And the Sea Is Never Full (42 page)
Read And the Sea Is Never Full Online
Authors: Elie Wiesel
… So here we are at the conclusion of this conference. It opened under the sign of gratitude; it is culminating under the sign of appreciation. We are being asked what we have learned during these four days. First of all, we have learned to know each other and perhaps recognize ourselves in each other. We have discovered that beyond our specialized disciplines, we share preoccupations and anxieties, of course, but also commitments and hopes concerning the future of our children.
… Have we resolved some of the problems that confront our society? Their number is as vast as their complexity. How can one resolve, in four days, what in fifty years or even five thousand years, since Cain and Abel, mankind has simply ignored or barely touched upon? The Nobel Foundation has not yet discovered the secret that would enable it to offer the laureates universal wisdom in addition to worldly glory….
… We must seek and situate the success of this conference in the conference itself. The fact that it has taken place is in itself significant and important.
And what is the goal we have set for ourselves? To identify the problems and prioritize them. To name the diseases, the epidemics, the famines, the fanaticism. Torture. Pollution. AIDS. The nuclear threat. The distress of children beaten and killed far from the eyes of men, and perhaps from the eyes of God Himself. Just by enumerating these problems, it would be easy to become discouraged. Every one of the participants is proof of what an individual is capable of undertaking and achieving for the benefit of mankind.
Our conclusions follow, and I admit that none is particularly original. Human rights, priority for education, scientific cooperation, encouragement for research in molecular biology, disarmament, aid to developing countries—they could appear as a collection of clichés. One editorial writer ironically compares them to behavior guidelines for schoolchildren. True, in that sense we have done no better than all other conferences of intellectuals. Their resolutions are frequently futile, if not banal, and have never had the slightest influence on the great of this world, as everyone knows. Sadly, ours fare no better.
There were sixteen “conclusions.”
Let us take as an example: the sixteenth—and final—“conclusion” of our labors. “The conference of Nobel laureates will meet again in two years to study these problems. Until then, wherever it is felt that there is urgent need, several Nobels will personally travel to wherever human rights are threatened.”
Many times two years have gone by since then and … nothing. I brought it up with President Mitterrand on several occasions. I reminded him of “our” promises, our public commitments. Each time he was content to answer, “Oh really?” For that matter, this is not the first public promise he has chosen not to keep. In his speech during the Sorbonne conference in 1982, he entrusted me with the organization of an international conference on hatred. Thereafter, several working sessions with scientists and philosophers ensued. Then came the
cohabitation
. And that was the end of a stimulating project meant to fight the rise of racism and xenophobia in Europe. With hindsight I think I should have protested immediately.
T
HIS NIGHT AGAIN
,
I see my father in a dream. Very close
,
over there, under a gray sky that is not that of Jerusalem. Behind him I sense my little sister. I sense her because my father is smiling the way he does only for Tsipouka
.
He looks at me but doesn’t see me. I call him. He doesn’t answer. I try to speak to him, but he doesn’t hear me. Suddenly he seems to tremble. I turn around and see an unknown woman. I know she’s a widow, for she’s dressed in black. I ask her: Since when have you been in mourning? As she remains silent, I pronounce the ritual formula: May God comfort you together with the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. I see her lips moving, but there is no sound. I say: I can’t hear you. She acquiesces with a nod: It’s true, you don’t hear me. Why this pain that seizes me abruptly? I look behind me for my father to come to my rescue, but he’s no longer there
.
First he hides the horizon from me. Then he illuminates it. And that is how it should be
.
The effect of the Nobel Prize? As Nadine Gordimer described it to me, it is sort of a full-time job. And it makes you travel. Invitations pour in from every corner. The world is yours; it is up to you to enrich it—according to your benefactors—or to amuse it, if you’ve remained lucid and kept your sense of humor. There is prestige in having a movie star to dinner, or a Nobel Prize winner on one’s roster of speakers. It is both chic and serious. You are asked to name your terms. You travel first-class or on the Concorde. You stay in luxury hotels. Rewarded for your activities or your work, you no longer have the time to pursue them.
I accept an offer to deliver a lecture at the Centre Rachi in Paris. While I am in Paris, Mayor Jacques Chirac presents me with the coveted Médaille de Vermeil. Thanks to Hélène Ahrweiler, rector of the universities, the Sorbonne awards me a doctorate
honoris causa
. I confess that the ceremony, in the presence of several ministers and academicians dressed in green, touches me; it brings back memories of my student years. Every morning I had to choose whether to walk from the Porte de Saint-Cloud to the Latin Quarter and buy myself a cheese sandwich, or take the bus and stay hungry. And now here I am, the same person, being told that I am honoring this great and venerable institution. The violinist Ivry Gitlis plays a new composition for us. Hélène Ahrweiler’s address is exquisitely intelligent and erudite. She stresses the connection between writer and witness. I, in turn, place the emphasis on the vulnerability of education: How can one forget that many of the
Einsatzkommando’s
commanders had advanced degrees? A university diploma does not constitute a guarantee of morality or humanity. In other words, a little humility would do our intellectuals no harm.
