IN OCTOBER 1986, back from Moscow, I mention to François Mitterrand that all the reporters ask how I intend to spend the Nobel Prize money. Rather than posing questions about my political, philosophical, or religious views, most of them seem preoccupied by my financial situation and future.
Mitterrand smiles roguishly. “Is that so? Well, tell me—what do you intend to do with the money?” I shrug and answer: “Oh, I don’t know…. Marion and I have spoken about it—we’re thinking of starting a foundation.” “Oh, really, a foundation? And what will it do?” “I don’t know yet. I think we may organize conferences, special colloquia on burning issues….” As I speak a mad—impractical—idea goes through my head: “What I’d really like to do is organize a conference bringing together all the Nobel Prize laureates, from all disciplines. It has not been done before. For the first time, Nobel Prize winners from the world over would join together in large numbers to discuss mankind’s fears and hopes for the coming century.”
I tell him about my adventures in the USSR. Thanks to the Nobel, I have been able to help several refuseniks get exit visas, and to assist several other dissidents. I also hope to have been instrumental in breaking down official attitudes toward Sakharov, still in exile in Gorki. Imagine, I said, ten or twenty laureates combining their efforts and mobilizing their networks of friends for humanitarian causes.
Mitterrand is interested. He urges me to research the project, to look into the details. I am only too happy to comply. I know what is involved in conferences, and I like them. For me the word “dialogue” is one of the most inspired. For that matter, at Culture Minister Jack Lang’s suggestion, the French president and I had by then already decided on a joint project: to write a book of dialogues. In a dialogue, the other loses his otherness. I also like the word “colloquium.” As long as people talk and listen to one another, everything remains possible.
And so it happens that I tell the president: “If you like this idea, let us do it together.” In other words, my foundation (to-be) would participate in its financing.
Mitterrand agrees, and that is how I become a “partner” of the French Republic. Procedures and technical details are to be worked out with Jacques Attali. No problem there—we understand each other and work together perfectly. We had met during a conference at the Sorbonne organized by Lang in 1982. Possibly mistaking me for a fellow member of the Socialist party, he said tu to me immediately. I was flattered. I knew his work, and I admired the brilliance of his ambitious intelligence. Also, he is interested in things Jewish—mysticism, the Talmud; he wants to learn. And then, in many areas—economics, international politics, the philosophy of science—he knows much more than I. We see each other every time Mitterrand receives me simply because, in order to reach the presidential office, I must go through his. That office is important to him. One day, he told me half-seriously that he wouldn’t have accepted the post of special adviser if he couldn’t have had that particular office. There are those who resent his arrogance, his obvious taste for power. It’s said that he treats his subordinates badly. But people say so many things about so many people. My relations with him are excellent, professionally and personally. There is mutual confidence. We exchange manuscripts, seek each other’s advice. I write a review of his book on Sigmund Warburg for a Paris daily. In short, there is a friendship. I visit his home, he visits mine. Because he usually answered my calls immediately, once, when I could not reach him after several calls, I wrote him an angry letter. Before sending it, on Marion’s always-wise counsel, I telephoned his office once more, then his home. And I found out that he had had an accident and was in the hospital. To redeem myself in my own eyes for having been unjustly angry with him, I dedicated my novel Le crépuscule au loin (Twilight) to him.
Jacques finds the idea of a Nobel conference excellent. We discuss it over a few lunches, a few dinners. He will create a group at the Élysée Palace to collaborate with our foundation’s small New York team.
Our first task is to make up a list of the more or less two hundred laureates. No problem there. The dominant theme will be the twenty-first century. Next we must establish the program and settle on a date. That is where things get a little complicated.
We are at the end of 1986. We must allow six to eight months for the preliminaries, on the condition that we start work immediately. And at the Élysée things are dragging. Is it because of la cohabitation between the parties of the left and right in the government? That’s what’s insinuated here and there. Weeks go by; I’m beginning to feel uneasy. If the Élysée now faces other priorities, I should be told. If Mitterrand is no longer interested in the project, that’s fine, too, but someone should deign to inform me.
Now it’s 1987 and we still don’t have the green light. From a purely practical point of view, that should please me: The more we keep postponing things, the fewer laureates will come and the less expensive it will be. That would be better for our foundation, which, though financially linked to the Élysée for this project, is not rich. However, objectively, not being able to gather a large group of laureates would have a negative effect on a conference that might otherwise have considerable impact. As for the financing, Mutual of America, a prestigious insurance company whose president, Bill Flynn, is a friend, offers us very generous support.
