WASHINGTON, D.C., January 1979. On this icy winter day the White House looks whiter than ever, a calm, sleepy citadel. One of its stately drawing rooms is filled with excitement. Elated Holocaust survivors greet each other, shake each other’s hands, embrace. It’s the first time they have met in this historic place. A woman with numbers tattooed on her arm is whispering: “It’s like a dream…. I’m afraid to wake up.” And another: “Never could I have imagined this.”
Nor could I.
“We have gathered here in this hall which echoes with history—the Declaration of Independence has been hanging on these walls for generations—to try to find appropriate ways to remember what it meant to live and die in the age of darkness.” With these words I open the inaugural session of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, created by Jimmy Carter a few months earlier.
House Speaker “Tip” O’Neill has come to swear us in. Members of Congress, Jewish leaders, rabbis, priests, scholars, and journalists are in the audience. Discreetly, Marion reviews the text of a talk I am about to give. She knows it well for having edited it. Sigmund Strochlitz smiles, visibly moved. Benjamin Meed, a Warsaw survivor, doesn’t bother to hide his tears. “This is the crowning moment of my life,” he tells me, “the most joyous.” This is his favorite expression. He will repeat it at every stage of this undertaking. I try to conceal my feelings. As always, I fear disappointment.
Today we are soaring. At last the American government, on the highest level, is showing interest in our past. At last our past is free to emerge from the depths to which it has been consigned. But I am ill at ease; though an agenda has been prepared for me, this is the first time I am chairing a session of this magnitude. And not surprisingly, at this moment, as always, I see myself back in Sighet. How far away it seems, this little town where a Jewish boy begged God to teach him to pray better, study better.
My friend Justice Arthur Goldberg had given me some good advice on how to preside. To me, my opening remarks to the members of the commission are like the preface to a book. Some excerpts:
It is with a deep sense of duty, privilege, and humility that I agreed to serve as chairman of this uniquely distinguished group of civic, religious, and political leaders.
Some of you, I know, are worthier than I, and most of you are surely more experienced in this kind of endeavor. With your help and cooperation, I hope we shall fulfill our task.
The problems facing us may seem insurmountable. We are supposed to remember, and to move others to remember. But how does one remember, individually and collectively, an event that was intended to erase memory?
By its scope and immeasurable magnitude, its sheer weight of numbers, by its mystery and silence, the Holocaust defies anything the human being can conceive of or aspire to.
All the documents, all the testimony, all the eyewitness accounts, all the history books notwithstanding, we know that we have not yet begun to tell the tale.
How does one reconcile—this is another question that we shall have to face—the purely Jewish aspects of the tragedy with its inevitable universal connotations? True, all Jews were victims; but not all victims were Jewish.
How are they to be remembered? Specifically? Collectively? Individually? Personally? Through monuments? Education? Special liturgy? Ceremonies of remembrance?
We lack a reference point. We don’t know what to do because of the uniqueness of the event. We cannot even go back into history and learn that this is what people used to do to commemorate such events, because there was no such event.
Also, whatever our purposes will be—and I hope they will be lofty and daring—we must remember at least this: that we must think boldly. Let the scope and magnitude of our endeavor not frighten us.
Whatever we do, let it strike the imagination of people everywhere, of all faiths, of all creeds, of all nationalities, of all nations, and perhaps of all centuries.
Let people know that our generation—probably the last that still has something to remember—does indeed remember.
… We around this table represent a noble quest for memory and justice. We are all committed to truth. And though we come from different horizons, we shall respect one another’s beliefs.
The Holocaust was possible because the enemy—the enemy of the Jewish people and of mankind, and it is always the same enemy—succeeded in dividing, in separating, in splitting the human society: nation against nation, Christian against Jew, young against old.
… Forgive me for introducing into this session a note of melancholy. While we are grateful to President Carter and his advisers for being so deeply concerned with the Holocaust now, I cannot but wonder what would have happened had the president of the United States then, and his advisers then, demonstrated the same concern.
If a presidential commission had been appointed in 1942 or 1943 to prevent the Holocaust, how many victims—Jews and non-Jews—would have been saved?
Well, they were forgotten while they were alive. They are dead now. Let us at least remember them and include their memory in our own….
It all began one summer day in 1978, at the Sharon Hotel in Herzliyya. The head of the Israeli opposition, Shimon Peres, is in my room telling me about his new book, when the phone rings. It is Stu Eizenstat, President Carter’s youthful adviser for internal affairs. He wants to know why I have not returned his calls. I laugh: For several days the concierge has been handing me messages asking me to call the White House. I honestly thought it was a prank. “Is that you, Professor?” He goes on to tell me that the president wants me to chair the “commission charged with proposing the manner in which to erect a monument to the memory of Holocaust victims.” I remember my journalist’s reaction, immediate but unvoiced: “The name is too long.” What I did say was: “Please thank the president for the honor he wishes to bestow on me, but …” The White House official cannot imagine that there could be a “but.”
I tell him that I don’t think this position is for me; I’m not a political person; I have no desire to become one; all I want is time to write and study. Eizenstat’s last words: “Please reconsider.” He calls back the next day. When I tell him I haven’t changed my mind, he informs me that the president wishes to see me. This I cannot refuse. The appointment is set for the following week.
An hour later I receive urgent calls from Yitz Greenberg—my former colleague at City College—and Sigmund Strochlitz. Both are aware of my conversation with the White House. Each, separately, tells me the genesis of the president’s invitation. The president had invited a thousand rabbis to the Rose Garden as a gesture of conciliation—his relations with Begin were tense, and he wanted to appease Jewish public opinion. The idea of the monument had come from Eizenstat.
It is impossible not to see the public relations game involved. I tell my friends: “This confirms my doubts: We must never use the Holocaust for political purposes.” Still, they beg me to accept. Sigmund tries to win me over by sentiment, Yitz by logic. I stand fast: My time is limited; I need it for my writing and my students. “But this is a unique opportunity to work on the highest level to ensure remembrance,” says Yitz. “It would be a pity to let it slip by or to allow some opportunist to take advantage of it.” Sigmund: “If you refuse, some politician or other will be nominated. Who knows what he’ll do with our memories.” To settle the discussion I suggest we wait for my meeting with President Carter. I’ll make the decision afterward. Marion’s view: “I know how much this means to you, but if you accept, turn this project into a living memorial, not just a monument.”
At the appointed hour I present myself at the White House gate. I’m always afraid of policemen, but these are polite, smiling; diplomats in uniform. Ed Sanders, the president’s adviser for Jewish affairs, is waiting for me. “Will it bother you if I’m present?” On the contrary, I’m pleased. This way, if I say something foolish he can intervene. He says, “I’ll leave you alone with him toward the end. In case you have confidential matters to discuss.”
