He is, by any physical measure, not a large man. His hair, longish and tousled, has not yet betrayed him by completely fading to silver. As he walks onto the stage, the crowd breaks into applause. On the street he could be any older gentleman, but this is an audience that knows him. Knows his life. Knows his work. They are applauding for Elie Wiesel.
As College President James Freedman gives his opening remarks, Wiesel sits on stage in a high-backed, antique armchair whose supple cushions emphasize the slightness of his frame. He is hunched over; he rests his forehead on his hand. Every once in a while he massages his temples or takes a quick glance at Freedman or the audience. Most of the time, we cannot see his face; His hand provides a barrier, shielding his expressions from us and ours from him.
He seems unaffected by the accolades that Freedman showers over him. They simply bead up and roll off him -- like water on wax paper. And so I listen to Freedman, but I watch Wiesel. He seems to be a man defeated in the most primitive way. His countenance, his posture, his body language speak of an animal whose spirit has been broken.
And then Freedman draws his introduction to a close; we applaud again, and Wiesel rises from his seat, slowly, belatedly, as though our homage is directed elsewhere to some unseen guest. He begins to speak, quietly, but forcefully. His body is still not imposing, but suddenly his presence is immense.
Wiesel spoke at Dartmouth on October 23rd. Two weeks of classes and midterms and mundane stress have occupied my attentions since then. Two weeks of dirty laundry and trying to use those darn meal punches has kept me busy. But still, when I walk between classes, or unearth my mind from a math problem, his palpable image returns, and with it, his words.
Wiesel's message is not a new one. To remember what occurred, to preserve the lesson humankind should learn, seems obvious enough. But still, there are people, both groups and individuals, who proclaim that the Holocaust is no more than a figment of an imagination.
Or rather, a figment of 9 million imaginations. And further, a contrivance of imaginings, an elaborate plot. Wiesel is deeply worried that with him and his fellow survivors will die the voice of truth, and our descendants will hear only a faint echo, elusive and refutable. He is telling us that the nay-sayers have time on their side.
This is what Wiesel spoke about that night -- "The Assault on Memory."
Like the Nazi euphemisms for death camp activities, the words of those who deny the Holocaust attempt to efface our awareness. The Nazis masked their murderous intent as "cleansing," disguised deportation as "resettlement," selection for death as "special treatment," and gas chambers as "showers."
In a word, they tried to fool the world, and for a while they succeeded, at least until the evidence emerged. Today the lies come after the voice of evidence has become a whisper before passing away.
Denial is Elie Wiesel's sworn enemy, as surely as the Nazis were. He tells us the critic Alfred Kazin questions the factual content of "Night," Wiesel's first book. "If a man like Alfred Kazin says this, why shouldn't all the deniers? What do you do," he demanded, "when people say you were too close, you are not objective. We don't believe you. We like you, but we don't believe you.' "
At the end of his speech, Wiesel portrayed the world as abominably and potentially indifferent. "The Talmud," he tells us, "says whenever a just person dies, God, in his immeasurable grief, weeps. And his tears, as they fall into the ocean, reverberate. [During the Holocaust], did God's tears fall... on deaf ears. And is it possible that God weeped and humanity was not moved. And if they were not moved then, how do we move them now?"
These are Wiesel's closing words, delivered in the same soft tone, but nonetheless epochal. He bows his head, and for a long moment Spaulding Auditorium is silent. I think to myself, if this were a rock concert, the audience would have erupted in applause before the music was finished, knowing the message by heart.
But here we are still stunned, and our silence speaks louder than the applause which follows it. A thousand sets of hands clap, and even though he is no longer speaking, my eyes follow his movements, memorizing his image. I want to remember a man who has earned God's tears.