Spring is here; Paris is alive with the joy of its lovers, but as I leave the Élysée I’m depressed. I don’t dare discuss my worries with Mitterrand; I would appear to be complaining. Rather I speak to Jacques, who counsels patience. It’s all a matter of scheduling, of calendars, but the decision will be made in a few days. By the time it is made, it is summer. The conference is to convene the third week of January 1988. The presidential election is to take place the following May but, naive as I am, I do not make the connection. Can everything be ready in time? Yes, if the Élysée machinery starts to move. How will we reach everyone? And how will we convince those who hesitate? The French embassies do their best. Joshua Lederberg helps. His wisdom and generosity are indispensable to me. President of Rockefeller University, this Nobel laureate (in biology) is adept at smoothing edges. Bishop Tutu offers his regrets, and so does Saul Bellow. Solzhenitsyn never leaves Vermont. Henry Kissinger hesitates: “I’m not too popular in scientific circles,” he says. He may not be wrong. There is anger because of his Southeast Asia policy in general and with respect to Cambodia in particular. At Harvard he is decried as a hawk. He’s afraid of embarrassing himself and me by being booed. I insist; he gives in. In the end he’ll be grateful to me.
Time is running out. The Élysée team is overwhelmed by technical and logistical problems. Everyone had forgotten that Americans must obtain French visas. Instructions go out to all passport-control stations: Nobel laureates are to enter without a visa.
But where can they all be lodged? Kissinger will stay in the U.S. Embassy. Special arrangements are made for Willy Brandt. The others will stay at the Méridien and Bristol hotels. Special buses with motorcycle escorts will shuttle back and forth between the hotels and the Élysée and Marigny Palaces, where the regular sessions are to be held and meals are to be taken.
We spend hours fine-tuning the program, the composition of the various commissions. Who will preside? How and according to what criteria will one laureate rather than another be accorded certain privileges? The solution: We shall invite the presidents of the various Nobel committees to direct the debates. On the French side, François Gros of the Collège de France, and Hélène Ahrweiler, the rector and chancellor of the Universities of Paris, agree to perform the same duties. François Mitterrand and I decide that I shall chair the plenary sessions. It may seem funny—it did to me—but as far as protocol is concerned, I represent, in the same way as the president of the French Republic, an “inviting power.” Yes, I know—the word “power” fits me as a tuxedo might a kangaroo. But then I’m not responsible for protocol.
Meanwhile, as cosponsor of the conference, I feel responsible for everything else. And “everything else” is immense. For example, one problem, a serious one: Should Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, head of the opposition, be invited? I am in favor of it. We must not offend him by leaving him off the program. I suggest we ask him to participate in the opening session. After all, he’s also mayor of Paris. A high Élysée official vetoes the idea. I insist: Let Chirac extend greetings at a plenary session. Veto. Why not ask him to offer a toast at one of the dinners? Veto. The problem is political, I’m told. I wouldn’t have guessed. I keep arguing: If Chirac is not invited, surely we’ll be accused of politicizing the conference. Nothing doing.
With hindsight I realize, of course, that even though conceived outside any political considerations, by me anyway, the conference proved extremely useful to Mitterrand in the May election.
As for Chirac, I refuse to admit defeat. Without consulting anyone I go to see him at Matignon, his official realm. I tell him that, as co-chair of this conference, I would be honored by his presence at its inaugural session. He is as charming and as friendly as when I met him in 1987 at the Paris Town Hall. The man who years later will become president of the republic tells me he appreciates my gesture but prefers to abstain.
One essential question remains unanswered: How many of our invitations will be accepted? Ten? Twenty? We hope it will be fifty. We are astounded when we learn that seventy-nine writers, scientists, and statesmen have accepted. Still, there are some refusals that sadden us. Lech Walesa would like to come but is not allowed a visa; General Jaruzelski has turned him down. Our response is immediate: Since our colleague is being prevented from joining us in Paris, we shall go to see him in his own country.
To go to Poland we shall need a plane. We have an urgent meeting at Jacques Attali’s office: Would the government let us have a so-called Glam, government airplane? Not likely; we’re in a period of cohabitation. Should we charter a commercial plane? Jacques knows the president of Air Inter, but Air Inter’s planes are not permitted to leave French airspace. So we have to fall back on Air France. But who will cover expenses? It will have to be our foundation. Jacques takes charge of the visas; he has already discussed the matter with the Polish ambassador. Everything is arranged. A collective visa will allow us to make the Paris-Cracow-Paris trip. It is now Thursday, and departure is scheduled for Sunday. Around three in the afternoon Attali calls. He is beside himself: The Polish ambassador has just informed him that the collective visa has been refused. Why? Evidently Jaruzelski is not enchanted by the interest shown Walesa by the Nobel laureates. We don’t want to give up the trip. So we decide to play the American card: Ronald Lauder, a Republican, former United States ambassador to Austria, calls the vice president of the United States, George Bush, and tells him of our predicament. Bush asks that I call his chief of staff. I call and in a few sentences inform him of the situation. “Stop worrying. Everything will be taken care of,” the chief of staff assures me. I insist that it’s urgent. “Come now, calm down. When we do something, we do it quickly.” The vice president has indeed acted swiftly. He has summoned the Polish ambassador in Washington to come to his office on Friday morning. I don’t know what he said to him, but that same day, around 4 p.m. (10 a.m. in Washington), Attali informs me that the Polish ambassador in Paris is desperately trying to reach me. He wishes to tell me the good news in person. The visa problem has been settled. The visas will be issued on the spot. The White House has been more efficient than the Élysée.