I am nervous, but the president’s smile reassures me and instantly restores my confidence. We sit down opposite each other. Sanders takes a chair slightly off to the side. The president tells me he’s read some of my writings and quotes some short passages from memory. The skeptic in me whispers that an aide must have prepared some appropriate quotations. I thank the president, who proceeds to quote another sentence from another work of mine. And, with his famous smile, he adds: “I have something for you. I asked my CIA director, Stan Turner, to go through our archives for material on the places where you were held prisoner. This is what he found.” He holds out to me a file stuffed with photos, and we look at them together. (Later I will offer copies of them to the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem.) Taken by an American bomber flying over Auschwitz in 1944, they show the camp in broad daylight. I learn later that the navigator forgot to stop the camera that was filming the dropping of the bombs.
“I remember that day,” I say to the president. “American planes had been bombing the factories surrounding the camp. Germans were holing up in their shelters. As for us, the inmates, we were praying for the Americans to reserve some bombs for our barbed-wire fences, our watchtowers, our barracks. Since we were going to die, let it be for something.”
Bent over the photos, the president follows my finger, which moves from Auschwitz to Birkenau, from block to block. “Here is the ramp, the chimneys.” He listens to my commentary with an intensity that touches me. I ask: “Were these photos available to the president in 1944?” “Yes, they were.” “Then President Roosevelt couldn’t help but know what was going on in Auschwitz?” “That is correct.” “And nevertheless he did nothing. Why? Why did he refuse to bomb the railways leading to Birkenau?” The president seems uneasy, lost in thought. He doesn’t answer. When he looks at me, his smile is gone. He asks: “What can be done now?” I remain silent; does he expect an answer? He already knows the answer, for he continues: “We must fight oblivion. Isn’t that the purpose of all your work?”
Which brings us back to the question: Am I going to accept the nomination? I say yes, but… but what? “I’m against the idea of a monument.” I tell him that Jewish tradition is opposed to monuments. After all, when Jews left a country, they had to leave all they had built. What do I propose in its place? I suggest a teaching project, a national Day of Remembrance, preferably in Congress—in the form of a solemn joint session of Senate and House—or perhaps at the White House, with the president’s participation. The president gives his consent. Will he come to the first ceremony? Yes, he will.
I have one more request. I would like his permission to take a fact-finding mission to Eastern Europe to revisit the sites: Treblinka, Auschwitz, Babi-Yar. “Why not,” says the president, “that is only normal.” I glance toward Sanders: He’s in tears. As I leave, I say to the president: “If this project succeeds, Jewish history will never forget you.”
The president’s willingness to place his administration in the service of memory touched me. For I am painfully aware of the real, constant threat of forgetting. The Talmud says of Moses that by night he forgot what he had learned during the day. Elsewhere our sages insist on the fact that sometimes the Torah was forgotten. We do not even remember God’s own ineffable Name. How then can we hope that our own experiences will be preserved?
I leave the Oval Office with a title. From now on, by the grace and authority of the president, I may speak on his behalf, having assumed responsibility for what, in my own head, I have already named the “President’s Commission on the Holocaust.” Yitz Greenberg will be its director. He chooses as his assistant Michael Berenbaum, a young rabbi from Wesleyan University whose doctoral thesis deals with my writings. Marian Craig, a former White House employee, a young woman as lovely as she is efficient, will be the soul and the professional organizer of the team. I call Marion: “I hope you like Washington…. We’ll be coming here often.”
All at once I’m besieged by requests, congratulations, suggestions, insinuations; suddenly I am surrounded by people who seem to have only one purpose in life—to become members of the commission. Senators, members of the House, business tycoons all telephone to intercede on behalf of their donors or protégés. This one was at Mauthausen, that one makes speeches about Majdanek. There is no end to the pressures. I never thought that this project would generate so much interest. My problem is that I don’t know how to say no. Luckily the White House people know how, but their criteria are not always mine. Theirs are mostly political. Mine are simple: I would like to gather as many survivors as possible. Sigmund, who has become my right hand, advises me. As does Yitz, of course. So they, too, become targets of pressure. Mark Talisman, a former associate of Congressman Charles Vanik, and Hyman Bookbinder, of the American Jewish Committee, know best who is most important in the capital; they help us with the recruiting. We choose Bayard Rustin, human rights activist and organizer of the Martin Luther King, Jr., march on Washington; Theodore Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame University; former Supreme Court Justice and Ambassador to the U.N. Arthur Goldberg; and also historians, theologians, philosophers, and teachers who have devoted years to studying, exploring, and interpreting the Holocaust. Among the survivors, Yossel Rosensaft is sadly missing. But his widow, Hadassah, joins my team. Some survivors are rejected by the White House. I protest in vain. So I create a board of advisers and make them members.
There is much work to do. Arthur gives me the benefit of his experience. Having presided over many commissions, he knows how to survive them. He knows when to be tolerant and when to be inflexible, when to encourage and when to call firmly and tactfully to order. Arthur is one of this country’s most respected men. The fact that he is a member of my commission surrounds us with a protective zone.
I had first met him with Yitzhak Rabin, who had just been appointed Israel’s ambassador to the United States. Arthur had told me about his war years, and how as an officer of the OSS he had occasion to converse with Arthur Zygelbojm, the Jewish Socialist leader, member of the Polish Parliament in exile in London. He described to me how Zygelbojm, in tears, pleaded the cause of Jews in occupied Poland. He was convinced that if only America knew what was happening, it would force the Germans to halt the massacres. Goldberg felt that it was his obligation to tell him the truth. Soon after, Zygelbojm killed himself. Surely this was one reason why Goldberg, after the war, became a fierce defender of Jewish memory and human rights.
The inaugural session begins with a solemn ceremony. After the traditional minute of silence, I invite every member of the commission to introduce himself or herself. Each expresses his or her gratitude to the American people and its leaders for this initiative. My friend Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson from Washington State comes by to demonstrate his support. He thanks President Carter for choosing me to lead this commission. Senators and representatives of both parties are enthusiastic. Sigmund speaks of Bendin and Rabbi Gottschalk of Berlin. There is a special dimension to their speeches, which seem to be drawn from the most secret zone of their being. Some are sentimental, others matter-of-fact. All are solemn.
