Elie Wiesel was 15 years old when he and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz. In his best-selling memoir, Night, Wiesel recounts his experiences during the Holocaust, including the death of his father at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed Wiesel to lead the President’s Commission on the Holocaust. From 1980 to 1986, Wiesel served as the founding chair of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, the governing body of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. Today, he is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University. He has written more than 40 fiction and nonfiction books.
At the USHMM dedication ceremony on April 22, 1993, Wiesel spoke about his hope that the museum would become a forum for gathering people and fostering understanding:
Now, a museum is a place, I believe, that should bring people together, a place that should not set people apart. People who come from different horizons, who belong to different spheres, who speak different languages—they should feel united in memory. | 
Elie Wiesel and Daniel Greene. Photo by Carl Cox Photography.
| And, if possible at all, with some measure of grace, we should, in a way, be capable of reconciling ourselves with the dead. To bring the living and the dead together in a spirit of reconciliation is part of that vision. |
This past April, Daniel Greene, a historian at USHMM, interviewed Wiesel in his New York City office. Greene and Wiesel discussed contemporary antisemitism, memory and the role of museums in remembering tragedy.
Daniel Greene: I wonder if we might begin by discussing the resurgence of antisemitism today. In June 2004, you gave a speech at the United Nations seminar on antisemitism [“We Plead on Behalf of an Ancient People”]. I was fascinated to hear you say, “I never thought I would have to fight antisemitism. Naively, I was convinced that it died in Auschwitz.” What did you mean?
Elie Wiesel: If one considers all the components that brought about Auschwitz, one must acknowledge that maybe antisemitism was not the only factor. But one thing is clear: Without it there would have been no Auschwitz. At the same time, after the war some of us believed, very naively, innocently, that there will be no more antisemitism, that antisemitism died in Auschwitz. And then we realized that, no, its victims perished in Auschwitz, but antisemitism is still alive and doing rather well.
Greene: Was there a moment of realization for you? It struck me that you described yourself as naive.
Wiesel: Well, I was naive. I was very naive. In 1945, I was convinced that that would be the last major injustice against human beings, because people will have learned. I think many of us believed that.
The United Nations was also a gesture, and a project, of naiveté. Read the charter of the United Nations. Those who created the United Nations were convinced—and I praise them for that—that thanks to the United Nations there will be no more wars, no more hunger, no more humiliation, no more violation of human rights. They were naive. So were we. And, of course, the world now realizes that our hope was displaced.