Walesa is waiting for us at the Cracow airport, surrounded by his close advisers: Bronislav Geremek, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, and the priest Henryk Jankowski. Under the watchful eyes of Jaruzelski’s secret service, we tell them of our admiration and it feels good to see them reassured, happy.
Particularly moving is the meeting between Walesa and Egil Aarvik, who says to him: “Do you know, Mr. Walesa, that we are still holding your check?” “I know,” Walesa answers, “I don’t think about it. What would I do with that money here?” Suddenly he has an idea: “Give it to Elie, he’ll know how to use it.” Aarvik asks me: “Would you accept his check?” Out of the question.
We make a pilgrimage to Birkenau and Auschwitz, to recite the Kaddish and to open symbolically the Paris conference: One cannot reflect on the future without casting a glance backward on the waning century for which Auschwitz will remain a monument. Walesa does not hide his emotion, and I’m surprised to learn that this is his first visit here. In my brief speech I speak directly to him: “We shall be the emissaries of Solidarnosc [Solidarity] throughout the world, I promise you. But promise us to be our representative here to protect the memory of the Jewish victims as well as their cemeteries, both visible and invisible.” He promises. I shall be bitterly disappointed, years later, when he makes certain remarks with anti-Semitic overtones in order to win an election. Another disappointment: In his second autobiographical book he quotes my speech but forgets to mention my request—and his promise. A third: At the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, he delivers a solemn speech without ever mentioning that Jews were assassinated and annihilated there.
Bernie Fischman, a director of our foundation, observes Yahrzeit for one of his parents on that day. He recites the Kaddish at the old synagogue that bears the name of Rabbi Moshe Isserlis. Again it is the first time that Walesa, a fervent Catholic, sets foot in a Jewish place of worship.
I didn’t know it then—I discover it only in the early nineties—but facing the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria where, among all the others, the Hungarian Jews were exterminated, a dozen crosses were erected. Some of them were glued to stars of David.
How can this sacrilege be explained? Who dared put these Christian symbols on the invisible tombs of the most pious among our Jews? We are told that some young Poles planted them there as a token of reconciliation. Though the intentions may have been honorable, the result is no less offensive.
I am appalled by the insensitivity of the Catholic Church of Poland, and the indifference of European and American Jewish leaders. There is no place for religious symbols, Jewish or Christian, in Birkenau. Its ruins are the strongest symbols of what was perpetrated and destroyed in that camp.
We return to Paris, and the conference opens the next day, in the Great Salon of the Élysée Palace. For me the date is significant: January 18, the day of the evacuation of Auschwitz.
Transmitted live by France’s premier television station, TF1, the opening session is impressive. No one has ever seen so many laureates from so many countries in one place, discussing problems concerning the future of mankind. What has motivated them to come from so far away, surely disrupting their overloaded schedules? I ask the question of my friend Joshua Lederberg. Wisely, he answers: “At this point, what else can we hope to obtain? A Nobel Prize? We already have one. Now we must give something back.”
The mood is solemn, as this extraordinary gathering of extraordinary minds listens to the president of the republic bidding them welcome:
… When—it will soon be two years ago—Elie Wiesel and I elaborated the project that has brought all of you to Paris, we never thought so many of you would be able to come. Elie Wiesel is a great writer in the French language and a universalist; he is also a man of faith: his own faith is contagious. He likes to move mountains, and, as we see, does so successfully. For, not content to juggle concepts, to link dreams and symbols, he affects reality. Thus we went from idea to project, then from project to event….
… You are going to reflect together on the “threats and promises of the twenty-first century.” … What have all of you in common? A title, perhaps the loftiest, in each of your domains. You are “the Nobels.” It is an aspect of glory. It is a challenge. It carries with it a kind of moral obligation. Your presence here bears witness to that. By “obligation” I mean a certain responsibility toward universal conscience…. You are the bearers of an immemorial hope … but we have learned, to our cost, that science, which has brought so many benefits to mankind, can also cause disaster….