After the morning session I ask Yitz to gather nine men in a private room. For that day, the 18th day of Sh’vat, is the anniversary of my father’s death, and I must recite the Kaddish. The impromptu minyan attracts more than the requisite quorum. Even non-Jews attend. In accordance with tradition, I officiate. I repeat the Amidah, with its eighteen benedictions. Suddenly, my voice breaks. I cannot suppress the sob that rises and chokes me. I see my father’s face, his many faces: the one I saw on Shabbat; the one at the Sighet railway station; the one I saw in camp, during the first few days; and finally, the one of the end. I look at him, and he looks at me, as if to ask me what I am doing here, at the White House. This has never happened before, but I cannot go on. I try to hold back my tears as I implore my father not to go away, not to abandon me among all these strangers. Did I shout the Kaddish? Did I whisper it? It stays with me when the session resumes that afternoon.
We appoint the special committees: education, finance, international relations, and a “committee of conscience,” which could just as well have been named “human rights commission.” To Sigmund, I assign the task of organizing the annual “Remembrance Week” ceremonies. I share my thoughts: Since it is forbidden to remain silent and impossible to speak, how does one commemorate a community massacred a thousand times? What prayer must one recite, what forms must one invent?
From the very beginning, the meetings are dominated by the question of the specificity or universality of the Holocaust. Does our mandate apply only to the Jewish victims? What about the Gypsies? The Poles? The Ukrainians? And the homosexuals? After all, other nations, other ethnic and social groups, also endured the horrors of the Nazi regime. For instance: I am haunted by the tragedy of the Armenians, which inspired Hitler to remark, speaking of the Jews: “Who will remember them? Who still remembers the massacre of the Armenians?” But if we included the Armenians, why then would we exclude the Cambodians? We have passionate discussions, stormy sessions. Arthur Goldberg maintains that since our mandate contains a specific name, the Holocaust, it refers exclusively to the tragic fate of the Jews. Other members of the commission, Americans of Polish, Ukrainian, or Lithuanian descent, don’t agree. My position is that the Holocaust is a Jewish tragedy with universal implications. Any attempt to dilute or extrapolate it can only distort its meaning. As a Jew, my duty is to evoke the Jewish tragedy. But in so doing, I incite other groups to commemorate their own.
Behind the scenes, I rely on Saul Lieberman, Yossi Ciechanover, Bernie Fischman. And, of course, Marion. I do nothing without asking her advice.
I have already referred to Dr. Lieberman and to Yossi. Bernie is a lawyer, a humanist: I don’t know anyone as concerned with human rights as Bernie. As soon as he has knowledge of a violation committed anywhere, of any injustice that strikes any human being, there he is, sounding the alarm. I believe him to be the best informed, most passionate man in the world. He and his colleague Arnie Forster have provided me with the information that has allowed me to become involved in more than one fight on behalf of prisoners and victims.
Three months after its inauguration, the commission organizes its first ceremony of remembrance. It takes place in the Rotunda, the great hall of the Capitol. This is where the nation honors the memory of its heroes. It is where, in 1963, its leaders came to pay their final homage to JFK.
Of course all Washington is present. President Carter has kept his promise. He participates in the ceremony. From that day on, thanks to Sigmund’s efforts, similar ceremonies will take place in all fifty states of the country.
As we begin, President Carter notices a small boy sitting opposite us, next to his mother. “Who is that?” he asks me. “My son, Elisha.” “How old is he?” “Seven.” The President motions him to come forward. Bewildered but poised, Elisha leaves Marion and joins us. He will watch the program sitting on the President’s knee, a photo that will make the front pages. When asked, he sums up his reaction: “It was pretty uncomfortable—the president’s knees are kind of hard.”
President Carter speaks movingly and conveys a strong sense of history. But I am troubled by his reference to “eleven million victims.” In the car that takes us back to the White House, I ask him where he obtained this figure. The source: the writings and speeches of Simon Wiesenthal. He insists on including all victims: six million Jews and five million non-Jews. I tell the president that this figure does not reflect the facts. The president is astonished: “Are you saying that there were no non-Jews in the camps?” I explain to him that yes, there were, and some of them were heroes of the Resistance and brave humanists, but that they did not number five million; they were a fraction of that figure. Among the others there were fierce anti-Semites and sadistic criminals whom the Germans released from their prisons in order to supervise the camps. “Would it be just, Mr. President, to honor their memory together with that of my parents?” The president never cited this figure again.
The ceremonies of remembrance, established by act of Congress, become annual events. I claim paternity, but their exemplary execution is assured by Sigmund, who invests in them his time, talent, and passion. We owe him our gratitude. I am also deeply grateful to President Carter for spontaneously accepting, at our first meeting, the idea of an annual commemorative session. Of all the projects related to my work in Washington, this is the one that has given me a genuine sense of accomplishment.
Meanwhile we are actively preparing our official trip to Eastern Europe. There is no problem with pre-Jaruzelski Poland. All the visas are granted, all requests agreed to. Not so with the USSR. The Soviet Embassy here informs us that all decisions will be made in Moscow. To avoid the looming difficulties, Arthur Goldberg accompanies me to the Soviet Embassy. He knows Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin well, and we enjoy a cordial, friendly conversation. Though this is before the Russian intervention in Afghanistan, there is plenty of distrust. What might be the purpose of a commission of inquiry in the USSR, if in fact that is what it is, the Ambassador asks. He understands that we might want to conduct an investigation in Poland, but what might we be looking for in Moscow? I mention Babi-Yar. Well, yes, he can possibly understand Babi-Yar, but Babi-Yar is in Ukraine. How to tell him something he surely guesses, that my wish to go back to Moscow is only vaguely connected with our declared mission? Since 1966, I have been dreaming of returning to “my” Jews of silence. On the pretext that hotels were overbooked, I have been systematically refused a visa. Now, as head of a presidential delegation, I shall get it. Dobrynin confirms this to me.
Still, I don’t obtain everything I request. Until August 1979, almost to the eve of our departure, the Soviets stubbornly refuse to issue visas to two members of my party, Yitz Greenberg and Miles Lerman. I learn of this in France, where, with Marion and Elisha, I am spending a few weeks completing The Testament. There follows a flurry of transatlantic conversations. My own feeling is that we must show solidarity and inform the Soviet authorities that, because we don’t have visas for everyone, we are canceling our trip. Sigmund Strochlitz alone supports me. Hyman Bookbinder counsels moderation. Yitz’s assistant, Michael Berenbaum, urges us to go forward. In his view, our mission should proceed as planned, never mind the “undesirables.” Clearly we are not on the same wavelength.
