by Rabbi Arnold Saltzman
In Manhattan, New York, on July 2, 2016, Elie Wiesel passed away at the age of 87. The name Elie is short for Eliezer. He was born in Sighet, Romania, on Sept 30, 1928, where he received a thorough Jewish education including being fluent in the study of Talmud. Arie Tabak, the father of a best friend of mine, Harry Chaim Tabak, grew up with Wiesel, and Arie was an expert in traditional Jewish texts, able to read Torah fluently with little or no preparation.
Wiesel lost both of his parents in the Holocaust; his mother was killed soon after she entered a cattle car train, and his father was killed in a concentration camp.
As a high school student in the 1960s, I would spend free time browsing in the La Guardia High School library, and I came across the book Night, Wiesel’s powerful indictment of the horrors thrust upon the Jews during the Shoah.
In the early 1970s, following college, I traveled alone to Europe and Israel. While in Paris, again browsing in a French book store I came across La Nuit, the original French publication of Night [Wiesel wrote it in English, and the first translation, in 1958, was to French]. I kept the book all these years and it looks pretty much the way it looked the day I purchased it. The paper used in those days must have been better.
During my years in high school, a rally was held for Soviet Jewry in the plaza opposite the United Nations, which has a wall with the biblical inscription: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not life up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4)
Elie Wiesel spoke about his visit to the Soviet Union, and about his book The Jews of Silence. The Jews of Russia were in danger, and if we were silent there could be a repetition of something we believed could not happen again. Someone who was a Holocaust survivor was warning us that the conditions in the Soviet Union were moving toward pre-World War II dimensions.
During the late 1970s Carol and I heard Wiesel speak at a lecture series at B’nai Jeshurun in New York City. Carol wrote a letter to him protesting his religious point of view, which was traditional, while hers is Reform. He took the time to respond. To paraphrase his words he wrote that even if not everyone is waiting for the Messiah, can’t we still unite around the idea of a time of peace for mankind?
Carol was hired to sing with the Workman’s Circle Chorus whose members made her look tall (she is 5’4”). They sang in the Capitol Rotunda with President Ronald Reagan and Elie Wiesel for the dedication of the groundbreaking of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Everyone was invited to the Rose Garden where chorus members were wrapping cookies in White House napkins for their grandchildren while White House staff looked on happily.
In 1993 I conducted my Youth Choir in the dedication of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. We dedicated the Meyerhoff Auditorium and the Wall of Children’s tiles, in a program called “Remember the Children.” The same day, President Clinton and Elie Wiesel conducted the dedication outside the building. We had a nice mention in the Washington Post feature story and were told we stole the show from some heavy hittesrs.
In 2006, the law firm of Holland & Knight invited me as Rabbi to make an invocation for their event and dinner honoring a half dozen authors who were also survivors. Elie Wiesel was the featured guest speaker, following law partner and former FBI Director William S. Sessions. A $10,000 college scholarship was being awarded to a high school student for an essay on the Holocaust in addition to other prizes.
I brought my copy of La Nuit with me, and when Wiesel saw it he said, “I haven’t seen a copy of that in years.” I explained how I acquired it and when. He autographed it: “To Rabbi Saltzman with warm delight!”
I had always been moved by his writing, his gentle speaking which added such weight to his profound statements. I was delighted to learn that he had supported himself as a youth choir director while attending the Sorbonne in Paris following the war.
He was the “conscience of man” who was able to mobilize the rescue of Soviet Jewry, avoiding a disaster, and helping to free more than one million Jews from the Soviet Union. He moved President Clinton to act to stop the genocide in the former Yugoslavia. He made us more Jewish and more human by insisting that we never forget the events of the recent past, and for these reasons may Elie Wiesel never be forgotten. Now it is our responsibility to Never Forget.