“Why were crematoriums built there in the first place?” I pressed him.
“Because they anticipated, as well as experienced, a great outbreak of the disease,” Countess retorted. Bodies were burned and thrown into large open pits, he said, because it was the best way to deal with the epidemic of typhus deaths. I reminded Countess that even the camp’s longtime commandant, Rudolf Höss, had confessed that Auschwitz was a death camp, before being found guilty of war crimes and hanged—but Countess had an answer to that too.
“He was tortured,” he said, adding that Höss “was kept up 48, 72 hours, was beaten, and didn’t know what he was saying or doing when he signed the confession.”
Countess then tried to suggest that so many people had died in the camps because the camps had fallen into chaos due to allied bombing. “People were dying left and right,” he declared. He also insisted that the figure of six million Jews killed during the war was “highly exaggerated,” and claimed the figure was closer to 300,000—“possibly.”
I was getting increasingly agitated as I listened to this diatribe, but maintained my objective demeanor as we continued. During our seven-minute interview, Dr. Countess failed to offer any substantive argument to support his claims, and those of his fellow Holocaust deniers. Before we ended, I asked for his reaction to a statement by an anti-Jewish group, which read, “In our view it is nothing more than an international racket by Jews to bleed, blackmail and terrorize their many enemies around the world into silence about the crime of subservients to their aggressive designs.”
Countess concurred with the statement, noting, “There are a number of American Jews who would say that it is a racket.” He added that Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel “would be the high priest of this racket.”
At that point I thanked my guest, and announced that the program would continue after the commercial break. Right or wrong, it was my desire not to shake this man’s hand—but the camera was late in getting out of the shot, and caught Countess thrusting his hand into mine. Before the taped program aired, I had the handshake edited out.
My following guest, Holocaust survivor Valerie Jakober Furth, could not believe what she had heard.
“This man has the gall to come here and tell me that it didn’t happen,” she said emotionally, telling me how painful it had been to listen to Countess’s denial. “His lies were so outrageous, I got upset,” she said. “How does he have the nerve to say that in face of all the evidence?” She feared that by permitting such deniers to continue spreading lies, the Holocaust could happen again. The best way to combat such ignorance, she said, was through education, by continuing to tell the truth and bear witness to what had occurred.
With tears in her eyes, Mrs. Furth powerfully did just that. “I know this man is a liar, because I know the truth,” she said. “I’m a witness. I smelled the smoke, the burning flesh. I was almost gassed. My family was gassed. I saw the lake where they threw the ashes. These were my people, soaked with our blood.”
38
ELIE WIESEL: BEARING WITNESS
Elie Wiesel interview on PIX11.
“I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.”—Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel’s mission in life was to bear witness, and not allow the world to forget the inhumanity of the Holocaust with its annihilation of six million Jews. A survivor of the Nazi concentration camps who lost his mother, father and younger sister in the camps, Wiesel emerged as a voice for the voiceless—“a messenger to mankind,” as the citation read on the Nobel Prize for Peace he received in 1986—whose strong message of tolerance lives on as his rich legacy. When Wiesel revisited Buchenwald with President Obama in 2009, the president called him a “living legend.”
Wiesel was 82 in 2011, when I met him at a social event and encouraged him to join me for an in-studio interview. It turned out to be one of the most emotionally inspiring interviews I have ever done.
Having spoken extensively and eloquently about the haunting atrocity of what had happened and the lessons the Holocaust should have taught us, Wiesel told me he felt “close to despair” over public opinion polls that showed that 35 million Americans bore hatred for the Jewish people. “If Auschwitz didn’t cure the world of anti-Semitism, what could and what would?” he asked. “It’s stupid,” he added. “The anti-Semites hated me before I was born. The anti-Semites who hate me have never seen me. Nevertheless there is hatred in them.” He questioned where they learned this hatred, noting, “Somebody has to teach them anti-Semitism—you’ve got to be taught to hate.” To counter that, he insisted that it is imperative to continue to speak out, not just against anti-Semitism, but against hatred, bigotry and intolerance in all its other forms as well. “To give up is not an option,” he declared.
If he were a judge, Wiesel said, he would institute a new way to mete out justice for an anti-Semite who was charged with a hate crime. “I would put him in a cell for a whole week, and force him to read certain pages, certain messages and testimonials, and show him pictures, all relating to the Holocaust. That would force him to face the realities of those times.”
As for those who deny that the Holocaust ever happened, the Nobel laureate asserted, “They exist to our embarrassment. Just as there are mentally ill people, there are some morally ill people. Why should I waste my time and energy to discuss anything with them? We don’t live in the same world.” Wiesel said he had encountered deniers himself who tried to provoke him; one even tried to kidnap him. “He said he would take me into custody and force me to admit that the Holocaust is a lie,” he sadly related.