Of all the conferences I had participated in up to that moment, this was the most spectacular—and the most stimulating. It taught me a lot: about peace and justice; the challenge of intelligence, and the challenge to knowledge; the duties and limits of science; the Third World and the rich countries; biological research and genetic temptations. How rewarding it was to watch these great minds meet, become friends, and combine their talents and determination to move history in positive and constructive directions. To see them, involved in general discussion, disagreeing, laughing, listening to Slava Rostropovitch, and visiting the newly opened Musée d’Orsay.
I observe Betty Williams, an Irish laureate, as she accosts Henry Kissinger and tells him in a loud voice, for everyone to hear, how much she once hated him. “Yes, Dr. Kissinger, there was a time when I not only hated you, I cursed you; I told everyone how evil I thought your policy was in Cambodia and in Vietnam…. Well, I’ve just heard you speak. And I beg your forgiveness.”
Kissinger is dumbfounded. He blushes. It is one of the very few times I’ve seen him too embarrassed to respond with humor. She kisses him on both cheeks. Suddenly shy, he just stands there, speechless.
In the end, Kissinger thanks me for having insisted that he take part in the conference. I knew how he feared hostile reactions from the pacifist scientists. As a matter of fact, I had shared his apprehensions. But I had faith in his ability to meet the challenge. And he did. Rather than reading his prepared speech on geopolitical problems, he had improvised a short personal address, a sort of credo: “I am not speaking to you as a former secretary of state, nor in my capacity of political science theoretician; I am speaking to you as a Jew who lost twenty-six members of his family in Auschwitz….”
I like playing the role of matchmaker of souls.
Our conference is going well. There is perfect harmony: People wish to learn, to understand, to venture beyond familiar territory. Surely that is why the scientists choose to participate in debates on culture, and, conversely, the humanists listen to scientific debates. The eternal, timeless questions lead to courteous but dramatic exchanges between optimists and pessimists, pragmatists and utopians. Perhaps all of them are right. If one contemplates the road traveled, one may be proud; and if one looks at the road yet to be traveled, one may well be anguished. All the speeches are remarkable; some are dazzling. We experience some powerful moments.
While we convene in Paris, in the Holy Land the Intifada is taking on devastating dimensions. Did I make a mistake by not placing more emphasis on these events in my opening speech? Should I have launched a firmer appeal to reason? Only three speakers allude—discreetly—to the violent clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian adolescents. Privately, I am asked: “What do you think? What should be done?” I suggest setting up our own commission to visit the area. The arrival of ten Nobel Prize winners would not pass unnoticed. And while I am at it, I propose—still privately—the creation of an association of laureates who, in periods of crisis, would send ad hoc commissions to areas of conflict to bring assistance or, at least, to bear witness. The majority agrees, but a minority is wary of the political power such an association might acquire. In the absence of unanimity and means, it is wiser not to initiate anything.
But during the twice-daily press conferences and television broadcasts we are being asked more questions about the Intifada than about our debates. I have rarely felt so uneasy. How can one tolerate armed soldiers hunting down youngsters, even if they are not only capable but determined to wound and kill? On the other hand, how can one defend the provocative acts of the Intifada fighters determined to shed Jewish blood on the West Bank?
Despite Yitzhak Rabin’s prediction that it won’t last, the bloodshed continues. How many victims, on one side or the other, will fall before Israelis and Palestinians decide to meet around a table rather than on the battlefield? But that’s another story. Let us return to the conference about to close.
The closing ceremony is telecast live. At the Élysée the mood is solemn and festive. The trumpets and drums of the Republican Guard resound. The laureates love it. In each of them a child continues to dream. As for me, I admit I’m satisfied. It is true that nothing concrete has been decided, but the encounter itself was a positive act. In my report I summarize the essential gains of our labors:
… So here we are at the conclusion of this conference. It opened under the sign of gratitude; it is culminating under the sign of appreciation. We are being asked what we have learned during these four days. First of all, we have learned to know each other and perhaps recognize ourselves in each other. We have discovered that beyond our specialized disciplines, we share preoccupations and anxieties, of course, but also commitments and hopes concerning the future of our children.
… Have we resolved some of the problems that confront our society? Their number is as vast as their complexity. How can one resolve, in four days, what in fifty years or even five thousand years, since Cain and Abel, mankind has simply ignored or barely touched upon? The Nobel Foundation has not yet discovered the secret that would enable it to offer the laureates universal wisdom in addition to worldly glory….
… We must seek and situate the success of this conference in the conference itself. The fact that it has taken place is in itself significant and important.
And what is the goal we have set for ourselves? To identify the problems and prioritize them. To name the diseases, the epidemics, the famines, the fanaticism. Torture. Pollution. AIDS. The nuclear threat. The distress of children beaten and killed far from the eyes of men, and perhaps from the eyes of God Himself. Just by enumerating these problems, it would be easy to become discouraged. Every one of the participants is proof of what an individual is capable of undertaking and achieving for the benefit of mankind.