Another incident interferes with our preparations. The Union of Soviet Writers offers to give a dinner in our honor. I accept. This will be the first time I shall be able to converse with people likely to have known the Jewish writers Der Nister and Peretz Markish. But I ask to see the guest list. Evidently displeased, the Union directors politely answer that the guest list is their business. I don’t remember what made me do it, but I remain firm: In that case, no dinner. The list arrives a day later. The Yiddish poet Aaron Vergelis is on it. An unrepentant Stalinist, he is unacceptable to me. Russian Jewish writers in both Israel and the United States have proffered serious charges against him. I myself heard him telling New York reporters in the mid-sixties that Russian Jews were living very well, that they enjoyed full freedom, and that campaigns on their behalf were based on lies. In his monthly magazine he went so far as to accuse me of being a CIA agent—why else would I fight so hard against the Soviet Union and Communism? And so, while I have no wish to judge him, I also have no desire to shake his hand. The Writers Union reacts angrily: It is their privilege to decide which of their members will attend their dinner. I respond that, in that case, we too will decide with whom we dine. A new list arrives: Vergelis’s name has disappeared. Finally, everything appears settled.
The delegation includes several members of the commission, members of the advisory board, and representatives of various Jewish organizations, among them Judy and Irving Bernstein, of UJA, and the Miami art collectors Irma and Norman Braman.
A native of Poland, Benjamin Meed insists on my sending him to Warsaw ahead of the delegation, as a kind of scout. He implores me to entrust him with the mission of making sure that our program is set by us and not by our hosts. “I know the Poles,” he says. “We had better be careful.” My instructions to him are simple and precise. From the airport we shall go first to the Ghetto to pay homage at the Monument to the Ghetto Fighters. Only then shall we go wherever our hosts wish to take us.
Surrounded by a welcoming committee from the Veterans’ Ministry, Meed is waiting for us at the airport. He looks undone, forlorn. I never would have guessed he could behave so submissively. He tells me it has been decided that we will be taken directly to the Polish monument, the one in the capital. His manner is pathetic. Evidently, for him, our hosts are not much different from the authorities he knew and feared long ago. “I tried to explain to them,” he says, his face crimson with embarrassment, “I really tried.”
In a VIP lounge, sitting around a table with the officials, we try to find a solution to this first crisis. Not being a diplomat, I take a firm stand that surprises even me. (Whatever happened to the shy Talmud student from Sighet?) I tell our hosts that we are here on behalf of the president of the United States for reasons not of foreign policy but of moral conscience linked to the memory of the Holocaust. Therefore either they will take us at once to the Ghetto, or else we shall, however regretfully, leave on the first plane out. The Polish officials stare in amazement and give in. Surely they did not realize what it meant to us, Jewish survivors, to walk on the Ghetto’s hallowed ground. They cannot understand why we insist so much on the Jewishness of the Jewish victims. After all, they lament, Poland lost six million citizens, of which only three million were Jews. They ask: “Weren’t we also victims of the Germans?” I reply: “Yes, you were. But we were the victims’ victims as well.”
This is my first visit to Warsaw, a city I learned to know and love from books. In fact, since Auschwitz, I have not been back to Poland. Is this how I had imagined my return? We move from frustration to frustration. The atmosphere is oppressive. Vanished is the Jewish Warsaw of Roman Vishniac, with its hungry students and their unfulfilled dreams. Aharon Zeitlin’s Tlomacki 13, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s poverty-stricken Nalevki, all these places immortalized by Jewish writers gone up in smoke. Warsaw, the most Jewish of all Jewish cities in the Diaspora, will not be Jewish again. Ever.
Most of the officials we encounter are courteous, even friendly, but I cannot help feeling that we are in inhospitable territory. People are not used to seeing so many Jews here. Are they afraid that we have come to claim what was stolen from us? I have heard too often of survivors being chased away from their former homes by their new occupants: “What are you doing here? Weren’t you killed?”
It is difficult to rid ourselves of the malaise that weighs on us. There is constant tension. The minister of justice, Mr. Buffa, is another disappointment. I expected more from a man entrusted with safeguarding justice. I speak to him of the “deniers,” those who on five continents deny the Holocaust. The discussions are exhausting, endless. There’s a sense of having to fight for every scrap of truth. Exasperated, I finally cry out: “To whom can we turn for justice if not to the minister of justice?” I don’t know why, but at last there is a reaction. He suddenly becomes conciliatory and agrees to most of our requests: the opening of the archives, the exchange of documents, the creation of a joint commission to handle pending problems and unresolved matters.
We leave for Cracow.
Auschwitz. The watchtowers. The barbed wire.
Our guides are waiting for us at the camp entrance. They talk and talk. Marion makes them understand that we don’t need explanations. This is the first time I am back.
Auschwitz a museum! That is what is left—a museum. The plaque is offensive, deceitful. Evidently there have never been any Jews here, or if there were, they arrived here by accident, visitors who lost their way. To satisfy the curiosity and appease the feelings of foreign visitors, especially Americans, a Jewish block has been created. And it is closed, most of the time, “for repairs.” Schiller’s question, “History will judge society, but who will judge History?” comes to mind.
Surely it will be judged by its victims.
I walk past “my” block. The memories rush back: the first days, the first nights at Auschwitz; the apprenticeship of hunger, of death. The terrifying block 11: the prison inside prison. A place one left only for the scaffold or the firing squad. And where is Yossel Rosensaft’s dark cell? They all look alike. Dark. Stifling.
We continue on to Birkenau. Here too, it is the first time I am back in this cursed place. A steel fist is pounding at my lungs. It is daylight, but we are enveloped by night.
The silence of Birkenau is a silence unlike any other. It contains the screams, the strangled prayers of thousands of human beings condemned to vanish into the darkness of nameless, endless ashes. Human silence at the core of inhumanity. Deadly silence at the core of death. Eternal silence under a moribund sky.
As I return to Birkenau, centuries after leaving it, I leave reality behind and find myself face to face with the adolescent I was then. Only now it all seems calm, almost peaceful. I close my eyes, and from the depths of time, hallucinating images appear. The thick smoke, the small heaps of ashes. Blank-faced men running in all directions. In Birkenau, no one moved slowly, especially not Death, which after all must be everywhere at once.
Life, death: a frantic race from one to the other. Here the future was reduced to the instant preceding the selection and departure. “I’ll remember you all my life,” someone said to his neighbor. In an hour he was no more. Here one had to pursue the present before it vanished into nothingness. You ran to wash, you ran to dress, you ran to get your portion of bread, margarine, soup. You ran for roll call, you ran to work, you ran from one block to another, from one man to another, in search of a familiar face, yearning for a word of consolation.