But the scholar who came to personify the Holocaust survivor knew all too well the realities of the horror. He expressed anger that the United States remained silent about the Holocaust while it was going on, and failed to intercede to try and stop it. “Why didn’t the American Air Force bomb the rails leading to the camps?” he asked. “They could have at least delayed the process for days, weeks—perhaps saved some lives. Every day, from ten to 15,000 human beings—men, women, children—were being gassed and burned… every day, every night.” The deep lines in his aging face tightened as Wiesel told me how disgusted he was that the superpowers were aware of the depravity that was going on at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and did nothing to intervene. “To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all,” he proclaimed, and expressed his belief that had there been social media back then, the Holocaust might never have happened, since there would have been no way to maintain its secrecy.
Wiesel wasn’t sure what helped him to survive his own experience. “No one ever said I had to survive so I could tell the tale,” he said. “As long as my father was alive, I wanted to live, because I knew, if I died, he would die immediately after me.” Having lost his mother and sister at Auschwitz before being transferred to Buchenwald, he was forced to watch as his father was beaten with an iron bar, and later cared for him as he succumbed to dysentery and starvation. “I had no more tears,” Wiesel recalled in his trailing voice. “After my father died, my life was not a real life. I let myself live. I didn’t do anything to remain alive.” A few months later, the war was over and the death camp was liberated.
When he was freed from Buchenwald in 1945, Wiesel was 16 and orphaned. He couldn’t speak about his nightmarish experience, no less write about it, until more than a decade later. He told me he delayed discussing it because “I wanted to be sure that I had the proper words. I’m still not sure I found the right words. How do you explain something like that?” He said he rarely spoke about those events. “I go around it,” he explained. He said only four or five of his 60 books relate to the Holocaust.
Wiesel’s famous chronicle of his ordeal, Night, was written in Yiddish and originally entitled And the World Was Silent, a title later changed by his publisher. The book has since been critically acclaimed and translated into many languages, and has sold well over 10 million copies worldwide.
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br /> During our interview, and for the first time on television, Wiesel agreed to read the book’s most renowned passage, about his imprisonment at Buchenwald. His eyes dropped and his speech slowed as he began: “Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget those things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never!” Even 65 years later, I could sense the heavy emotion consuming his body as he read the passage. “It’s painful,” he conceded, “because it was a moment in my life that outweighed all others for me. Life is not made up of years, but of moments.”
When I asked him, “All these years later, can you forgive?” his response was terse.
“I am not a judge, really,” he said. “Only God can forgive, if He so chooses.”
I asked the scholar of the Scriptures, as so many before me had asked, “Where was God when six million Jews were being slaughtered?”
Wiesel paused and took a deep breath before responding, “I have heard the question; I don’t have the answer.” Though Wiesel too had asked the question and voiced disbelief over the slaughter around him, he said he never stopped believing in God. “I cannot live without God,” he said. “There is the greatness of my tradition. We may question God, even if he doesn’t answer.”
39
RUDY GIULIANI: SHEDDING A TEAR LIKE THE REST OF US
Mayor Giuliani at Ground Zero.
Rudy Giuliani was nearing the end of his term as the 107th mayor of the city of New York when terrorists struck our country and forever changed our lives on September 11th, 2001. Almost caught in the destruction of the World Trade Center himself, Giuliani emerged as the unquestioned hero of the day, acting as the father figure who guided us through the dark cloud of terror that hung over our city and our nation.
My relationship with the mayor went back to 1983, when he was the United States Attorney for New York. His then-wife, Donna Hanover, co-anchored a midday broadcast with me on the Independent Network News. He became a friend during that time, and always made himself accessible to me for an interview.
We recorded many interviews, particularly during the annual observance of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. On the fifth anniversary, I found Giuliani more reflective and more candid than he had ever been before as he talked to me about that day, and shared with me the moment he cried. He started by telling me he had conflicting sentiments about 9/11.
“Sometimes I look back on that day with anger,” he began. “I have tremendous feelings of sadness. It was the worst day in my life—the worst day in the life of my city, my country. But there were other aspects of that day that made it an uplifting day, because of the incredible acts of nobility and bravery people displayed. I witnessed so many people helping other people.”
As President George W. Bush was being flown to a secure location, Giuliani became the comforting voice updating a stunned nation about what had happened. His most difficult announcement was in response to the question about how many casualties were anticipated from the collapse of the two towers.
“The number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear, ultimately,” was his response, the grim reality written over his somber face. “I didn’t want to give an actual number,” he told me, “because we just weren’t sure.” Initially, he had been told to expect 12,000 casualties, then 6,000, then 8,000. “I didn’t want to give them a number I wasn’t sure of. I didn’t know how many we would recover.” Ultimately, the final figure was placed at just under 2,900 lives lost.
Giuliani was so stoic during those days—such a pillar of strength. We saw a different Rudy Giuliani that day.
“What changed you?” I asked.
“The event changes you,” he replied. “All of us are different people under different circumstances. In a situation like that, you need unity of purpose—compassion that hopefully will bring out your very best instincts.”
