elcome
To The
illennium

Bratzlav in Ukraine with a group of
Chasidim.
He has been back to Sighet and
says that he longs to go back again, yet
the moment I arrive, I am seized by
panic."
This volume of memoir, based on
diaries he has kept since 1946, covers
the years 1969 to the present, making
several statements in print for the first
time. Wiesel writes about a 1980
march for Cambodia (and his efforts
to assemble a minyan there so that he
could say Kaddish for his father). He
remembers the 1986 Nobel Prize cere-
mony; his relationship with Israel and
his inability to criticize the govern-
ment's actions; the trial of Klaus
Barbie; the Gulf War; a 1975 trip to
South Africa to witness apartheid; and
a 1992 visit to prison camps in
Saravejo. He also writes of friendships,
including that with Cardinal Jean-
Marie Lustiger, archbishop of
Paris, who was born Jewish.
This volume is different from
the first in its tone: Here, he writes
critically of some events and peo-
ple, taking a stand against adver-
saries, yet always with a gentle
touch. He seems to be following
the code of one of his masters,
who "advised me long ago never to
use a hatchet in my responses."
Of Nazi hunter Simon
Wiesenthal, Wiesel states that he
ultimately feels sorry for the man,
for his rage and hate and blinding
jealousy. The author explains how
Wiesenthal "covets" his Nobel Prize,
how Wiesenthal made defamatory
comments about Wiesel's "national-
ism" and "chauvinism" in the press,
alleging Wiesel's contempt for non-
Jewish victims of the Nazis. Wiesel
explains how he lost respect for
Wiesenthal but refrained from
responding to reporters' queries about
their relationship, never making
derogatory comments in print. "Until
now," he writes.
He also writes in detail about the
1985 Bitburg Affair, when President
Reagan agreed to visit a German mili-
tary cemetery that includes tomb-
stones of the SS. Public opinion unan-
imously opposed the decision. After
Wiesel was called in for a briefing by
the President's chief of staff, along
with Jewish Republican leaders, he
was critical of several of the Jews in
the meeting for their diplomacy and
reluctance to speak out against the
president.
He writes: "I sit here thinking to
myself that this is doubtless how
things happened during the

Holocaust; the Jewish leaders came
here to plead for European Jews but
wound up saying the same things as
their hosts."
By coincidence, Wiesel was sched-
uled to receive a Congressional Gold
Medal at a White House ceremony at
around the same time. Once the
Bitburg Affair become public, the
While House shifted the ceremony
from a room that accommodated
more than 300 guests to one that fit
40. The text of his acceptance speech
— when he said, "That place is not
your place, Mr. President. Your place
is with the victims of the SS" —
resounded around the world.
He explains how the day before the
ceremony, as a courtesy, he had the
speech delivered to the president, with
the hope that he would still change his
mind. But he understands that the
president felt "trapped," that the

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threesome of Donald Regan, Michael
Deaver and Patrick Buchanan made
the decision in his place. After the
speech, Regan invited him to join the
president on the trip; Wiesel was puz-
zled. "I desperately don't want the
president to go there, and you want
me to go there with him?"
In the chapter "Francois Mitterand
and Jewish Memory," he describes in
detail his break with the French presi-
dent, ending a close friendship. When
Wiesel learned in 1994 of Mitterand's
ongoing social relationship with for-
mer Vichy official Rene Bosquet, sec-
retary general of police responsible for
rounding up tens of thousands of Jews
in France, he tried to get Mitterand to
admit he had made a mistake. But
Mitterand, then suffering from cancer,
would not.
Wiesel was asked several times to
write newspaper articles about
Mitterand and how he went wrong,
but he always declined, waiting for
"the present volume to say what is in
my heart.
Wiesel also focuses his attention
closer to home, discussing his involve-

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