Our conclusions follow, and I admit that none is particularly original. Human rights, priority for education, scientific cooperation, encouragement for research in molecular biology, disarmament, aid to developing countries—they could appear as a collection of clichés. One editorial writer ironically compares them to behavior guidelines for schoolchildren. True, in that sense we have done no better than all other conferences of intellectuals. Their resolutions are frequently futile, if not banal, and have never had the slightest influence on the great of this world, as everyone knows. Sadly, ours fare no better.
There were sixteen “conclusions.”
Let us take as an example: the sixteenth—and final—“conclusion” of our labors. “The conference of Nobel laureates will meet again in two years to study these problems. Until then, wherever it is felt that there is urgent need, several Nobels will personally travel to wherever human rights are threatened.”
Many times two years have gone by since then and … nothing. I brought it up with President Mitterrand on several occasions. I reminded him of “our” promises, our public commitments. Each time he was content to answer, “Oh really?” For that matter, this is not the first public promise he has chosen not to keep. In his speech during the Sorbonne conference in 1982, he entrusted me with the organization of an international conference on hatred. Thereafter, several working sessions with scientists and philosophers ensued. Then came the cohabitation. And that was the end of a stimulating project meant to fight the rise of racism and xenophobia in Europe. With hindsight I think I should have protested immediately.
THIS NIGHT AGAIN, I see my father in a dream. Very close, over there, under a gray sky that is not that of Jerusalem. Behind him I sense my little sister. I sense her because my father is smiling the way he does only for Tsipouka.
He looks at me but doesn’t see me. I call him. He doesn’t answer. I try to speak to him, but he doesn’t hear me. Suddenly he seems to tremble. I turn around and see an unknown woman. I know she’s a widow, for she’s dressed in black. I ask her: Since when have you been in mourning? As she remains silent, I pronounce the ritual formula: May God comfort you together with the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. I see her lips moving, but there is no sound. I say: I can’t hear you. She acquiesces with a nod: It’s true, you don’t hear me. Why this pain that seizes me abruptly? I look behind me for my father to come to my rescue, but he’s no longer there.
First he hides the horizon from me. Then he illuminates it. And that is how it should be.
The effect of the Nobel Prize? As Nadine Gordimer described it to me, it is sort of a full-time job. And it makes you travel. Invitations pour in from every corner. The world is yours; it is up to you to enrich it—according to your benefactors—or to amuse it, if you’ve remained lucid and kept your sense of humor. There is prestige in having a movie star to dinner, or a Nobel Prize winner on one’s roster of speakers. It is both chic and serious. You are asked to name your terms. You travel first-class or on the Concorde. You stay in luxury hotels. Rewarded for your activities or your work, you no longer have the time to pursue them.
I accept an offer to deliver a lecture at the Centre Rachi in Paris. While I am in Paris, Mayor Jacques Chirac presents me with the coveted Médaille de Vermeil. Thanks to Hélène Ahrweiler, rector of the universities, the Sorbonne awards me a doctorate honoris causa. I confess that the ceremony, in the presence of several ministers and academicians dressed in green, touches me; it brings back memories of my student years. Every morning I had to choose whether to walk from the Porte de Saint-Cloud to the Latin Quarter and buy myself a cheese sandwich, or take the bus and stay hungry. And now here I am, the same person, being told that I am honoring this great and venerable institution. The violinist Ivry Gitlis plays a new composition for us. Hélène Ahrweiler’s address is exquisitely intelligent and erudite. She stresses the connection between writer and witness. I, in turn, place the emphasis on the vulnerability of education: How can one forget that many of the Einsatzkommando’s commanders had advanced degrees? A university diploma does not constitute a guarantee of morality or humanity. In other words, a little humility would do our intellectuals no harm.
On the personal and professional level I receive a serious lesson in modesty administered by my various publishers. Between celebrity and success there is a bridge I have not yet crossed and probably never shall. The proof is that my books, though quickly reprinted, have only modest sales; some do quite well but rarely become best-sellers. The Prix Médicis, one of France’s most prestigious prizes, helped A Beggar in Jerusalem. Contrary to popular belief, the Nobel Prize does not influence sales much—at least not the year I won.
As for celebrity, sometimes I am accosted by a smiling person who asks: “You look like a famous person. Who are you?” Or else, “My elderly father adores you.” Or again: “My children admire you.” It’s always someone else who reads me.
Rather than royalties, the Nobel Prize brings you an audience. Egil Aarvik had murmured this in my ear the night of the official dinner in Oslo: “From now on you will have a forum, a tribune; your words will not vanish into a void. I don’t promise you will be heard, but people will listen to you.”
