Wiesel’s messages are as relevant today as they were a decade ago

Elie Wiesel

To say that Elie Wiesel’s death on July 2 was a monumental loss to humanity still feels like a gross understatement.

Wiesel, a professor, a writer, a Nobel laureate, a humanitarian and a Holocaust survivor, devoted his life to Holocaust education and to combating indifference, intolerance and injustice, while promoting acceptance, understanding and equality.

In 2006, Wiesel was invited by Hillel of Greater Toronto to lecture at the University of Toronto about the threat of fanaticism.

Below are excerpts from a CJN article based on an interview Wiesel granted us in advance of his speaking engagement, and from the speech he delivered to an overflow audience of about 2,000 people.

As the world continues to struggle with the rise of global terrorism, racism and xenophobia, Wiesel’s messages are just as relevant today as they were a decade ago.

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“I believe it is a priority for a Jew to help Jews, but not exclusively,” said Wiesel, whose family was murdered in Nazi death camps.

“Be sensitive to other communities if they are in danger and if they feel oppressed and they feel they are neglected or humiliated.”

This week, Wiesel was invited by Hillel of Greater Toronto to present a lecture titled “Confronting Fanaticism: Building Moral Unity in a Diverse Society.” He spoke to a sold-out crowd at the University of Toronto.

“A fanatic is someone who believes that only he or she has the key to truth and only he or she possesses the exclusivity of truth.

“It is somebody who has all the certainty in the world and no doubts, and a fanatic believes he is superior to anyone who is not like he is,” he said.

“If a fanatic is given power, then he becomes dangerous, and if you give it nuclear power, as is now the case with Iran, we surely are in trouble,” said Wiesel, who was a devout supporter of Israel and a harsh critic of then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But Wiesel said that some may fail to understand that fanatics are not as much of a minority as some would like to think, and that no religious group, including the Jewish community, is immune to fanaticism.

“The challenge is that it is now a world phenomenon. It is not only in Islam, it is also in Catholicism and Protestantism, and fundamentalist are even within our own community, the Jewish community. Luckily it is a very small minority, but we have our own fanatics,” Wiesel told The CJN.

Wiesel, who spoke passionately about the victims of the ongoing conflict in Darfur that led to the murder of 400,000 people and the displacement of hundreds of thousands more, said the best way to incite change is to appeal to the people who have the power to do something.

“I think we should prevail on our governments because they have the power and the money and they have the means. All we have are words.

“We have to speak up. Each in his or her own circle. Sign petitions… We must do something. Otherwise we will feel guilty for not helping those who need help saving their lives.”

Later, during his lecture, Wiesel warned the audience, hundreds of whom watched a live feed in a neighbouring building, that fanaticism is a threat to us all and tried to explain why people are easily seduced by it.

“The fanatic is seduced because [he] believes simply that he is superior… The fanatic believes that he alone has the key to God’s paradise. The fanatic believes that only his words carry weight and others are empty of meaning and consequence… The fanatic has no questions, only answers, and the same answers. He doesn’t have dialogues, only monologues, and the fact that he is not bored by that is beyond me. The fanatic lacks a sense of humour. You will never see a fanatic laugh. He can shout, but not whisper.”

Wiesel said that if we choose to live in a moral society, we must speak up for the persecuted people everywhere, not just Jews.

He referred to a video address by Tony Comper, then-president and CEO of BMO Financial Group and the co-founder of FAST, Fighting Anti-Semitism Together, during which Comper called on other non-Jews to join Jews in the fight against anti-Semitism.

To this, Wiesel said, “May I respectfully ask my fellow Jews to answer and say, we as Jews must fight racism, and bigotry and prejudice and misery everywhere, not only among Jews.

“Wherever communities are in danger, we must come to their aid. Wherever people suffer from persecutions, for any reason, we Jews must say, ‘No, persecution is not an option. Humiliation is not an option.’”

Wiesel, a man who lived by the philosophy that the greatest sin is indifference, has spoken out in defence of Soviet Jews, Nicaragua’s Miskito Indians, Argentina’s “disappeared,” Cambodian refugees, the Kurds, the victims of the South African apartheid and most recently, the victims in Darfur.

He said he became involved with the genocide in Darfur after then-president Bill Clinton invited him to give the millennium lecture in 2000 titled “Perils of Indifference.”

During the question and answer period, a woman from Rwanda stood up to ask a question about the world’s indifference during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Wiesel then turned to Clinton and asked him to answer the question.

“We could have saved between 600,000 to 800,000 men, women and children in Rwanda. Why didn’t we?” Wiesel recalled asking Clinton at the millennial lecture.

The president admitted his regret and said he had travelled to Rwanda to apologize on behalf of himself and the United States and he promised that it would not happen again, Wiesel said.

He said that after his lecture five years earlier, he was visited by a bishop from Sudan who said to him, “You are now the custodian of the presidential pledge,” and Wiesel has been involved with the crisis in Darfur ever since.

Although Wiesel believes that indifference is just as damaging as persecution itself, he could understand the helplessness people feel when attempting to fight a phenomenon as widespread as fanaticism, yet he urged people never to give up hope.

“One feels helpless to… comprehend a mother who says publicly on television that she has just given one son, who had become a suicide terrorist, to the cause, but she has four more sons to give. What about her maternal instincts?” he asked.

However, he said that despite the rise in political and religious fanaticism over the years, there have been events in the last century that are promising.

“I went to South Africa in 1975, and if anyone had told me that I would see the end of apartheid, I would not have believed him. In 1989, the fall of Communism, the opening of the gates – if anyone would have told me when I went to the Soviet Union in 1965 that I would see one million Jews in Israel, Russian Jews, I wouldn’t have believed them. I would have said, ‘You are crazy, Communism is here to stay.’”

But despite these events, hatred is still a worldwide disease that must be conquered, he said.

“Hatred is contagious. I call it an infectious disease. Hatred is like a cancer. It goes from cell to cell, from limb to limb, from person to person, from city to city.”

Wiesel said he was embarrassed to admit that after the war in 1945, he was optimistic that if there was one thing he could be sure of, it was that anti-Semitism perished with the victims in Auschwitz.

“Now we realize that the victims perished, but anti-Semitism is still alive. If Auschwitz hasn’t cured the world of anti-Semitism, what can and what will?

“How do we stop [fanaticism]?” Wiesel asked. “Whatever the answer, education must be its major component. We must put all our energy into education to save ourselves and to save those around us.

“My friends, we must be carriers of hope, for hope is the only option if our humanity wants to justify itself. It depends on us.”

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