Holocaust survivor and 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel was the keynote speaker at Elon’s Spring Convocation for Honors in the Koury Center on Wednesday, April 21. Earlier in the day, he answered questions from students and faculty during a session in Whitley Auditorium. Details...
At the convocation, Wiesel received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree in front of a crowd of 2,800. In his speech, Wiesel said he is saddened that the world is once again experiencing anti-Semitism.
“If anyone had told me that at my age I would discover new (anti-Semitism) threats, I would not have believed it,” said Wiesel, who was 15 when he and his family were deported from their Romanian village to concentration camps in Poland, where his parents and younger sister died. “I really thought anti-Semitism perished at Auschwitz. Its victims did, but anti-Semitism did not.”
Wiesel said education must be a major part of any solution to hatred around the world. He encouraged Elon students to contribute to the solution by asking the right questions.
“When I was young, my mother never asked if I had a good answer at school that day,” Wiesel said, “but she always asked if I had a good question.”
Appointed by President Jimmy Carter, Wiesel chaired the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council from 1980-1986. He has championed the cause of the oppressed, including Soviet Jews, Nicaraguan Miskito Indians and victims of famine in Africa.
His famous book, “La Nuit (Night),” based on his struggle for survival as a young boy at Auschwitz during World War II, was read by many Elon students. Since its publication in 1958, more than five million copies of the book have been printed in 30 languages. The Holocaust, which Wiesel calls “history’s worst crime,” is featured in many of the more than 40 novels, essays and plays he has written.
Before the convocation speech, Wiesel fielded questions from students and faculty in Whitley Auditorium on subjects including terrorism, prospects for Middle East peace and lessons learned from the Holocaust.
When asked about a rise in anti-Semitism since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he said, “You cannot imagine how I feel. There are more anti-Semites now in the world than even in the 1930s. In the ’30s it was limited to certain countries. Today, anti-Semitism is seen in both the left wing and right wing. The source of my distress is, if what we so poorly called the Holocaust has not cured anti-Semitism, what will? What can? Whatever the answer is, education must be a component.”
In the wake of renewed Israeli-Palestinian violence, Wiesel was asked if he thought Israel would one day cease to exist. “I’m not ready to accept the question, it is too horrible,” he said. “The Jewish people would not be able to bear a second catastrophe in such a short span of time.”
He said Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat was the “reason for paralysis” in the Middle East and that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants to make peace with Palestinians. He noted Sharon’s plans to dismantle Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. “Sometimes you need a right-wing administration to implement left-wing policies,” he said.
Wiesel also called “outrageous” any comparisons of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews. “It is an outrage. Why go that far?”
He called rationalism humanity’s biggest failure, because the Holocaust was seen as a logical solution to dealing with Jews. Humanity’s second failure was culture. “(The Holocaust) happened in a place that had reached the highest culture. In those years, German universities were the best in the world.”
Humanity’s biggest success, Wiesel said, is that the Holocaust victims remained human. “And their humanity honors all that we want to believe in.”
Wiesel’s address highlighted convocation, which honors Dean’s List and President’s List students, the faculty, graduate students, the Class of 2004 and members of the Elon Society, the premier annual giving group at Elon.