And the Sea Is Never Full (36 page)

That settles it. My absolutely final effort has failed. The next day I hand in my resignation to the White House. Everyone is astounded. Donald Regan’s reaction is: “What? You’re resigning? But the president has just reappointed you for another five years! Is it something we did?” He is worried about possible political consequences. I reassure him: “It has nothing to do with you.” My reasons are personal. This is not quite true, but almost. Since the Bitburg affair I have not felt right. How can I “serve” under a president who “objectively” (using Marxist terminology; once is not a habit) has whitewashed the SS by comparing them to their victims? But that is not the only reason.

Back from the White House, I know that word has leaked out. Sigmund is sad, but there is nothing he can say to make me go back on my decision. Marion is happy; Marian Craig, my loyal assistant, is unhappy. Miles suggests that I take a year’s leave. I shrug my shoulders. Yitz Greenberg and Alfred Gottschalk, president of Hebrew Union College, beg me not to abandon the project. I tell them that it’s too late. Technically that is not true: A simple call to Regan and everything could be as before. But that’s just it—I don’t want things as they were before.

The Council meeting is pathetic. There is a series of sentimental appeals imploring me not to go. With the exception of Bud and Sonny, almost all the members ask to speak. I would be too embarrassed to repeat what was said—yes, embarrassed, not flattered. They question me, plead with me, make me promises. Some use emotional arguments, others prefer logic. They are not unlike children fearful of becoming orphans.

As always, I listen to them attentively, just like at the university, where from the start I have always tried to set an example. I owe it to my students and to my colleagues not to let myself be distracted. I concentrate on what each one has to say. My personal opinion, or any comment I have, is given only at the end.

I look out over the assembled Council members with a mixed feeling of accomplishment and failure. All things considered, we did some good work. Sworn to preserve memory, we had all been resolute in fighting defamation and oblivion. We reached certain goals, fought certain battles, and obtained victories of which we can be proud. Not many. So what? I refuse to judge my colleagues, those
who fell short. We all have our own way of doing what we consider to be our duty.

As far as I am concerned, I consider it my duty to relinquish the reins. I acknowledge my shortcomings: I am a poor manager, a bad administrator. I have problems giving orders, and I am incapable of hurting anyone, even in the name of supposedly sacred aims. I don’t like firing people. I abhor reprimanding, punishing. I would rather write, study, and teach than “preside.” In my letter to President Reagan, which I read to the plenary session, I suggest that since the project has now entered the practical, concrete phase, my successor ought to have the qualities required of a C.E.O., someone able to administer, organize, and navigate through budgetary labyrinths.

A few weeks later the White House appoints Bud Meyerhoff. Together with his friend Sonny Abramson, he will monitor the work of the Council. They bring back Berenbaum and Weinberg, take revenge on Sigmund (who will no longer be a member of the executive committee and will not even be reappointed as a member of the Council), and dismiss Richard Krieger and then Professor Eli Pfefferkorn—in short, all those who were close and devoted to me are removed.

From that time on, whenever a survivor comes to see me to tell me about what is going on in Washington during the meetings and behind the scenes, I stop him or her; I would rather not know. With my resignation I gave up the right to criticize. I want my successors to do their work without criticism from me. Once the project is realized and the museum is built, I’ll speak my mind—not before.

What really hurt and disappointed me? That when Sigmund was excluded from the executive committee, of which he had been a part since the beginning, not one survivor rallied to his support. A comrade, a colleague had been humiliated, and they all looked away. The same was true for Pfefferkorn. No one spoke up to save the job of this Holocaust survivor.

How can these people labor for remembrance of the past when in the present they flout the dignity of living people? But then, perhaps, I expect too much of them. They are human, hence capable of anything. Just like everyone else.

This said, the new team deserves praise. Miles and Bud excel in the art of collecting funds. People who refused to help earlier now show themselves more generous. The New Jersey group’s gift comes to several million dollars. The project is taking shape. Hundreds of specialists are at work.

•   •   •

January 1993: I visit the essential part of the museum, and my first impression of the building itself is positive. But paradoxically, the museum, by trying to say everything, does not say enough. Yes, there are the ghettos, the yellow stars, the terrified men, the starving children, the corpses in the street, the cruelty of the torturers, the misery of the victims. You enter through the cattle car imported from Poland. You walk on the cobblestones of the Warsaw Ghetto. “Identity cards” are distributed at the entrance. These things are designed to make things look authentic, to give the visitor the impression, if not the feeling, that he or she is
there
. Upon leaving, the visitor will be able to say: “Now I know everything; I understand.” Later he or she will say: “I was there.” I had a different vision of the museum. I should have liked the visitor to leave saying: “Now I know how little I know.”

