The Holocaust will forever be remembered as the central event of the 20th Century, Holocaust survivor and scholar Elie Wiesel said Tuesday.
“The 20th Century was a failure [despite] all the good things that happened — the end of colonialism, the end of official racism, the end of imperialism, communism, fascism,” Wiesel told about 3,000 people in the Sheraton Hotel and Towers in Chicago to celebrate the coming 15th anniversary of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “The dominant element, the dominant event, the dominant fact of the 20th Century was [the Holocaust], and that was a failure of humanity.”
Wiesel, a native of Romania, was 15 when he and his family were taken to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. Wiesel’s parents and younger sister died in death camps, while he and his two older sisters survived.
Wiesel was the founding chairman of the Holocaust museum, which opened in Washington in 1993, and is now a professor at Boston University. “Night,” his memoir about his experience in the death camps, has been translated into more than 30 languages.
Wiesel called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “the No. 1 Holocaust denier in the world” and said that those who share his beliefs are proof that anti-Semitism is still a force today.
Anti-Semitism “is a plague,” Wiesel said. “An anti-Semite is a person who hated me before I was born.”
Wiesel said he was disappointed that so many UN delegates listened to Ahmadinejad’s speech before the assembly last month and that the UN has not been more forceful in denouncing Iran’s nuclear ambitions and Ahmadinejad’s statements against Israel.
“He says, ‘There was no Holocaust, but there will be one, and I will be the author of that one,'” Wiesel said, paraphrasing Ahmadinejad. “And the world is silent, the world doesn’t say anything. I don’t understand. When he spoke at the UN, I had expected that the entire hall would be empty…. The Israeli delegation left and, of course, the Americans left, but the others stayed there. To listen to what? To this stupidity? To this extraordinary insensitivity to people?”
Wiesel also said the length and tone of U.S. presidential campaigns have poisoned political discourse.
“With all my heart, with all my soul, with every fiber of my being, I am opposed to a two-year campaign. It is too long,” he said. “Pass a law limiting the campaign to six months. We cannot take it anymore.”
The movement to aid the people of Darfur shows that the lessons of the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda and similar tragedies have taught people to stand up to injustice, he said.
“Because of the moral debacle of Rwanda, Darfur became imperative, and everybody responds,” Wiesel said. “Why? Because they read books on the Holocaust. Because they go to classes and learn about the Holocaust. The Holocaust occurred not only because the killer killed but because others let him do the work and did not protest.”