Invitations continue to pour in. Which should I accept? Seminars, colloquia, conferences: I am invited to speak on all continents, as though it had been discovered suddenly that I had not lost the power of speech.
I return to Oslo to honor Sjua Eitinger. I no longer like all this moving around. I do it anyhow. I don’t like facing audiences; I face them anyhow.
I make a lightning trip to Brazil. David Pincus, a director of our foundation, accompanies me. Hardly has he landed in São Paulo than he disappears. He’s carrying out his own investigation on disadvantaged children. Children are his “cause,” his obsession. He looks for them everywhere; he organizes help for them everywhere, in Rwanda as well as in Bosnia. By the time he leaves Brazil he will leave behind him an organization—financed by him—to assist the children of the impoverished districts, the favelas.
March 1987: Aside from India, I hardly know Asia at all; but it is not in order to discover it that I’m going to Japan. I am going in order to research a bizarre and disquieting phenomenon there: the rise of anti-Semitism. Popular books are spreading a hatred of all things Jewish. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other anti-Jewish writings are on the best-seller lists. I can’t understand it. There are hardly any Jews in the country, probably not more than five hundred, all foreigners, so what is to account for the rampant anti-Semitism there? In my lectures, in Tokyo and Osaka, I tell my audience how astounded I am: “Anti-Semitism without Jews? In Japan? Don’t you know this is a Western disease? Why are you importing it here?”
The writers and university professors I meet do their best to reassure me: Japanese, they say, do not hate Jews, quite the contrary—they admire them. If they read books about the Jewish people, it’s in order to absorb their wisdom, to get to know more about these Jews who seem to dominate the world by virtue of the money they make(!), the solidarity that links them to one another, and the influence they exercise in the press and in international diplomacy(!!). The Japanese want to know them in order to emulate them; it’s as simple as that; it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. I am far from convinced by these “reassurances.”
In response to a standing invitation from the Jewish community of Australia, we visit that country in August 1988. Two of our friends, Harriette and Noel Levine, go with us. I find this faraway continent, a haven for the outcasts of Europe, particularly exciting. It has become a lush, vibrant place of freedom and culture. In Sydney, I meet a woman who used to live on my street in Sighet. She and her husband pull me into a corner to tell me their problem: Their daughter is about to marry a non-Jew. He’s going to convert, they say, weeping, but … but what? I quickly explain to them the rules of conversion: A male convert becomes a son of Abraham, a female convert a daughter of Sarah, and each assumes the duties and privileges of any other Jew.
David Burger, a survivor of Auschwitz, tells me of his experiences in the camp. He should write a book about them. If only I had the time to help him. That is my obsession: to make the survivors talk, to encourage them to testify, to put their recollections on paper.
Marion rushes back to New York with Elisha. Her sister Anny has just died.
In the airplane that brings us from Paris to Kiev on a cold October morning, in 1990, we have a minyan for the Shaharit service. Wrapped in tallitot and with tefillin ringing our foreheads, we are saying our prayers. A young Bratzlaver Hasid is officiating. He has a melodious, fervent voice, filled with beauty and melancholy. Marion and our traveling companions are watching us in silence. Marion seems taken by these prayers. That is unusual for her.
It all had begun with a surprising question: “Would you like to visit Uman?” Clément Vaturi asked me one day. “I’m going there with a group of Hasidim.” We had met Clément through his sister and brother-in-law, Alice and Daniel Morgaine. I knew Daniel from his days as a journalist at France Soir.
“Did you say Uman? In Ukraine?” “Yes,” Clément answers. “Does that mean something to you?” Does it mean something to me? The word is part of my intimate, imaginary landscape. Uman was the last home of Rebbe Nahman of Bratzlav, the marvelous storyteller of the movement founded by his grandfather the Besht. It is the place where the Rebbe is buried.
Rebbe Nahman is close and precious to me on more than one level. He makes me dream. I love everything that touches him, everything that refers to his life, his work. I love everything that is impregnated by his universe—the stories of princes who lose their way and of exalted beggars, his tales of unknown worlds, his biblical ideas and commentaries, even the comments he used to make at table. “Take my stories and turn them into prayers,” Rebbe Nahman used to say. Well, as far as I’m concerned, I’ll turn his prayers into stories.
An old wreck of a bus is waiting for us at the Kiev airport. The guide is there, the driver is not. The guide is running around looking for the driver. Now the driver is there, but the guide cannot be found. We extract him from a sort of bar. Finally we’re all ready. We get to Uman toward the end of the afternoon, after a horrendous drive across fields and villages where peasants and children stare at us blankly.
We see nothing of Uman, a small hamlet where no Jews live anymore. We’ve come to tell the late Master of our love for his teaching, to meditate and pray on his grave. We plead for his intercession—Rebbe Nahman had promised his followers, “Whosoever will recite psalms on my grave—in the prescribed order—I will help him.”
