by Elie Wiesel
At the time, it seemed to me that the enemy’s aim was to attack God Himself in order to drive Him from His celestial throne. Thus, the enemy was creating a society parallel to our society, a world opposed to ours, with its own madmen and princes, laws and customs, prophets and judges.
Yes, an accursed world where another language was spoken, where a new religion was proclaimed: one of cruelty, dominated by the inhuman; a society that had evolved from the other side of society, from the other side of life, from the other side of death, perhaps; a world where one small piece of bread was worth all ideas, where an adolescent in uniform had absolute power over thousands of prisoners, where human beings seemed to belong to a different species, trembling before death, which had all the attributes of God.…
As a Jew, it is impossible for me not to stress the affliction of my people during their torment. Do not see this as an attempt to deny or minimize the sufferings of the populations of the occupied countries or the torture undergone by our comrades, our Christian or nonreligious friends whom the common enemy punished with unpardonable brutality. We feel affection and admiration for them. As though they were our brothers? They are our brothers.
It is impossible for me, as a Jew, not to stress that for the first time, an entire people—from the smallest to the largest, from the richest to the poorest—were condemned to annihilation. To uproot it, to extract it from history, to kill it in memory by killing all memory of it: such was the enemy’s plan.
Marked, isolated, humiliated, beaten, starved, tortured, the Jew was handed over to the executioner, not for having proclaimed some truth, nor for having possessed envied riches and treasures, nor for having adopted a certain forbidden behavior. The Jew was condemned to death because he was born Jewish, because he carried in him a Jewish memory.
Declared to be less than a man, and therefore deserving neither compassion nor pity, the Jew was born only to die—just as the killer was born only to kill. Consequently, the killer did not feel in any way guilty. One American investigator formulated it this way: the killer had not lost his sense of morality, but his sense of reality. He thought he was doing good by ridding the earth of its Jewish “parasites.”
Is this the reason Klaus Barbie, like Adolph Eichmann before him, does not feel guilty? Except for Höss, the commander of Auschwitz, condemned and hanged in Poland, no killer has repented. Their logic? There had to be executioners to eliminate a million and a half Jewish children; killers were needed to annihilate four and a half million Jewish adults.
Auschwitz and Treblinka, Maidanek and Ponar, Belzec and Mauthausen, and so many others, so many other names: the apocalypse was everywhere. Everywhere, mute processions headed toward pits filled with dead bodies. Very few tears, very little crying. From their appearance, resigned, thoughtful, the victims seemed to be leaving the world without regret. It was as though these men and women were choosing not to live in a society disfigured, denatured by hatred and violence.
After the war, the survivor tried to tell about it, bear witness … but who could find words to speak of the unspeakable?
The contemplative silence of old people who knew, of children who were afraid of knowing … the horror of mothers who had gone mad, the terrifying lucidity of mad people in a delirious world … the grave chant of a rabbi reciting the Kaddish, the murmur of his followers going after him to the very end, to heaven … the good little girl undressing her younger brother … telling him not to be afraid; no, one must not be afraid of death … perhaps she said, One must not be afraid of dead people.…
And in the city, the grand, ancient city of Kiev, that mother and her two children in front of some German soldiers who are laughing … they take one child from her and kill it before her eyes … then, they seize the second and kill it too.… She wants to die; the killers prefer her to remain alive but inhabited by death.… Then, she takes the two little bodies, hugs them against her chest and begins to dance … how can one describe that mother? How can one tell of her dance? In this tragedy, there is something that hurts beyond hurting—and I do not know what it is.
I know we must speak. I do not know how. Since this crime is absolute, all language is imperfect. Which is why there is such a feeling of powerlessness in the survivor. It was easier for him to imagine himself free in Auschwitz than it would be for a free man to imagine himself a prisoner in Auschwitz. That is the problem: no one who has not experienced the event will ever be able to understand it. And yet, the survivor is conscious of his duty to bear witness. To tell the tale. To protest every time any “revisionist,” morally perverse as he may be, dares to deny the death of those who died. And the truthfulness of the memory transmitted by the survivors.
For the survivors, however, it is getting late. Their number is diminishing. They meet one another more and more often at funerals. Can one die more than once? Yes, one can. The survivor dies every time he rejoins, in his thoughts, the nightly procession he has never really left. How can he detach himself from them without betraying them? For a long time he talked to them, as I talk to my mother and my little sister: I still see them moving away under the fiery sky.… I ask them to forgive me for not following them.…
It is for the dead, but also for the survivors, and even more for their children—and yours—that this trial is important: it will weigh on the future. In the name of justice? In the name of memory. Justice without memory is an incomplete justice, false and unjust. To forget would be an absolute injustice in the same way that Auschwitz was the absolute crime. To forget would be the enemy’s final triumph.
The fact is that the enemy kills twice—the second time in trying to obliterate the traces of his crime. That is why he pushed his outrageous, terrifying plan to the limits of language, and well beyond: to situate it out of reach, out of our range of perception. “Even if you survive, even if you tell, no one will believe you,” an S. S. told a young Jew somewhere in Galicia.