The barking of the dogs—I remember it with painful precision. The howling of the killers. The noise truncheons make when they crack people’s necks. The silent pain of the starving prisoners, weak, defeated, humiliated. I’ll remember all this forever.
Moshe-Chaim Berkowitz, my childhood friend, a generous and deeply religious man, points to something on our left. What is he remembering? He had arrived with the first transport, a week before me. He may well be showing me the Chief Rabbi, the Rebbe of Borshe, or the Rebbe of Kretchenev, all gone without leaving a trace. I watch his lips moving. He is reciting a psalm. So am I.
How peaceful it all looks now, on this sunny day in August. The wind ruffles the gray-white clouds above us. And I remember.
The third week of May. It was cold. Hilda and Bea were silent. Jumping down from the cattle car, a small golden-haired girl put on her coat. “Button up,” said her mother. The little golden-haired girl, so beautiful, so calm, obeyed. My eyes followed her. I see her still, through my tears, I see her carried away by the crowd, disappearing into the distance, a well-behaved little girl, so very well behaved, with a poignantly beautiful smile, a little Jewish girl with a dreamy but worried face, a shining light high above a shipwreck. It is enough to close your eyes a second for time to grab you and sweep you back to the past. There, nothing has changed. There is a level of existence where nothing ever changes.
Birkenau: I had not realized that the camp was quite small; could this really be the black hole of time, like the one scientists situate in space? It has swallowed an entire people, with its princes and its beggars, its old people and its children, a people with hopes and memories.
Between Birkenau and Auschwitz, it is Birkenau that continues to resonate most strongly in my memory; Auschwitz today is too well tended, too well maintained. And the reality of Auschwitz surpassed anything a museum could display. As the years go by, I have less and less confidence in museums as sanctuaries of memory. That is not the case with Birkenau. Birkenau today resembles the Birkenau of long ago. You only have to bend down to the ground to find the ashes that fell from the sky long ago, dispersing to the four winds the pitiful remains of Jewish children.
We walk through the camp. Here too, a guide wishes to be helpful by providing explanations and commentaries. We pretend to be listening. Here is the ramp, and the railroad tracks that linked this place to every Jewish center of the Continent, ultimately converging on the immense altar of fire whose flames touched, must have touched, the celestial throne. The night of our arrival, in May, we had no way of understanding the meaning of that ramp. We were stunned; we thought we had blundered into a nightmare. So this was where the ramp was. The crossroads. The turning point. Josef Mengele. With a flick of his wrist he showed the way to death. By dawn there was little left of our convoy.
I believe I’ve read all that has been written about this supreme site of evil. I believe I know everything, can guess everything, about the victims’ final hours. I shall say nothing. As we get closer to the place where the killers built their gas chambers and their crematories, we clench our teeth and repress the desire to scream, to yell, to sob. As we stand in what was once the antechamber of death those of us who had been there hold each other’s arms. Time is suspended. We remain silent, each with his or her own thoughts. And then, softly at first, then louder and louder, I recite the prayer of the Jewish martyrs; the others join in. “Shma Yisrael….” Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Once, five times…. Why? Because back then, the victims, knowing the end was near, recited that prayer. We needed to show our solidarity with those we loved and still love. And then because, on the threshold of death, all words become prayers, and all prayers become one.
In the open railroad cars that transported us, in a violent snowstorm, in January 1945, from Auschwitz to Buchenwald, we had also shouted that same prayer. With our last breath we wanted to proclaim our faith in Him Who is the source of all faith. Yes, in spite of Auschwitz, God is unique; yes, in spite of the killers, God is our God.
Once again a heavy silence envelops us. I imagine it is not unlike the one that preceded the Revelation at Sinai. The Talmud has this poetic description: “the silence was such that the cattle stopped bellowing, the dogs stopped barking, the wind stopped blowing, the sea stopped heaving, and the birds gave up chattering…. The universe held its breath, in expectation of the Divine word….”
Sixteen years later, during the ceremonies of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and Birkenau, I say these words, which will offend some Christians:
God of forgiveness, do not forgive those who created this place. God of mercy, have no mercy on those who killed Jewish children here. Do not forgive the murderers or their accomplices whose work was to kill…. Remember the nocturnal processions of children, so many children, all so wise, so frightened, so beautiful….
God of compassion, have no compassion for those who had none….
I spoke without hatred. With anger? Yes. And grief. It was at Birkenau that I had discovered the kind of evil that saps all joy.
When I return to Cracow on February 6, 1995, I am welcomed at the airport by the American ambassador, Nicholas Rey, and several Polish officials. I get the full VIP treatment, no police formalities. Three bodyguards are assigned to me full-time. Cars with gyroscopes and sirens rush me through seemingly empty streets. In short, much noise and solemnity. This time I represent President Bill Clinton. Together with Undersecretary of State Richard Holbrooke, I lead the U.S. delegation to the fiftieth-anniversary celebration of the liberation of Auschwitz.
My heart is heavy with anguish. I wonder if I did the right thing in coming. I have attended a great many ceremonies of remembrance. This time it’s different. The number fifty has special meaning and symbolism. That is why heads of state, dignitaries, and survivors have gathered here, invited by Lech Walesa, president of the Polish Republic.
But this event has provoked many polemics, and the world media have a time of it for several weeks. There are two sides: on the one, the Warsaw authorities; on the other, the Jewish organizations, and in particular, the World Jewish Congress. Until November, the International Auschwitz Committee—presided over by a former Belgian deportee, Baron Maurice Goldstein—had been in charge of the program. Then the chancery of the president took over. Weighed down by bureaucracy, it seems to have gone from misstep to misstep: invitations sent out too late or not at all, ambiguous statements and decisions that offend Jewish sensitivities.
For example, the official program that was sent to me in New York included the Jewish prayers for the dead in a manner that was disconcerting, not to say insolent. Scheduled to start off the event were sirens and the welcoming of crowned heads and dignitaries, followed by accolades and speeches, and then, after all the dignitaries had left, those who wished to recite the prayers for the dead could do so. In other words: the Kaddish and the El Maleh Rakhamim were to be kind of optional appendices. In response to a question from a New York Times reporter, I said that if no change were made, I would not make my speech and instead would recite the Kaddish myself.
Faced with the scandalous attitude of the organizers, I even considered staying away altogether. Why should I go to Poland to participate in a media operation that could only dishonor the Jewish memory of the victims?
