the conditions were deplorable and the prisoners terrified. But it was not Auschwitz. Auschwitz was an extermination camp, a black hole in history. Victims were taken there to be turned into ashes. Now we are witnessing a nightmare in Kosovo; it demands action, not comparison.
Was NATO’s decision to intervene correct? Was Washington right to push for it? The answer to both questions is yes. Faced with Milosevic’s stubborn policy of ethnic cleansing, no self-respecting government or nation could knowingly violate the Biblical injunction “Thou shall not stand idly by.”
Surely, when human lives are involved, indifference is not an answer. Not to choose is also a choice, said the French philosopher Albert Camus. Neutrality helps the aggressor, not his victims. If NATO had been created only to protect the weak and defenseless, that would be enough to justify its existence.
Critics of the attacks on Milosevic say that sending our army to the former Yugoslavia is not in America’s national interest. From an economic or geopolitical viewpoint, the critics may have a point. But a nation is great not because of its wealth or its military might; its greatness is measured by the way it uses or abuses its wealth and power. In other words: its greatness derives from its commitment to moral principle.
Milosevic has followed an intolerable path of violence and destruction that must provoke revulsion in every civilized person. His policies are evil. Even one of his associates, the novelist turned politician Vuk Draskovic, admitted the possibility that “atrocities” are being committed. Naturally, they occur away from public view. The Yugoslav military and police have ordered witnesses to leave the country: for weeks, Kosovo has been turning into a ghetto. Belgrade’s objective is now clear: a demographic change of the entire region. Is it too horrible to imagine that at the end of the war, there will be no more Albanians to enjoy their liberation in Kosovo?
I know Milosevic. I met him during the war in Bosnia, first at an international conference on Bosnia in London and later in Belgrade. I have spoken with officials and journalists who knew him well. Their analyses confirmed my impression of the man: a coldblooded cynic who never kept a promise, except when it was in his own best interest. His extremist political philosophy remained cloaked in facile patriotism. It is no accident that he is nicknamed “the butcher.” He is ruthless with those who stand in his way. A fanatic, like most dictators whose argument is terror, he believes that the end always justifies the means. That is why he rejected Richard Holbrooke’s last-minute efforts to save peace and Yevgeny Primakov’s attempts to stop the hostilities: he is determined to consistently defy the international community’s quest for a peaceful solution. He is interested not in peace, but in absolute domination.
But what about the cost in lives, including those of his own people? They are of no concern to
him; his personal power alone matters. Hence his willingness to sacrifice innocent civilians, burning their homes and destroying their villages. With utter contempt for humanity, he has embarked on a state-sponsored program aimed at the humiliation, persecution and uprooting of an entire ethnic community.
Like all nightmares, this too will come to an end. And then Milosevic’s actions in Bosnia will also be remembered. And he will appear before an international tribunal, charged with the ultimate offense: crimes against humanity. That hope must be part of his victims’ victory.
And Yet
AND YET. One must wager on the future. To save the life of a single child, no effort is superfluous. To make a tired old man smile is to perform an essential task. To defeat injustice and misfortune, if only for one instant, for a single victim, is to invent a new reason to hope.
Oh yes, I know: It is not always easy to hope. Also, hope can become a trap whose victims are as unhappy as victims of despair. I came up against this problem when I was writing The Forgotten, which I had trouble finishing. I did not want to leave my young protagonist Malkiel faced with total despair. In all my novels I try to open or at least to indicate a path not toward salvation (does it exist?), but toward encounter, with the Other and also with oneself. In The Forgotten, the old hero, Elhanan, deprived of his memory and aware of the incurability of his disease, no longer has any hope of human contact. Who could possibly succeed in making him smile one more time? I saw no solution to the problem and kept the manuscript in a drawer for several months. Then very early one morning, as I was working, I heard my young son in the next room. And suddenly the solution was clear. I needed to help perform a transfusion of memory; as Elhanan’s diminished, Malkiel’s would be enriched.
At a certain age one becomes attached to certain words. I now love the word “transfusion.”
LAST NIGHT, I saw my father in a dream. I see him more and more often. And before I fall asleep I don’t know whether to fear or hope that he will appear. Each time I wake up trembling, a heavy weight on my chest.
I have read some of my pages to him, particularly those that I have not yet written and that I may never write. Was he listening to me? I was listening to him, and yet he said nothing. Was I not listening properly? It may well be that of everything I have written or thought I had written, the words that reflected his silence will be the ones to remain.
I also dream about my mother and my little sister. I cry in my sleep. I try to learn about their last moments. Hilda walked with them a few steps more than I did. I want to question her about it. I don’t dare. We speak every week but only about her health, her son, Sidney, her grandchildren. Yet I would like to know more about her experiences in the camp. I don’t dare ask. It was the same with Bea. I know they were together in Kauferingen, not far from Dachau. When did they leave Birkenau? What cruelties did the Germans inflict on them? Hilda: “I remember that night, our last night in Auschwitz. That night they moved out a transport of twelve hundred women. Naked. Yes, naked. Bea and I were part of the transport. I remember. I remember even the date. In the cattle car, a very pious woman remarked: ‘Today is Tisha b’Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, the saddest day of the year.’” What happened before, and later? I curse the reticence that renders me mute. Neither with Bea nor with Hilda have I spoken of our parents or our home. Am I afraid of bursting into tears?