The way he handled himself on 9/11 earned Giuliani the admiration of the nation and the nickname “America’s Mayor.” He admitted to feeling the same anger, anxieties and sadness as everyone else in the country during that time, but said he refused to allow himself to succumb to those feelings.
“I just kept saying to myself, ‘You can’t give into this now, you can’t break down.’” Giuliani said he resisted being overcome by emotion by telling himself, I’ve got to save that for another time. I’ve just got to remain focused—got to remain alert—because I don’t know what decision I have to make next. He did admit that had he not been the mayor, with such daunting responsibilities that day, and been simply another bystander to that horror, he probably would have broken down and cried, particularly after viewing the unthinkable—people jumping from the flaming tower.
But Giuliani did concede that he couldn’t hold back the tears in his office when he reached his longtime friend, U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olsen, on the phone. September 11th was Olsen’s birthday, and his wife Barbara had delayed her trip to Los Angeles by one day so she could celebrate with him. Barbara was one of the passengers killed aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon.
“Ted was one of my closest friends,” Giuliani remembered. “I was at their wedding, and he and his wife had recently visited my office.” He said he had heard that there was a tape of Barbara making a desperate call to her husband just before the crash. “It was overwhelming, talking to Ted that day. During the conversation, I cried,” he recalled sadly.
The former mayor’s head dropped and he fell silent for a moment as he remembered shedding tears again, when he learned that Fire Chaplain Mychal Judge had been killed. “I felt a tremendous sense of being alone when I lost Father Judge,” he said. He had turned to Father Judge for guidance at moments like this, he told me. “He’s the one who could help me explain this. He’s the one I would sit down with in a private room and ask, ‘Father, how do I explain this to all these people who lost loved ones?’ and he would always find a better way to do it, to help me explain it.” When he realized he had lost Father Judge, Giuliani said tears filled his eyes. “I felt so alone, and said to myself, ‘You’re going to have to do this one for yourself now.’”
Giuliani acknowledged that families would never get over the pain of a day the world should never be allowed to forget. But out of the ashes of that day, he said, America came together in a way we hadn’t seen before. “We were united as a nation, and we were supportive of one another. Somehow, goodness trumped evil.”
40
LIBERACE: THE DAY HE PLAYED THE PIANO FOR ME
Liberace captivated me when he played the contemporary Mack The Knife as if might have been interpreted by Mozart.
It was a cloudy spring day in 1985 when sunshine suddenly brightened the studio with the arrival of the incomparable Liberace. His warm smile showcased teeth as white as the keys on the piano; and dressed in a cream-colored striped suit, pale-blue shirt with sky-blue tie, and jewel-encrusted rings on both hands, he charmed everyone in sight. He greeted me like we were old friends, and we discussed the interview we were going to do live for the Independent Network News’s Midday Edition, which I co-anchored at the time with the former First Lady of New York, Donna Hanover.
Though outwardly flamboyant, the megastar showed a more reserved, humble side as we spoke one-on-one prior to our interview. While I had many questions for him, he wanted to know about me, too: where I was from, and how long I had been in the news business. He seemed genuinely interested, and if I wasn’t a Liberace fan before, I certainly was one now. I understood instantly why he was so popular around the world. When I left him in the green room to begin our broadcast, I told him I would rejoin him in the last segment. He placed his hand in mine, thanked me for inviting him and told me to feel comfortable calling him Lee.
I began the segment by introducing him with the wo
rds, “His costumes are his trademark, his talent his hallmark.” As the camera came in for a tight close-up of him, I explained that he had returned to New York after 30 years away from its clubs, for 21 performances at Radio City Music Hall. He told me performing there was the fulfillment of a career-long dream.
“I have so much fallen in love with New York,” he said. “This town has so much energy, it’s given me a vital spurt.”
I asked to what he attributed his enduring popularity. Without hesitation he replied, “I feel fortunate to appeal to a general type of audience, which includes people of all ages—kind of a family-type audience.” He said he had never been a “cult-type performer like so many others,” and cited dangers in dealing with cult audiences, explaining, “One day you’re hot and the next day you’re not. I’ve been fortunate to grow into new generations.”
As for the inspiration behind the signature candelabra on the piano during each of his performances, he explained that he had been so impressed by the presence of the candelabra in the 1945 film A Song to Remember about the life of Chopin that he went out the next day, bought one and placed it on the piano for his opening night in the Persian Room of the Plaza Hotel. “It became an instant trademark,” he said, beaming with that effervescent smile.
As we were conducting our interview over a piano, I couldn’t resist making a request.
“Might your fingers be itching a bit?” I teased. He was graciously receptive.
“I don’t think many people realize that Mozart was a very young and very popular composer,” he noted, his eyes turning to the piano, and added, “I have often thought if he were alive here today he would probably enjoy our pop music very much. He would probably play, in his own inimitable Mozart style, Mack The Knife.” For the next mesmerizing minute or so I listened and watched as Liberace’s fingers sailed ever so gently across the ivories, his jewel-encrusted rings glistening in the spotlight. It was such an unforgettable moment.
As I Saw It Page 22