On the personal and professional level I receive a serious lesson in modesty administered by my various publishers. Between celebrity and success there is a bridge I have not yet crossed and probably never shall. The proof is that my books, though quickly reprinted, have only modest sales; some do quite well but rarely become best-sellers. The Prix Médicis, one of France’s most prestigious prizes, helped
A Beggar in Jerusalem
. Contrary to popular belief, the Nobel Prize does not influence sales much—at least not the year I won.
As for celebrity, sometimes I am accosted by a smiling person who asks: “You look like a famous person. Who are you?” Or else, “My elderly father adores you.” Or again: “My children admire you.” It’s always someone else who reads me.
Rather than royalties, the Nobel Prize brings you an audience. Egil Aarvik had murmured this in my ear the night of the official dinner in Oslo: “From now on you will have a forum, a tribune; your words will not vanish into a void. I don’t promise you will be heard, but people will listen to you.”
Invitations continue to pour in. Which should I accept? Seminars, colloquia, conferences: I am invited to speak on all continents, as though it had been discovered suddenly that I had not lost the power of speech.
I return to Oslo to honor Sjua Eitinger. I no longer like all this moving around. I do it anyhow. I don’t like facing audiences; I face them anyhow.
I make a lightning trip to Brazil. David Pincus, a director of our foundation, accompanies me. Hardly has he landed in São Paulo than he disappears. He’s carrying out his own investigation on disadvantaged children. Children are his “cause,” his obsession. He looks for them everywhere; he organizes help for them everywhere, in Rwanda as well as in Bosnia. By the time he leaves Brazil he will leave behind him an organization—financed by him—to assist the children of the impoverished districts,
the favelas
.
March 1987: Aside from India, I hardly know Asia at all; but it is not in order to discover it that I’m going to Japan. I am going in order to research a bizarre and disquieting phenomenon there: the rise of anti-Semitism. Popular books are spreading a hatred of all things Jewish.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
and other anti-Jewish writings are on the best-seller lists. I can’t understand it. There are hardly any Jews in the country, probably not more than five hundred, all foreigners, so what is to account for the rampant anti-Semitism there? In my lectures, in Tokyo and Osaka, I tell my audience how astounded I am: “Anti-Semitism without Jews? In Japan? Don’t you know this is a Western disease? Why are you importing it here?”
The writers and university professors I meet do their best to reassure me: Japanese, they say, do not hate Jews, quite the contrary—they admire them. If they read books about the Jewish people, it’s in order to absorb their wisdom, to get to know more about these Jews who seem to dominate the world by virtue of the money they make(!), the solidarity that links them to one another, and the influence they exercise in the press and in international diplomacy(!!). The Japanese want to know them in order to emulate them; it’s as simple as that; it
has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. I am far from convinced by these “reassurances.”
In response to a standing invitation from the Jewish community of Australia, we visit that country in August 1988. Two of our friends, Harriette and Noel Levine, go with us. I find this faraway continent, a haven for the outcasts of Europe, particularly exciting. It has become a lush, vibrant place of freedom and culture. In Sydney, I meet a woman who used to live on my street in Sighet. She and her husband pull me into a corner to tell me their problem: Their daughter is about to marry a non-Jew. He’s going to convert, they say, weeping, but … but what? I quickly explain to them the rules of conversion: A male convert becomes a son of Abraham, a female convert a daughter of Sarah, and each assumes the duties and privileges of any other Jew.
David Burger, a survivor of Auschwitz, tells me of his experiences in the camp. He should write a book about them. If only I had the time to help him. That is my obsession: to make the survivors talk, to encourage them to testify, to put their recollections on paper.
Marion rushes back to New York with Elisha. Her sister Anny has just died.
In the airplane that brings us from Paris to Kiev on a cold October morning, in 1990, we have a minyan for the
Shaharit
service. Wrapped in
tallitot
and with tefillin ringing our foreheads, we are saying our prayers. A young Bratzlaver Hasid is officiating. He has a melodious, fervent voice, filled with beauty and melancholy. Marion and our traveling companions are watching us in silence. Marion seems taken by these prayers. That is unusual for her.
It all had begun with a surprising question: “Would you like to visit Uman?” Clément Vaturi asked me one day. “I’m going there with a group of Hasidim.” We had met Clément through his sister and brother-in-law, Alice and Daniel Morgaine. I knew Daniel from his days as a journalist at
France Soir
.
“Did you say Uman? In Ukraine?” “Yes,” Clément answers. “Does that mean something to you?” Does it
mean
something to me? The word is part of my intimate, imaginary landscape. Uman was the last home of Rebbe Nahman of Bratzlav, the marvelous storyteller of the movement founded by his grandfather the Besht. It is the place where the Rebbe is buried.
Rebbe Nahman is close and precious to me on more than one level. He makes me dream. I love everything that touches him, everything that refers to his life, his work. I love everything that is impregnated by his universe—the stories of princes who lose their way and of exalted beggars, his tales of unknown worlds, his biblical ideas and commentaries, even the comments he used to make at table. “Take my stories and turn them into prayers,” Rebbe Nahman used to say. Well, as far as I’m concerned, I’ll turn his prayers into stories.
An old wreck of a bus is waiting for us at the Kiev airport. The guide is there, the driver is not. The guide is running around looking for the driver. Now the driver is there, but the guide cannot be found. We extract him from a sort of bar. Finally we’re all ready. We get to Uman toward the end of the afternoon, after a horrendous drive across fields and villages where peasants and children stare at us blankly.