By now, night has fallen. The wind is determined to blow out the candles we’re holding to shed light on our psalters. The flames resist. Our shadows dance on the wall behind the grave. In the street a few villagers seem scarcely surprised by our presence. They’re accustomed to seeing Bratzlav Hasidim, especially around Rosh Hashana. Such was the Master’s wish: to attract to Uman as many followers as possible for the High Holidays. And they came. Even during the Stalin era they crossed the frontier illegally to be with the Rebbe, who, before dying, had promised his disciples that his flame would continue to shine until the coming of the Messiah. Some of the disciples were arrested, thrown into prison.
Rabbi Koenig of Safed, son of the famous Rebbe Gedalia, recites the psalms. We repeat them after him. There is an air of mystery to our gathering around this grave, for, in general, there is no cult of the dead in Judaism. And yet…. There comes a moment when Rebbe Nahman’s followers stretch out on the tomb of their Master, dead for more than two centuries. And I too stretch out beside them. And deep down I too address my secret requests to Rebbe Nahman.
Then a Hasid starts chanting a Bratzlav melody, and we all join in, repeating the words drawn from a psalm of King David. We repeat them fervently, our eyes closed, our minds aflame. And we start dancing around the tombstone. It’s getting late; all the better—one prays better at night. It’s getting cold; never mind. We dance the way Hasidim dance, hand in hand, flinging our arms from front to back and our heads up and down. At first we dance slowly, then faster and faster, our eyes shut, our hearts open, our souls seared by a burning wound; we dance as though we were being drawn to the heights of those prayers that go up all the way to the seventh heaven; we dance like madmen whose beings stretch out toward the Being, whose fire wills itself to become incandescent. No one will be able to stop us, no power will be able to muzzle us; we sing as we weep, we weep as we sing, and from afar, very far, I believe I’m hearing a strange and yet uncannily familiar voice, and it is telling very beautiful but extremely disquieting stories, in which princes and beggars meet in enchanted woods and inflict harm on one another in order to better fight evil and sadness. Now and then, exhausted and out of breath, one of us tries to stop the dance or at least to slow its rhythm, but then another begins to dance with new vigor. And we go on.
We take our leave of Rebbe Nahman with regret. I knew I loved him, but I only now realize just how deep my attachment is. Though I am a Hasid of Wizhnitz, I had claimed Bratzlav as my own, never acknowledging how profoundly I was tied to him.
In the bus we are silent. The young Rabbi Gabbai passes around almonds and dates brought from Safed. To me they have a special taste. I think of Rebbe Nahman and of his adventurous journey to the Holy Land. Hardly had he set foot there when he felt the need to tear himself away and go back home.
I, too, believe that a part of me has remained in Uman.
Another memorable journey followed, though of a different order. Invited by Moses Rosen, Chief Rabbi of Romania, I have come to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the murderous pogrom at Iasi that occurred in June 1941. It seems the Romanian government considers this visit important. The Romanians are obviously trying to please the foreign visitors. I am housed in one of the official—and luxurious—residences of the president. The permanent ambassador of Romania to the U.N., Aurel Munteanu, escorts us in all our travels. I tell him how outraged I am by the renewal of anti-Semitism, however traditional it may be, in his country. Two widely circulated weeklies are fomenting hatred against the fifteen thousand Jews, most of them elderly, who still live in Romania, and against world Jewry, which they accuse of every imaginable and unimaginable sin. Every cliché is used. Among other things, the anti-Semitic propagandists dare to write, without fear of ridicule, that Israel’s goal is to colonize Romania. Still, it’s not the stupidity of the anti-Semites that embarrasses me; I’m used to it. It’s the passivity of those who allow it to flourish, those who don’t oppose it, who don’t chase the liars from the public arena, who don’t say to them that no honest person will believe their senseless lies, that no reasonable person will believe that the Jews have established concentration camps in Romania in order to practice genocide. Nevertheless this is what local anti-Semites are saying and repeating with impunity.
I am received in private audience by President Iliescu and his prime minister, Petru Roman, who are soliciting my help in Washington, especially in economic affairs. I answer that I cannot assist a regime that tolerates hatred. I cite the minute of silence that their Senate has observed in memory of the Fascist dictator Antonescu, the virulent anti-Semitic campaign of a substantial segment of their press, the xenophobic statements of certain officials…. “But what about the starving children,” Roman interjects, “are you forgetting them? Even if the grown-ups are guilty, why punish the children?” My answer: “Don’t make us responsible for their hardships; it is you who bear the responsibility! Silence the hatred in your country, and the whole world will come to their aid and yours.”
