ICONIC ELIE WIESEL: A LIFE OF CHARACTER AND GRACE COMES TO AN END

Elie Wiesel, 1928-2016

Once in a while, I am reminded of some words that I wrote in my private journal in February 1984.  “I am not given to finding heroes in men”, I had written, “because no sooner had you made a hero of a man than he disappoint you with his negative ways of which it is hardly possible be proud”.  That was consistent with the principle by which I had lived for much of my conscious life until that point, and definitely since then.  I have never had a strong longing to meet a famous person because I am less interested in associating with any man’s fame than I am in the stories of their humanity and charity. Mr. Elie Wiesel had fame but it was his humanity that made him famous.  I could have wished to meet him and I would most definitely have loved to sit and hear him tell some of the stories of his life.  But I knew some things about his life because he gave so much of himself.                                             

Sometime in the early nineties, I came across the following words written and spoken by Elie Wiesel: “No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them”. Inspired, I cut the quote out of the New York Times, laminated and kept it in a permanent place in my home while I kept a copy in my office.  To this day, the cut-out quote remains in my home and office to remind me constantly of   the spirit and grace of a man who endured pain and still loved, and of my responsibility to always remember and remind others of the forces of love and hate that reside in the human mind, as well as the potentially destructive power of arrogance that lies within the human spirit.  For many years to come, I would refer to Mr. Wiesel’s words in various lectures that I would give within and outside the United States.  

A Holocaust survivor, Mr. Wiesel chose love over hate, humility over arrogance, peace over war, forgiveness over grudge, and embrace over rejection.  He was a Nobel Peace Prize winner who understood the value of that honor but never rested on his laurels.  So he woke up everyday showing us by his words and deeds that he had a continuing responsibility to make this a better world, and to help us all to be more loving in our dealings with others.  He stood against all forms of discrimination and worked hard to ensure that people were defined as human rather than by their race, gender, sexual orientation or religion.  

While introducing President Obama in a ceremony at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Buchenwald, Germany on June 5, 2009, Mr. Wiesel said: “Mr. President, I have high hopes for you.  Be able, be compelled to change the world into a better place where people will stop waging war. Every war is absurd and meaningless.  We need a world where people will stop hating one another, where people hate the otherness of the other rather than respect it…”  At the age of 87, Mr. Wiesel died today without seeing that world, but he left the rest of us who continue to live after him to work with as much zest as we can muster to stamp out hate in our world.  Now I wish I had met him before he died.  I wish I had the opportunity to assure him that I am doing my part in the fight against hate and injustice.  I wish I could have told him that I would fight that fight until I breathe my last breath.  I loved him without knowing him personally and now I thank him posthumously for sharing his life’s story in his quest to make this a better world in which humanity can be saved from itself.  I thank God for blessing this world with Elie Wiesel, knowing as I do that he was a rare gift to an ungrateful amnesic world that has so far learned very little, if anything, from the consequences of wickedness.