Wiesel's 'Legends of Our Time' Cries Out for Justice, Reminds Readers of Holocaust
we were poor pupils in the dis- another cry for justice, a call to
the Jews," after all there were
In Elie Wiesel, the survivor maintain against us an oppressive the
cipline of hate. Yet today, even Jews to Remember, a reminder to
Bonn reparations, yet:
from Nazism who suffered in con-
centration camps as a mere youth
and returned to tell the tale end
to guide his generation towards
a full understanding of the holo-
caust, we have an admonishing
spirit that calls out to our genera-
tion not to forget, to understand,
to be aware of what had transpir-
ed and to apply the lessons of the
Hitler era to our time.
These guiding elements perme-
ate his numerous works tor which
he has been highly honored in
ELIE WIESEL
France — he writes primarily in
French—and in this country and in
Israel, having been accepted as
a spokesman for the surviving
elements in both these lands.
His newest work, "Legends of
Our Time," published by Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, is especi-
ally dramatic in its presentation
of a case that could well be called
Elie Wiesel's. It is so distinctly
this eminent writer's way of shar-
ing agonies, of interpreting his
thoughts, of introducing the people
he knew and through them review-
ing experiences that were on the
threshhold of the gas chambers.
A great library has already
been built up with the Wiesel
books describing the sufferings
of the generation of Hitler's vic-
tims. In the 15 sketches in
"I.egends of Our Time" we have
more than a supplement to the
works that have already elevated
Wiesel to a high role in the
creative literary circles of our
time. We have here a new gal-
lery of people who formed the
cast of characters in a great
dram a—one of the most tragic
of the dramatic periods in his-
tory.
One senses in many of these
reminiscences a desire to explain
why Jews did not resist, the man-
ner in which their pride could be
labelled resistance, the reasons
for the fears and the callousness.
Yet many of the tales are not
devoid of courage—if a sense of
dignity transcends courage.
In the main, however, Wiesel
accuses. Jews had not done
enough, they protested but they did
not exert their influence properly.
He states, for example, in
"The Guilt We Share," that "the
American Jewish community
never made adequate use of its
political and financial powers;
certainly it did not move heaven
and earth as it should have."
Not the people but the leaders
are blamed—among them Franklin
Roosevelt and Chaim Weizmann.
The Eichmann trial is viewed as
having been a necessity, and of
importance, "because by reviving
the past it was able to demon-
strate how a crime could spill over
and outward, and splash its guilt
onto those who thought themselves
to be standing at a safe distance."
He reaches the conclusion that
"guilt was not invented at Aus-
chwitz, it was disfigured there."
And on this score it is worth
reading his supplementary com-
ment on the Eichmann trial:
"It is not known yet what the
psychiatrists uncovered who ex-
amined Adolf Eichmann at great
length, before and after his trial.
Surely Eichmann's victims—those
who are alive, that is—ought to
be examined. Only, these ghosts
silence which they brought back
with them from over there. They
refuse to open up. One thing that
is not (mown is that they are
afraid of their own voices. Their
tragedy is the tragedy of Job be-
fore his submission: they believe
themselves to be guilty, though
they are not. Only a Great Judge
would have it in his power to rid
them of this burden. But in their
eyes no one possesses either such
authority or such power: no one,
either human or divine."
And so we have a guilt that is
shared, as this essay is titled.
Perhaps the most dramatic of
the essays in "Legends of Our
Times" is Wiesel's account of
his return to Germany 16 years
after be bad left the country. He
went there in 1962 "not to exer-
cise a few aging, probably dated
demons, but to make a kind of
pilgrimage to the source." His
comment is: "The criminal is
not alone when he returns to the
scene of the crime; he is joined
there by his victims, and both
are driven by the same curiosi-
ty: to relive that moment which
stamped past and present for
each . .
Retracing his steps, apprehen-
sive, he found that "the Germans
did admit a certain guilt toward
"The Germans no longer feel any
shame, and they deny outsiders
the right to intervene. They no
longer feel they are standing at
the bar of history."
He was smiled at, but found it
difficult to smile back. When he
applied for a visa at the consulate
in New York he even sensed Ger-
man arrogance.
What he writes about hate is a
philosophical treatment that could
well serve as a subject for socio-
logical study in any university.
Relations between Jews and
German, "in the time of the apo-
calypse," had always been devoid
of hatred, Wiesel indicates, but
his pledge is: "I shall not return
to Germany soon again. - The ex-
perience of the return is too try-
ing, too tense. And he offers ad-
vice that is mingled with challenge
based on the experience as a vic-
tim of the Nazis:
having been deserted by my hate
during that fleeting visit to Ger-
many, I cry out with all my
heart against silence, Every Jew,
somewhere in his being, should
set apart a zone of hate—heal-
thy, virile hate—for what the
German personifies and for
what persists in the German. To
do otherwise would be a betrayal
of the dead."
He had tried to smile in Ger-
Germans of guilt. It is another
great work of one of our most
brilliant writers. --P.S.
There are several good protec-
tions against temptation but the
surest is cowardice.
—Mark Twain.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
16—Fridwf, December 6, 1968
mans looking him straight in the
many, but couldn't. He found Ger-
eye, as if nothing had happened.
The young certainly do not feel
guilt. One author even denied the
mass murders and called their
reports a myth invented by Zion-
ists. That is why Wiesel comments:
"The Israeli humorist Ephraim
Kishon has remarked: Logic, too,
went up in smoke at Auschwitz."
In large measure, Wiesel has
written another "J'accuse." His
"There is a time to love and "Legends of Our Time" contains
a time to hate; whoever does
not hate when he should does not
deserve to love when he should,
-
does not deserve to love when
he is able. Perhaps, had we
learned to hate more during the
years of ordeal, fate itself would
have taken fright. The Germans
did their best to teach us, but
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