Iliescu seems sincere. He initiates proceedings to bring to justice the editors and writers of the anti-Semitic weeklies. He also invites me to accompany him to Sighet, so that I may show him my birthplace, and then to Rezavlia, the village near Sighet where he was born. Much later, I read in the press that the Romanian government has decided to turn my house into a museum. The people who live there are worried about what will happen to them. I promise them that as long as they are not offered other decent lodgings, they can stay on in their home—or rather in mine.
With Elisha and his cousin Steve, I see Iliescu again, around the end of July 1995. The situation is unchanged. The anti-Semitic papers are still spreading their poison, while Antonescu’s memory is more and more widely revered. I try to make Iliescu understand that he must oppose this vigorously, that it is important for the reputation of his country, that his honor is at stake. But he is afraid of upsetting his citizenry: Too many people view Antonescu as the only leader who fought against the Soviets. I rejoin that Hitler, too, was anti-Soviet. Iliescu promises to find an occasion to speak out and to give the people his own low opinion of Antonescu, who was Hitler’s ally during the war. Will he find the necessary self-confidence and strength? I hope so, for I believe he is sincere.
Vienna, 1992: a happening. Some sixty or seventy thousand young Austrians have converged on the Heldenplatz (Heroes’ Square) to demonstrate against the renascent fascism in their country. Singers and rock musicians, among the most famous, take up the major part of the program. I would not have believed that I would ever willingly attend, let alone participate in, this kind of event, whose very noise would normally make me flee.
Some time earlier I had received a letter from the Austrian minister of culture and education offering to organize an “Elie Wiesel Day,” in the course of which my books would be discussed, after having been studied in all the schools. My response had been: “Thanks for the kind invitation; I accept. I shall come to Vienna the day after Kurt Waldheim leaves.” The infamous past of the former secretary-general of the U.N. is well known. Declared persona non grata in the United States, he has, for all practical purposes, been banned by the leaders of most civilized countries, the notable exceptions being certain Arab leaders, Helmut Kohl, and, sadly, Pope John Paul II, who all visited or received him.
But now Austria has elected a new president, and I feel free to come and meet the youth of Vienna.
The press is largely favorable to the demonstration. Austria clearly wants to close the regrettable parenthesis opened by Waldheim. But to do so it must reject the Fascist-leaning nationalism of Jorg Haider, who a year earlier had declared that there were some positive aspects to the Third Reich’s policies, notably with respect to employment. A demagogic politician, he seems to be a darling of the media. Evidently the Austrians, who have never confronted their Nazi past, easily identified with Haider’s xenophobic program. The polls are troubling; the number of anti-Semites in Austria is climbing. A well-known commentator publishes in the Kronenblatt, a tabloid with a large circulation, an article denying the gas chambers. I’m told that I’m the target of death threats. The demons are not all gone. For all these reasons Austrian democrats wish to strike a major blow “for Austria.” For them this demonstration presents the ideal occasion.
As for the place, it is symbolic: It was here, in this immense square, that half a million Austrians gathered in 1938, the day after the Anschluss, to salute Adolf Hitler as their beloved Führer. Indeed, I’m told proudly, I shall deliver my speech from the very balcony from which he had harangued the ecstatic crowd. It is a tempting prospect, I admit. It seduces me.
Though Marion was just a little girl at the time, she remembers hearing the speech over the radio, as she remembers the change in her neighbors. She lived through the very horror the youth of Vienna are demonstrating against today. Since Hitler, no one had been permitted to speak from that balcony. Strange, but I sense his evil shadow; I feel it enveloping this square, this city, this country. But these young people united in their quest for change merit our setting aside our anger. I have written a text. I decide not to read it. I choose to improvise.
… I am not sure history has a sense of justice, but tonight I am convinced it has a sense of humor! The speaker who preceded me on this balcony, soon after the Anschluss in 1938, decided on death for me, my parents, my family, and my people…. Who could have imagined that a Jewish writer would succeed him in this very place in order to speak out against hatred? But note this: The crowd that came to salute him in 1938 was much larger, and its jubilation far greater….
… Remember, young people of Vienna! In 1938, your ancestors, your parents and grandparents, following Adolf Hitler’s teaching, looked with indifference or complacency upon those Jews—one of whom was my wife’s father, a Viennese—who were arrested, humiliated, and often sent to their deaths. Today, as you close the era of lies and deceit symbolized by Kurt Waldheim, you are free to open a new chapter. Open it without erasing those that preceded it. Do not run toward the future by obliterating the memory of the past. Learn to live without betraying the truth. You must learn to confront, to assume responsibility for, that truth.
An incitement to rebellion? No. An appeal to my listeners to repudiate their parents’ and grandparents’ generation. Intervention in a country’s internal affairs? Never mind. Austria has lived equivocally and hypocritically too long. It must shake itself. I have confidence in its youth. They will do what must be done.