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108

Friday, November 21, 1986 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

His Encounters In Soviet Union
Are Heartening To Elie Wiesel

ELSA SOLENDER

Contributing Editor

lie Wiesel said there
was "no great break-
through" made in his
talks on behalf of Soviet
Jewry with Soviet officials
during his recent visit to
Moscow, but the 1986 Nobel
Peace Prize winner told The
Jewish News this week that
he was "encouraged" by the
trip and particularly heart-
ened by his meetings with
refuseniks.
Wiesel said he was inform-
ed this week that at least one
Soviet Jew whose cause he
pleaded for in his meetings
with Soviet officials has been
notified that he will soon be
permitted to emigrate. And
Wiesel added that he expects
to meet with Soviet leader
Gorbachev in Moscow within
the next few weeks, "before I
can go to Oslo," at which time
he will press his case on
behalf of Soviet Jewry and
Soviet cooperation regarding
Holocaust history and com-
memoration. The writer and
teacher will formally receive
his Nobel Prize at a ceremony
in Oslo on December 10.
Wiesel's six-day visit to
Moscow last month was part
of a mission for the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Council,
which he chairs. The Soviets
will participate in a con-
ference scheduled for Feb-
ruary in Washington to com-
memorate non-Jewish vic-
times of the Holocaust.
According to Abraham
Bayer, one of the six col-
leagues who accompanied
Wiesel to the USSR, the visit
generated more sparks of
hope for Jews than media
reports reflected. In an inter-
view in New York with The
Jewish News. Bayer, who
directs the international corn-
mission of the National
Jewish Community Relations
Advisory Council and serves
as vice chairman of the board
of advisors fo the U.S. Hol-
ocaust Memorial Council,
said that the visit resulted in
a new Soviet willingness to
share extensive data on the
Holocaust and an agreement
to exchange scholars, which
implicitly includes those of
Yad Vashem, the Holocaust
Memorial in Israel.
The Wiesel delegation had
many open, meaningful con-
tacts with Soviet Jewish
refuseniks during their
Moscow visit, some of which
were highly publicized in the
United States.
Bayer also credits Wiesel
with achieving many subtle
improvements in tone and
communication with the
Soviets on both Holocaust
memorial and Soviet Jewry
issues. Although understand-
ings on Soviet Jewry were
- . mainly matters of detail,

E

Elie Wiesel

nuance and context during in-
formal encounters, Bayer urg-
ed that they should not be
underestimated.
"Elie kept saying to them,
`You're a great superpower.
What do you need with this
problem? Why don't you just
solve this problem and preoc-
cupy yourself with things
that make a country like
yours great?'
"I caught from Elie —
who's admittedly always 'up'
— a feeling that we are at a
time of potential. Not a
crossroads, but moving to-
wards that," Bayer siad, ad-
ding, `.`—. and Elie Wiesel is
not naive. He grew up within
a matrix of suffering, and he
understands differences bet-
ween agenda and priorities,
and gestures and tokens."
Bayer believes the warmth
with which the Soviets
greeted the delegation —
which included Wiesel; his
wife Marion; Bayer; Rabbi
Michael Melchior of Oslo,
Norway; Sigmund Stracher, a
survivor who chairs the U.S.
Days of Remembrance; Her-
man Kahn, vice president of
the Oslo Jewish community
and a childhood friend of
Wiesel's from Sighet, Rum-
ania, and Sister Carol Rittner,
a Roman Catholic nun who is
administrator of the Feb-
ruary conference — may
signal "some kind of thaw or
rapprochement. I think we're
coming to a watershed in the
relationship. Gorbachev has a
vastly different style; al-
though the basic Soviet agen-
da is probably the same, they
now have to accommodate
their own international and
external problems."
The major point of dis-
agreement between the
Wiesel delegation and Soviet
officials, who were mostly war
veterans and military person-
nel, including some Jews, was
the uniqueness of the Jewish
tragedy during the Holo-
caust. Although General Vas-
sily Petrenko hadled a Soviet
delegation to an earlier con ,
awe of liberators of the con-
centration camps, the Soviets

have not joined in events ex-
pressly memorializing Jewish
Holocaust victims.
Bayer said that the U.S. c:\
Holocaust Memorial Council
operates under Wiesel's for-
mulation of a central princi-
ple. "Not all victims of the
Holocaust were Jews, but all
Jews were victims." Within
this context, he said, "proper,
appropriate" attention is paid
to the suffering of others as
well.
A little-noticed conference
in Washington last Septem-
ber on Naii slaughter of gyp-
sies was one such effort for
balanced attention to non-
Jewish victims. The upcom-
ing February conference will
be another.
"I think our agreement
that the Soviets were a target
of special fury and brutality
in the Nazi onslaught was ap-
preciated," Bayer said. "And
that fact is accurate. Three
quarters of the Soviet Union
was under occupation for as
much as three years during
what they call 'The Great
Patriotic War,' World War II.
Some claim there were as
many as 20 million Soviet
casualties, which probably in-
cludes combatants as well as
civilians.
The most striking Soviet
exclusion of the special
Jewish component of the
tragedy is at Babi Yar, where
80-90,000 persons, 90 percent
of them Jewish, were round-
ed up and slaughtered by the
Germans. The Soviets con-
sistently ignore or suppress
the specifically Jewish identi-
ty of the overwhelming ma-
jority of victims at Babi Yar.
They claim the Nazis were
trying to thin out the entire
Slavic population and ob-
serve that others, including
some partisans, were also
caught up in the massacre. A
memorial at Babi Yar makes
no mention of Jews.
"They kept saying they
make no distinctions between
Jews and non-Jews," Bayer
said. "But the irony is that
they do make distinctions.
Passports are stamped in the
Soviet Union with Jewish
identification. Confronted
with that inconsistency, there
was a pained silence?'
Bayer believes that the
weakness of the Soviet argu-
ment was made particularly
vivid by the presence of Rab-
bi Melchior of Oslo, a Dane by
birth and the son of the Chief
Rabbi of Denmark, Rabbi
Bent Melchior. Almost all
Danish Jews were evacuated
across the sea to Sweden by
the Danish resistance during
the German occupation, with
active participation of many
ordinary Danes, some of
whom gave their lives in the
effort. The Danes,,in rescuing
fellow Danes -who-Were Jews,
recognized the Nazi's' special

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