This trial has already contradicted that killer. The witnesses have spoken; their truth has entered the awareness of humanity. Thanks to them, the Jewish children of Izieu will never be forgotten.
As guardians of their invisible graves, graves of ash encrusted in a sky of eternal night and fog, we must remain faithful to them. We must try. To refuse to speak, when speech is awaited, would be to acknowledge the ultimate triumph of despair.
“Do you seek fire?” said a great Hasidic rabbi. “Seek it in the ash.” This is what you have been doing here since the beginning of this trial, this is what we have attempted to do since the Liberation. We have sought, in the ash, a truth to affirm—despite everything—man’s dignity; it exists only in memory.
Thanks to this trial, the survivors have a justification for their survival. Their testimony counts, their memories will be part of the collective memory. Of course, nothing can bring the dead back to life. But because of the meetings that have taken place within these precincts, because of the words spoken, the accused will not be able to kill the dead again. If he had succeeded it would not have been his fault, but ours.
Though it takes place under the sign of justice, this trial must also honor memory.
*Given in French in Lyon on June 2, 1987.
When Memory Brings People Together*
ALLOW ME to read you a poem. It is in Yiddish:
Schtiler, schtiler, lomir schwajgn
Kworim waksn do,
s’hobn sej farflanzt di ssonim,
Grinen sej zu blo.…
Schtiler, kind majns, wejn nit, ojzer,
s’helft nit kejn gewejn.
Undser umglik weln ssonim
Saj wi nit farschtejn.…
Hush, hush, let us be silent,
Tombs are growing here.
Planted by the enemy,
They are green and turning blue.…
Hush, my child, don’t cry,
Crying won’t do any good.
Never will the enemy
understand our plight.…
This lullaby was written
in the ghetto by Shmelke Katchegirsky. Grieving Jewish mothers would chant it, trying to put their hungry and suffering children to sleep.
Tombs? These children—these innocent little children—were deprived of everything: their lives and even a burial place.
And so, hush, little children, one million of you, hush, come: we invite you. We invite you into our memory.
Yiddish in the Reichstag? There is significance in using this warm, melancholy, and compassionate language in a place where Jewish suffering and Jewish agony, some fifty years ago, aroused neither mercy nor compassion.
Yiddish was the tongue of many, if not most, of the Jewish victims who perished during the dark period when the Angel of Death seemed to have replaced God in too many hearts in this country. Yiddish too was their target and their victim.
There is significance, too—as there is irony and justice—in my speaking to you this afternoon from this very rostrum where my own death, and the death of my family, and the death of my friends, and the death of my teachers, and the death of my entire people were decreed by the legally elected leader of Germany. I would betray the dead were I not to remind you that his poisonous words did not make him unpopular with his people. Most applauded with fervor; some, very few, remained silent. Fewer still objected. How many Jews found shelter in how many German homes during the Kristallnacht? How many Germans tried to help extinguish the flames engulfing the synagogues? How many tried to save holy scrolls? How many cared?
In those days and nights humanity itself seemed to have been distorted and twisted in this city and nation which are proud of their distant history, but struggling with their recent memories. Everything human and divine was perverted then. The Law itself had become immoral. Here, in this city, in this place, it had become legal and commendable to humiliate Jews simply for being Jews and to hunt down children simply because they were Jewish children. It became legal and praiseworthy to imprison, shame, oppress, and, ultimately, destroy human beings—sons and daughters of an ancient people—because their very existence was considered a crime.
The official decision to implement the Final Solution was made at the highest level of German hierarchy, at a relatively brief but practical and congenial meeting that took place on January 20, 1942, in Wannsee.
The high officials who participated in the meeting knew that they acted on behalf of their government and in the name of the German people, which supported that government.
The atrocities committed under the law of the Third Reich must not and will not be forgotten; nor will they be forgiven. I said it when I was here nearly two years ago: I have no right to forgive the killers for having exterminated six million of my kinsmen. Only the dead can forgive; and no one has the right to speak on their behalf.
Still, not all citizens who were alive then were guilty. As a Jew, I have never believed in collective guilt. Only the guilty were guilty. Children of killers are not killers, but children. I have neither the desire nor the authority to judge today’s generation for the unspeakable crimes that were committed by that of Hitler. But we may—and we must—hold it responsible, not for the past, but for the way it remembers the past. And for what it does with the memory of the past.
“Memory” is the key word. To remember is to create links between past and present, between past and future. To remember is to affirm man’s faith in humanity and to convey meaning on our fleeting endeavors. The aim of memory is to restore its dignity to justice.
It is in the name of memory that I address myself to Germany’s youth. “Remember” is the commandment that dominates the life of young Jews today; let it dominate yours as well. Challenged by memory, you could move forward. Opposed to memory, you are bound to remain eternally opposed to us and to all we stand for.