One thing was clear: The Polish officials meant to de-Judaize the tragedy of Auschwitz. This is not new. Beginning in 1945 and under the Communist regime until the nineties, every effort was made to remove or at least curtail the intrinsic Jewish aspect of that tragedy. There was talk only about anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi victims, of Polish citizens and political prisoners. They forgot—or at least wanted other people to forget—that even non-Jewish historians had postulated that 90 percent of the murdered victims in this death factory had been Jews. And all this was still going on under the administration of Solidarity’s founder, Lech Walesa, whom I had taken with me to Birkenau and Auschwitz in 1988. Had he understood nothing of what I had said to him then?
In fact, the problem transcends individuals. It must be posed in psychohistorical terms: Why, when it came to the Jewish past, did the Polish people, in its collective conscience, seek to forget? Because it felt guilty? Because it envied the Jews’ martyrdom? Or was it merely convenient to remove the Jewish component from the general suffering under the German Occupation?
It may seem paradoxical, but if in the end I decided to accept President Walesa’s invitation, it was precisely because of the controversies surrounding this fiftieth anniversary. I convinced myself that I did not have the right to evade the issues. Perhaps in my dual role of Nobel laureate and representative of the American president, and with a little luck, I might succeed in building some kind of consensus.
I miss Marion: I need her advice, her support. But she refused to join me. She has never liked ceremonies.
Two friends accompany me: Sigmund Strochlitz, himself a survivor of Auschwitz, and Pierre Huth, a Paris dentist whose father was the Schreiber, the scribe, of the infamous block 11, the punishment block, at Auschwitz.
The Forum Hotel in Cracow is a real anthill, its atmosphere that of a huge international convention. Polish security agents and bodyguards are whispering into tiny microphones. Delegates and journalists are calling out to one another in every European language. Everyone is busy, rushing here or there. All the foreign delegations are expected at the ancient Jagiellonian University for a solemn session to be addressed by President Walesa. I’m not going. My empty chair—between Polish President Walesa’s and German President Herzog’s—will raise eyebrows. It will be interpreted, rightly, as a protest against the official policy of de-Judaization.
Moreover, at the same time, the Jewish representatives are organizing an entirely Jewish ceremony at Birkenau. I choose to join them.
The day before, Marion had transmitted to me from New York an invitation to a private luncheon with Walesa at Wawel Palace. I would have accepted, of course, if only to try to resolve the conflict. But there is no way for me to return from Birkenau in time. After some negotiation, U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Rey informs me that the meeting has been changed to that evening.
I feel better. Surely Walesa will realize that if he maintains his stand on the prayers, his country’s image will be tarnished. After all, what am I asking for? A few minutes to recite a few prayers. Is that too much? No. I’m no longer concerned: This unique commemoration will take place with dignity after all.
I leave for Birkenau.
The ceremony there is moving. The speaker of the Israeli Parliament, Shevah Weiss, who is of Polish origin, speaks in both Hebrew and Polish. I begin in Yiddish and continue in English. I speak at length on a topic that has haunted me since 1945: the children. I keep seeing them, that first night. And I keep seeing a beautiful little girl with blue eyes and golden hair. I keep seeing my little sister whom my father made laugh, my little sister who makes me weep every time I think of her and her smile.
Later that day, at Wawel Palace, there is a meeting of Nobel laureates, representatives from several international organizations, and heads of foreign delegations. The purpose is to compose and adopt an “Appeal from Auschwitz” aimed at mobilizing peoples and nations to work toward preventing another Auschwitz. Walesa chairs the session. He reads us a proposed text prepared by his staff. And—I cannot believe my ears—the word “Jew” is not mentioned. Already that morning, in his speech at Jagiellonian University, he had startled the Jewish participants by omitting all reference to the Jewish tragedy. How to explain his insensitivity? Surely he must know that his behavior can only make matters worse?
On Holbrooke’s advice, I ask for the floor the moment Walesa finishes speaking. Politely, I point out the omissions in the text proposed to us. I particularly emphasize the fact that it seems unthinkable to adopt an appeal to mankind on the lessons of Auschwitz without mentioning the Jewishness of the great majority of its victims. I do not deny—I have never denied—that there were other peoples in the accursed realm that was Auschwitz; but I state that, however much against their will, Jews constituted the overwhelming majority there. Shevah Weiss supports me. So do other delegates. The first battle is won. The wretched victory leaves me feeling nauseous.
During that session a diplomatic incident occurs that goes almost unnoticed. Seated at the same table the Serb and Bosnian representatives avoid looking at each other. Normal. But when the Serb begins to speak, the Bosnian leaves the hall. Between the two men there is an abyss of blood and death. Here and there a few delegates comment in whispers. That is all. A moment later everybody is speaking of other things.
“I’ll see you tonight,” Walesa tells me on his way out. The American ambassador, who never leaves my side, specifies “after the concert.”
Finally, in a small room next to the stage, I find myself face to face with the president of the Polish Republic.
To my astonishment, he is the one who attacks: “We’ve known each other for years. We were friends. But ever since I was elected president, we have had no contact.”
I answer that I don’t like to disturb him. “Before, it was different….”
Should I tell him I did not appreciate the anti-Semitic overtones of his last electoral campaign? This is not the time. Right now we need to resolve the crisis that could well jeopardize the spirit and content of tomorrow’s ceremony. I convey this to him cautiously. He responds, punctuating his thoughts by gesturing with his hands.
“Since you perceived a crisis, why didn’t you pick up the phone and talk to me? Friends talk to each other. Between friends problems can be settled quickly.”
Should I answer that he too could have called me? Instead, I explain that I called his minister in charge of the commemoration, called him five or six times, and each time was told to speak in Polish for he understood neither English nor French nor German. Walesa nods and listens.
I convey to him the grievances of the Jewish organizations. I explain to him why we feel offended. I ask him whether he remembers our visit—our very first—to Birkenau and Auschwitz. Yes, he remembers. And at that moment his attitude changes; even the room suddenly appears lighter, more cheerful. The situation is defused. From that moment, everything goes quickly, very quickly. Walesa asks me what I want. I answer: “The Kaddish, and all the customary prayers….” Before I even finish, he agrees. What else? I would like him to say what we Jews never stop repeating in every language on earth, that the Holocaust is, above all, a Jewish tragedy, unique of its kind. Again, he agrees. And he adds: “And then we’ll be friends again, promise?”
The next day he keeps his word. First at Auschwitz, then at Birkenau, he mentions the singularity of Jewish destiny in these places. Opening the general ceremony, a rabbi recites the Kaddish, chants the El Maleh Rakhamim, and then intones the credos of the martyrs. Centuries ago, those were the affirmations made by pious Jews who, rather than convert, went to their death by fire and by sword.