And then: There is this huge bas-relief that shows—yes, shows—the process of annihilation. The Polish sculptor has depicted the inmates upon arrival, upon assembling at the ramp. He “shows” the selection, the march to the “showers;” he “shows” the members of the
Sonderkommandos
pushing the victims into the antechamber to undress and then into the gas chamber; then you “see” the corpses being “treated” by the “dentists” before being sent to the furnaces. You “see” it all. You “see” too much.

That is how it is: By trying to illustrate too much, reveal too much by contrived means, it all becomes too facile.

The men and women who have gone through concentration camps and try to speak of it know the boundaries of language. They speak in order to tell us that no words can possibly communicate the unspeakable. In trying to show everything, you conceal the essential. It is not by “seeing” the ramp in Birkenau that the visitor will feel what those newly arrived Jews felt as they moved toward the selection. In this case the saying “less is more” is apt.

Also, though the building is powerful, you become aware of the magnitude of the ambition and the means expended. As though it had been decided that this museum had to be “the best, the greatest in the world.” All these computers, all these videos, all these ultramodern technical and electronic effects, all those buttons to press, all those photographs accumulated to shock you, make you weep. It is an enormous enterprise worthy of our capital. James Freed has produced an excellent piece of work. If there is fault, it lies with those who conceived and shaped its content.

Publicly I have said nothing until now, but in truth I would have preferred a more sober, more humble edifice, one that would suggest the unspoken, the silence, the secret. I think of a talmudic saying: The children of Israel deserved to be delivered from Egypt because they had safeguarded their mystery. Here, the sense of mystery is missing.

And yet…. Upon revisiting the museum sometime later, I change my mind to some degree. It is undeniably impressive. The first section, which covers the rise of Nazism in Hitler’s Germany, is excellent. The maps, the statistics, the photographs are magnificent. The same is true for the way the lack of any “response” from the Allies and the neutral countries is presented. The builders’ devotion is so evident that I silence any impulse to criticize. In fact I often praise the museum in public.

I take part in the official opening, together with Presidents Bill Clinton and Chaim Herzog, on April 19, 1993. Once again, it is that symbolic date: the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

It is raining that day and it is cold. I am soaked, and so is my text. I had worked on it until three in the morning and now it is illegible. I have no choice but to improvise. I evoke the genesis of the project under President Carter, the deep reasons that impelled me to give it form with the words: “For the dead
and
the living—we must bear witness.” I tell the story of a woman in her kitchen, preparing for Passover in 1943, discussing the news from Warsaw. She wonders: “Why did the young Jews there think it necessary to rebel? Couldn’t they have waited quietly for the end of the war?” My speech ends with this small sentence: “That woman was my mother….”

Three weeks before the opening, Bud Meyerhoff, my successor as chairman of the Council, is suddenly stripped of his functions. Why? There are bizarre rumors. Some say that, together with his deputy, William Loewenberg, he refused to invite Chaim Herzog to speak at the inauguration.

Now and then, members of Congress and members of the Jewish community call, asking me to return to my old post, which Miles has been coveting for a long time. Sigmund is for it, but Marion is dead set against it. Friends point out that now that the museum exists, I would no longer be burdened by administrative tasks. I refuse. Having been gone for almost seven years, I don’t feel I should take up the reins again. Though the idea of launching a project never fails to seduce me, once a project is realized I tend to lose interest.

Besides, the museum does very well without me. The public is lining up outside, people from all over the world, Jews and Christians, young and old—altogether more than two million visitors in a year. It is impossible to get tickets without waiting days, weeks.

And, more important, those who have seen the exhibition leave overwhelmed, full of enthusiasm and admiration. It seems the museum is playing a pedagogical role of the first order. I help as much as I can. After all, this museum is not meant for people such as myself who know and who remember, but for the others, the multitude who know nothing and for whom the Holocaust is not unlike all the other episodes of the war. I am pleased to see that so many people have finally become interested in learning the dark history of the twentieth century. After all, that was the purpose of all my work on this project and that of my fellow survivors. Yes, I am grateful for having been allowed to contribute. And I thank the American people and all those who have helped.

In general, things have changed on the leadership level. Twenty-two years ago, I appointed Yitz Greenberg as Director of the President’s Commission. Now he is the Council Chairman, Miles’ immediate successor. As a teacher and Rabbi he is sensitive to Holocaust-related matters, and this is a good omen for the future. My apprehensions seem unfounded.

Having said this, I repeat: For my generation, nothing is completed. Just like knowledge, this achievement is tinged with anxiety. I cannot help but think: “All this is good and well. And yet….”

Indeed, and yet.

From Sighet to Oslo