Memory means to live in more than one world, to be tolerant and understanding with one another, to accept the mystery inherent in questions and the suspicion linked to answers. Naturally, it can also bring forth tensions and conflicts, but they can then be transformed into culture, art, education, spiritual inquiry, the quest for truth, the quest for justice. Without memory, mankind’s image of itself would be impoverished.
Of course, I understand—for you, it is not easy to remember. It may even be more difficult than it is for us as Jews. We try to remember the dead; you must remember those who killed them. Yes—there is pain involved in both attempts. Not the same pain. Open yourselves to yours, as we have opened ourselves to ours.
You find it hard to believe that your elders did those things? So do I. Think of the tormentors as I think of their victims. I remember every minute of their agony. I see them constantly. I am afraid: If I stop seeing them, they will die. I keep on seeing them, and they died nevertheless.
I remember: January 20, 1942, in my childhood town. It must have been a day like any other. Some Jewish children were playing with snowmen, others studied hard at school. They were already dead here, in Berlin, and they did not know it.
There is something in all this I do not understand—and never will. Why such determination on the part of the killer to kill so many of my people? Why the old men and women? Why the children? Why an entire people? How was all that made possible?
You young men and women in Germany must ask yourselves similar questions—or the same questions.
A people that had produced Goethe and Schiller, Bach and Beethoven, had suddenly chosen to put its national genius in the service of evil and erect a monument named Auschwitz to its dark power.
A community that had contributed to culture and education, as few nations had, called culture and education into question. Now we know many killers had college degrees and were products of the best universities in Europe. Many came from distinguished families. I often wonder about the theological implications of Auschwitz, but here I must also recognize that Auschwitz was not sent down from heaven; Auschwitz was conceived, planned, constructed, managed, and justified by people. What human beings did there to other human beings will affect future generations. After Auschwitz, hope itself is filled with anguish.
But—after Auschwitz, hope is necessary. Where can it be found? In remembrance alone.
After the war, it took many Germans too long to confront their past. Teachers did not teach, and pupils did not learn, the most tragic and important chapter in German history and world history. To confront it would be too painful, was the explanation. It took the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem for German courts to indict S. S. murderers who, after the war, quietly returned to their homes and resumed their trades—as if nothing had happened.
True, the situation in East Germany remains worse. Unlike the Federal Republic, which did make serious attempts under Konrad Adenauer to compensate survivors and help Israel, East Germany is hostile to Israel and refuses to pay reparations. East Germany, like Austria, behaves without the slightest trace of remorse.
The Federal Republic has chosen a more honest and enlightened course of action. You have succeeded, in a few decades, in creating a transition from brutal totalitarianism to true democracy. Individual freedom is respected. Your commitment to the Western alliance is strong.
Furthermore, there are among you individuals and groups who have been seeking atonement in word and in deed; some have gone to work for Israel, in Israel; others are involved in religious dialogues. Writers, artists, poets, novelists, statesmen: there are among them men and women who refuse to forget—and, make no mistake, the best books by German authors deal with the trauma of the past.…
Now, in the new Wannsee museum, you will show what was done to Jews, to Jews alone. You will show pictures of Jews before they died, you will show the cold brutality of those who killed them, you will show the passivity, the cowardly indifference of the bystanders.
However, in fairness, I feel I must point out negative elements in modern Germany: the extreme left is violently anti-Israel, the extreme right is anti-Jewish. Furthermore, it is bad enough that we have revisionists in our own countries—but must we encounter them in
Germany too? I know: here it is illegal to publicly deny the Holocaust. Still, it is being done in a vulgar form—by neo-Nazis—and in a more subtle manner by some historians whose intent is to “normalize” and “relativize,” and thus banalize, cheapen, and trivialize the most painful event in Jewish history. Their attitude is impudent, arrogant, obscene. Whether they want to or not, those historians will ultimately belong to the ugliest category of all—that of the revisionists who deny occurrence of the Holocaust; they serve the same gods. The normalization of the historians helps the revisionists in their fight against memory. Against the Jewish people.
But I wonder: “What has been the general response to the “Battle of the Historians”? I hope that you, young Germans, have taken part in it. I hope that you are, and will be, sensitive to Jewish pain. Was Bitburg really necessary? Was it essential for a Frankfurt theater to stage an anti-Semitic Fassbinder play? Was it a must for your government to show friendship toward an Austrian chancellor with whom the Jewish community at large was, and remains, in open conflict?
And how come the Bundesrat has never found it necessary to officially ask the Jewish people for forgiveness?
The United States Senate has recently adopted a bill that expresses an apology to the Nisai, the Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in 1941–1942. Why couldn’t the German parliament offer a similar apology to the Jewish people? Germany would not be humiliated by such a move; just the opposite.
I appeal to you: Be our allies. Justify the faith we have in your future. Fight forgetfulness. Reject any attempt to cover up the past. Remember the Jewishness of the Jewish victims, remember the uniqueness of their tragedy. Thus, it is incumbent upon you not to allow the building of museums that do not distinguish between war casualties and victims of Nazism. Be the conscience of your nation. And remember: a conscience that does not speak up when injustices are being committed is betraying itself. A mute conscience is a false conscience.