Boston —   Amid a standing ovation, guest of honor Elie Wiesel took center stage at Boston University’s main ballroom on October 27. The recognized outspoken keeper of Holocaust memory and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate was celebrating his 80th birthday by delivering the plenary lecture devoted to Kristallnacht. The lecture was part of the three-day international conference entitled “A Celebration of Elie Wiesel.” It was organized by the university to critique his more than 30-years of writing by a cadre of world renowned scholars. Approximately 1800 students and adults filled the ballroom plus four other locations where the speech was video simulcast.
Showing a sense of humor, Wiesel quipped that sitting through the seven sessions of the conference and listening to the many scholarly speeches by well-known experts and critics of his literary works was hardly a way to celebrate one’s birthday. It occurred to him, he joked, that the conference might serve as a rehearsal for the future when he might come before the “heavenly tribunal” and have to justify his published thoughts.
Wiesel began his presentation marking the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht by reminding his audience that Kristallnacht was the worst pogrom in history. It occurred on November 9-10, 1938, when Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, with Hitler’s approval, planned massive pogroms against Jews in Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland, using Herschel Grynszpan’s actions (a young Jewish man angered by the mistreatment of his parents) as a pretext for the Nazi brutality. The military arms of the Nazi Party and civilians killed at least 91 Jews, transported about 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps, and torched all the synagogues and their vessels. They broke into Jewish homes and businesses shattering tons of glass crystals and thus the name “Night of Broken Glass” or Kristallnacht in German. To add insult to injuries, the Germans manipulated the insurance companies not to pay for damages and instead Jews were forced to pay 1 billion marks. The message of the pogrom was made clear: the Jews were unwanted and pressured to evacuate Germany and Austria.
But to where could Jews immigrate, asked Wiesel? A year later, the growing numbers of Jewish refugees prompted President Franklin Roosevelt to call the Evian Conference of 32 nations in France. Sadly none of those countries offered to take in refugees, not even the U.S. or Britain. The conference was a joke and proved to the Germans that no country in the world wanted Jewish refugees.
Wiesel analyzed the catalyst for Kristallnacht, Herschel Grynszpan, who was the Nazi’s excuse to destroy the Jewish community. History showed that in 1938 when thousands of Jewish Polish nationals were expelled from Germany and were refused admittance back to Poland, they remained in a no-man’s land in appalling conditions. Among them was the family of Grynszpan.
While living in Paris, Herschel received word from his displaced family and he became distraught. He purchased a gun and proceeded to shoot and kill the third secretary of the German Embassy in France. Immediately Goebbels seized upon the incident as an opportunity for a gigantic pogrom.
The heart of Wiesel’s message explored whether or not Grynszpan took revenge for the mistreatment of his family. Wiesel questioned if an individual has a right to vengeance. He looked to history for a precedent, and recalled the Purim story when Haman ordered all the people of Shushan, Persia to bow down to him, a form of idol worship. Mordecai refused because Jewish honor was at stake, and the Jews defended themselves.
His second example pertaining to vengeance dealt with the myth that during the Holocaust Jews walked to their deaths like sheep going to slaughter. He referred to the uprisings in the various death camps, concentration camps and ghettos where there was a cry for Nekomeh or revenge. Yet Jews were not out to avenge their persecutors, but rather to defend themselves with honor.
Wiesel categorically stated that he opposed vengeance, but favored justice instead. Vengeance, he emphasized, was the province of God, not man.
Wiesel asked the audience whether Grynszpan sought to avenge Jews persecuted by Germans and if so where did he learn it. Grynszpan was arrested, received no trial and finally walked into a jail declaring that what he did was an act of love for his family and for the Jewish people as well as an act of honor. This was confirmed by his father at the Eichmann trial in 1961 when he was called as a witness and spoke of his son’s act of love, not angry revenge.
Wiesel questioned what happened to Jewish anger in 1945? Anger was not hatred toward the persecutors, he said, because hatred only leads to more hatred. He recalled his own experience of coming to the U.S. in 1956 and being ashamed of being white since racism was the law. And he was angered by the injustice of segregation.
Anger, he observed, must be channeled in the right way. Post World War II Jewish anger was channeled in building a Jewish state.
“For a people without a country cannot exist,” said by Boston University President Emeritus John Silber when introducing Professor Wiesel.
The honoree concluded by lauding the conferees of the celebration for their quest for memory that brings hope for the future.