Of course the organizers had also invited clergy: Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and a Muslim qadi. Some found that strange: Had there been Muslims in Auschwitz? Were we not forgetting the SS Muslim divisions? And the Mufti Hajj Amin el-Husseini of Jerusalem, Heinrich Himmler’s friend? In 1942 Himmler acted as his guide to this very place. Better to let it go.
Journalists, delegates, and survivors congratulate me on a victory. What a victory…. I think of those whose cemetery is the sky, and I feel not at all victorious.
Let us return to the fact-finding mission in 1979. Back in Warsaw, the president of Parliament and a few influential members of government invite us to a farewell cocktail. They never knew, they never bothered to find out, that for us it is Tisha b’Av, a day of fasting. A journey that had begun in an atmosphere of little understanding ends in embarrassment.
Next stop is Kiev, the beautiful Ukrainian capital and its gardens, the city and its anti-Semitic past. Kiev means Babi-Yar. Babi-Yar means Jewish suffering, Jewish memory, Jewish anger. I still remember fragments of images of my first visit, in 1965: the cowering old men in the synagogue; the mute woman, her memories sealed—a survivor from the ravine of death, she had lost the use of speech. I could not understand: The massacre had lasted ten days; people could hear the crackling of the machine guns; and yet the Jews made no effort to flee or hide. No, I could not understand: Day after day Jews were being murdered, and the population had done nothing to save their neighbors.
A narrow street was used as the assembly area. At its end was a ravine. There the victims were lined up in rows and machine-gunned point-blank. As the shots rang out, the victims toppled into the ravine, the dead and the living. Kiev means forgetting legitimized. Kiev means outrage. How could a Jew not feel uncomfortable here?
The program is a full one. We are harangued, we watch documentaries never seen by the general public, showing roundups and tortures, humiliations and executions. We see villages set on fire, corpses mutilated. I am constantly nauseous.
The worst is still to come: in front of the Babi-Yar monument, a military orchestra and wreaths of every color. Red carpet and all the rest. It seems as if every official in Ukraine is here. Evidently these political leaders of Kiev are proud of themselves. One can no longer criticize them for the absence of a monument in Babi-Yar. There it is, the monument. Now, they seem to be asking, are you satisfied at last?
The huge Stalin-style monument is grandiose, pompous, banal, and outright vulgar. It is so large and ugly that it has a crushing effect. Never mind, I tell myself, that’s their business. It is not up to me to judge their lack of taste. But I can and must reproach them for their lack of decency and honesty, their distortion of historical truth, for the word “Jew” does not appear on the monument. The inscription describes the victims as Soviet citizens assassinated by the Fascists.
I am overcome by rage. I tell the Ukrainian officials that while I had been pained and outraged in 1965, when there was nothing here but emptiness to obscure the only thing that remained of the victims—their memory—that was nothing compared with what I was feeling now.
I ask them how they dare deal so shabbily with the truth. I ask who gave them permission, who ordered them to commit this sacrilege? Those Jews who were killed, were they killed because they were Ukrainians, or Soviets, or Communists?
Rarely have I felt such fury. I remind myself that I am representing the president of the United States, that I have no right to involve him in this way, possibly provoking a diplomatic incident. But I cannot think of that now. I shall think of it tomorrow.
The ceremony ends abruptly. We get into our bus and start off toward the airport. But why are we stopping on the way? The guides and chauffeurs respond that it is all in the program; a light lunch to show us Ukrainian hospitality. But who can eat or drink?
In Moscow, in 1979, we had two purposes: first, to secure the liberation of the “prisoners of Zion;” second, to negotiate the opening of the secret Soviet archives to American and Israeli scholars.
On the second point, we obtain polite promises and assurances. On the first, not even that. Are the Soviet authorities familiar with the State Department’s directives to us not to raise political problems? The situation is delicate. We may evoke the past, the persecutions, the racism, the anti-Fascist struggle, and the Holocaust, but not the fate of the refuseniks and dissidents, for fear of jeopardizing relations between the two powers. Hence our dilemma: to follow the rules and do nothing, or disobey and possibly embarrass the president, to whom Brezhnev, known to be touchy, would be sure to complain. The others defer to my judgment. What do the Talmud and our beloved Rashi say about this kind of problem?
These are my thoughts as we wait in a spacious drawing room in the Ministry of Justice to be received by Attorney General Roman Rudenko, former Soviet prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. I have a list in my pocket. The list, compiled by the special team dealing with Soviet Jews in the Israeli prime minister’s office, includes four names, among them those of Anatoly Shcharansky and Iosif Mendelovich. I know that Rudenko has personally taken part in their trials. Can I speak to him without risking an explosion?
The attorney general, in full dress uniform, covered with medals, invites us to take our places around a long table—the Russians adore long tables. In accordance with protocol—the Russians are mad about protocol, too—I face our host. Everything about him suggests authority and strength. His stature, his shoulders, the epaulets shining on his dark jacket, and especially his face. He is not someone you could oppose with impunity.
The discussion starts with a review of the aims of our mission. I say to him: “I am familiar with your role at Nuremberg.” He answers: “You may know a part of my life, whereas I know your whole life. I know about your literary activities and the others.” He stresses “others.” A bad omen? He promises that his department will cooperate with us. He wishes to be given a list of our requests. My colleagues seem pleased, but I am preoccupied by another list, a list of a different sort. After all, I cannot hand it to him in front of everyone, especially not in front of his own people; if he gets angry, I’ll be to blame. But then how will I manage to communicate the four names to him? I am determined not to go back to my room with the famous list, and so, after the session ends, I say to Rudenko: “Mr. Attorney General, I should be grateful if we could talk alone.” He wants to know why. Courtesy of the Talmud, I have an answer ready: “In order to explain to you why we need to be alone.” A fleeting smile crosses his stony face: All right, come along.
The three of us—he and I and his interpreter—walk into his huge office. I am ill at ease: I am moving onto dangerous terrain; if I make a mistake, others will suffer. I beg the god of amateurs to help me, and I launch into my plea: “You said a moment ago, Mr. Attorney General, that you know all about me; therefore you know I’m not a political person….” He interrupts me: “Not a political person, you? Do you, perhaps, think that you’ll be able to deceive me? Do you, perhaps, think I am not aware of what you are doing against my country?”
I must have changed color. I open my mouth for air. He is still talking: “I know you came here in 1965 to write a defamatory book against the fatherland of Socialism. You came back a year later to write a play, also directed against us. Don’t bother to deny it; I know all about it. I also know the rest. Your articles, your speeches, your statements, I know them all. So don’t tell me that you’re not a political person!”