I know that Hilda, just like Bea until her death, constantly thinks of our landscape of long ago. As do I. All the time.
In my study you will find no medals, no diplomas. But over the table where I work there hangs a single photograph. It shows my parents’ home in Sighet. When I look up, that is what I see. And it seems to be telling me: “Do not forget where you came from.”
I have just turned seventy. It is time to take stock again. The century I have lived through has been more violent and more promising than any other. Mankind has never before proved to be as vulnerable or as generous. Man lives in expectation. Expectation of what? The Jew in me is waiting for Redemption. And waiting for Redemption, he remembers his enemies. I have fought battles and won some, few in number, too few to derive pride and confidence from them. Anyway, I don’t think I shall stop now. I trouble some people when I raise my voice, others when I don’t speak up. There are people, good people, who often make me feel as though I owe them something. I don’t resent it. There are some who understand my itinerary; others never will. I continue to learn—thus to take and give back—to reach out to others, to begin and begin again with every encounter. I have said certain words; I have kept others for future attempts to tell the tale that is waiting and will always be waiting to be told.
And I say to myself that even taking into account my stories and novels, my essays and studies, analyses and reminiscences, I know that it is not enough.
Help me, Father.
Long ago, over there, far from the living, we told ourselves over and over that if we were to come out alive, we would devote every moment of our lives to denouncing by word and deed the cynicism and silence of mankind toward victims past and future. Convinced that the free world knew nothing of the cursed and evil kingdom where death reigned, we encouraged one another. The one among us who would survive would testify for all of us. He would speak and demand justice on our behalf; as our spokesman he would make certain that our memory would penetrate that of humanity. He would do nothing else. His days and nights would be devoted to telling the story. He would turn his entire life into a weapon for our collective memory; thanks to him it would not be lost.
I was no exception. There were times after the liberation when I saw myself as a messenger carrying only one message: to say no to forgetting, to forgetting the life and death of the communities swallowed by night and spit back into the sky in flames. My only goal and obsession was to save them from a second death. I didn’t know that I was like Kierkegaard’s jester who shouted “Fire!” and people thought he was joking.
I saw myself crisscrossing the Earth, going from town to town, from country to country, like the madman in Rebbe Nahman’s tales, reminding humans of the good and evil they are capable of, making them see the armies of ghosts hovering around and within us.
Then I stopped running, or let’s say that I slowed my pace. I study, I teach, I guide my students toward their careers. I observe the passersby to guess their secrets. I am happy, I am sad. I continue to teach, to write. More books, more novels. In short, I try not to die before I die. Marion and I have founded a home, we have watched our son grow. He fills us with pride and happiness. Together we have tried to do useful things.
Marion, my wife, my ally, my confidante, it is she who often prevents me from making mistakes. It is to her that I owe the wisdom that enables me to follow a certain path. And she has remained young, which I am no longer.
Hilda’s son and grandchildren in Israel are doing well. Oren and Orly have completed their military service. Bea’s daughter, Sarah, is the mother of six children. Steve and Itzhaka are the parents of two. I was present at their wedding, and escorted Steve to the Chuppah. So as not to slide back into memories, I danced with the young bridegroom to the point of exhaustion.
I was both happy and sad. But more happy than sad. The lineage of Sarah and Shlomo Wiesel is not extinct.
In 1970 I spoke of my intention to end my testimony:
… And now, teller of tales, turn the page. Speak to us of other things. Your mad prophets, your old men drunk with nostalgic waiting, your possessed—let them return to their nocturnal enclaves. They have survived their deaths for more than a quarter of a century; that should suffice. If they refuse to go away, at least make them keep quiet. At all costs. By every means. Tell them that silence, more than language, remains the substance and the seal of what was once their universe, and that, like language, it demands to be recognized and transmitted.*
A pessimistic assessment? I believed it then. I had decided not to speak of “it” anymore.
And today? Those born at the time that tex
t was written are now almost thirty years old. They have their whole lives before them. Must we speak to them? Of whom? Of what? Of our past? To make sure that it will not become their future? To silence those who deny our past, those who wish to silence us?
And here I had dreamed of singing of memory and friendship in a world that sadly needs both.
“Remember,” the Book commands us. In my tradition, memory does not set people apart. On the contrary, it binds them one to the other and all to the origins of our common history. It is because I remember where I come from that I feel close to those I meet on the way. It is because man is capable of transforming his burdens into promises that he lives them fully. That is why to live without a past is worse than to live without a future. What would our civilization be if it were stripped of its memory? Memory is more than the sum of images and words, cries and deeds; it is even more than an individual or collective identity; it is the bond that ties us to the mystery of the beginning, this nebulous place where man’s memory is reflected in God’s.
That is why we stubbornly continue to bear witness.