The verbal avalanche makes me feel as though I am literally shrinking. I am annoyed with myself for having pushed too hard. How am I going to get out of this? I must try: “I repeat, Mr. Attorney General, I am not a political person. If what I write sometimes has political connotations and repercussions, it is not my fault.” He does not seem convinced. He counters with a shrug: “Very well, let’s get on with it. You wanted to see me, you’re seeing me. Is there anything else? I am a busy man, you know.”
It is now or never. I hand him my list. He glances at it and tries to give it back. I refuse to take it. His face, his voice, his whole body stiffen: “I have no idea what or whom you’re talking about.” He is lying. I know it. I am sure of my Israeli friends; it was he who prosecuted the four refuseniks. “I can explain it to you,” I say. He is close to losing his temper: “I haven’t the time…. Your explanations don’t interest me…. Write me a letter through normal channels….” I tell him that he is holding that letter in his hand; it contains all the facts concerning the four cases that he should resolve on purely humanitarian grounds. He persists: “I’ve just told you—I don’t know them!” I answer that he undoubtedly knows someone who does. Now he sees red; his face is turning purple: “None of this pertains to me or my department.”
Our conversation has lasted some twenty minutes. Outside, Sigmund and Marion must be worried. Maybe they already picture me in a cell in the Lyubianka. As for me, I know that at most I am risking expulsion and a reprimand from the State Department. I can deal with those. And then, a small miracle: Abruptly his tone changes: “I’ll make a deal with you. Two of the four. Tell them to write me directly.”
So he knows that we have ways of contacting the prisoners in the Gulag.
The letters were sent. And he kept his word.
Saturday we make our way to Arkhipova Street. The huge synagogue is packed. How did these Jews learn of our presence in Moscow? As always, word of mouth functions here with tested efficiency. The rabbi is absent. “Well-informed” people speculate that he must have been advised to spend Shabbat elsewhere. But his assistants treat us with great respect. “Personal” messages are whispered to us: refused visas, separated families, official humiliations. Nevertheless these Jews do not give up hope. A man pushes his small son in front of me: “Take him to Jerusalem!” An old woman: “I don’t mind living here, but I want to die in Israel.” Young people tell me about their secret meetings in the cemeteries of all the large urban centers; they’ve been studying Jewish history and Hebrew. These Jews will never cease surprising me. They are amazing.
As I sit in synagogue, I scrutinize them, these people, so near and yet so distant, whom since 1965, in one way or another, I have never left. Do they recognize me? Some of them tell me they do, no doubt to please me. What matters is that I recognize them. I even recognize those I am meeting for the first time. Though impoverished, they do not seem unhappy. The spirituality they seek within their defiance confers on them an air of exaltation. Young and old, I admire, I love them all; I almost define myself in terms of the love that binds me to them. It is clear they have not come to pray—do they even know how to read the siddur?—but to communicate.
I am given the maftir, the privilege of reading the chapter from Isaiah in which the prophet consoles his people; generous, poignant words that in their simplicity are so appropriate to the situation. Forming a semicircle around the bimah, the faithful silently repeat the words after me, word for word, hardly moving their lips. How many understand their symbolic meaning? But every one of them longs for consolation. And in my address, I tell them of my joy at being with them. If President Carter had created this commission just for these encounters, dayyenu—it would have been enough.
But our visit to the Soviet Union was about to produce a more concrete effect, one I believe is worth reporting.
Among the personalities whom the authorities have us meet there is a heavyset man, with an open, smiling face—General Vassily Petrenko, the liberator of Auschwitz. Upon meeting my young son, he removes one of his many medals and pins it to Elisha’s jacket. I instantly find him even more appealing. We isolate ourselves in a corner and exchange reminiscences. He describes to me the atmosphere in his unit as it prepared for the assault, and I describe to him the last day, the final hours inside the camp, the urgent discussions between fathers and sons, friends and comrades: What to do? Hide? In which barracks? And would the SS not clean out the death factory before retreating? To the general I say: “The Red Army was so close, so close; we were all praying for you and your men. No believer ever implored God with more fervor.” Petrenko answers that his soldiers had an idea of what they might discover in the camp, but that they could never have imagined the reality they found.
I say: “You could have advanced your attack by one day, by a few hours. You could have saved a great many prisoners, Jews and Russians.” He explains: “It wasn’t easy. There were logistical problems, strategic considerations. And then, I had to get the order from the Stavka, the High Command….”
And suddenly, as we chat, the general and I, as we exchange stories about courage and despair, an idea flashes through my mind: We must bring together the other liberators of camps—to listen to them, to thank them, and to ask for their support. Our testimony has been questioned, even refuted by Nazis and moral perverts. The voice of the liberators would make them hold their tongues. That was the genesis, in my mind, of the Liberators’ Conference that was to convene in Washington in 1981.
In the plane that takes us from Moscow to Copenhagen, where we go to express our gratitude to the Danish people for having demonstrated to the world that it was possible to save Jews, my Elisha, who until then had never complained about being hauled around the world, exclaims: “That’s enough! I’m resigning from the commission!”
From Europe, that commission continues to pursue its fact-finding mission in Israel, the place where memory has been preserved better than anywhere else. We have endless meetings with the directors of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum. How can we put their concerns to rest? They are worried that the museum project we are planning will relegate theirs to second place. I believe they are wrong. Yad Vashem will remain the essential site of remembrance. It deserves absolute priority.
In the report we are about to submit to the president, we are proposing the creation of a museum. Such is the wish of most members of the commission. They feel that having entered into the era of the audiovisual, books alone no longer suffice. My position is that we Jews have never assigned much importance to museums. How are we going to “show” the Tragedy, when it is almost impossible even to speak of it? Could images be more eloquent, more effective? And what images? Those taken by the enemy? In the end I go along with the concept of a “living museum,” as long as the accent is on “living.” Now that the concept has been accepted by the commission, there remains the matter of drafting the report to the president.
With the exception of my introduction, it is written by an aide to the director. Unfortunately, it is badly written. In the end, our friend Lily Edelman undertakes a rewrite. It takes her a full three days.
Another ceremony: We deliver the report to the president in the Rose Garden in the presence of many dignitaries and congressmen. The president seems satisfied. We have proposed that a new organization be created to succeed the commission. The proposal has been accepted. What shall it be called? Just as they had for the commission, the White House suggests a name as long as a stifling summer day without water. Once again I invoke my authority to shorten it. It will be inscribed in various legal documents as the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, or just the Council. I summarize its purpose in a sentence to be engraved on the museum wall: “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”