Greene: One of the most often repeated lessons of the Holocaust is “never again.” “Never again” can the world allow this to happen. “Never again” can people stand silently by in the face of such injustice. Considering the genocides that have taken place since World War II—Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur—is saying “Never again” as a lesson of the Holocaust naive?
Wiesel: It is naive, I guess, sure. It’s naive to say now because while we say “never again,” of course, injustices are being committed. But I believe that Auschwitz is a unique phenomenon—never before and never again, naturally. There’s a difference between the Holocaust and genocide. Genocides, yes, have occurred, or at least attempted genocides, but no Holocausts.
Greene: Should we stop saying “never again?”
Wiesel: Not at all. I think we should say it until it becomes reality.
Greene: When we spoke last year at the USHMM, a group of students passed us in an exhibition, and you told me that they needed to be “inoculated” against antisemitism. I also have heard you described hatred as a “cancer.” Tell me why you use this metaphor of disease to describe antisemitism and hatred.
Wiesel: Antisemitism is a product of hatred and a phenomenon defined by hatred; its intent is to create more hatred, of course. And it’s directed against Jews, only against Jews. But an antisemite is a racist, and a racist is a racist is a racist. I think he or she who hates hates everybody—slowly, gradually, going from one group to another, from one minority to another, from one victim to another.
Now, with this, I already gave you the definition of a disease, of an infectious disease: it goes from cell to cell, from limb to limb, from person to person, from group to group, from community to community, unless it is stopped. Cancer in itself is not contagious. It simply spreads inside the body of the person who suffers from it. But in this case, we may use it as a metaphor and say that it is an infectious or a contagious disease.
Greene: And its goal is to kill the host.
Wiesel: To kill, absolutely—first of all, to undermine the healthy zones of the human being and the morale of the person. That is its goal: that the person should be so demoralized that he or she would lose hope. And there again, the analogy with cancer is proper because any oncologist will tell you, and any cancer patient will tell you, that cancer is the only disease where the morale is as important as the medication and the treatment, if not more important. So, of course, the antisemite would like to demoralize the Jew. The racist wants to demoralize the person the racist hates. And today there are so many people who hate so many people that antisemitism is no longer a matter solely of individual incidents. It’s more than that. It’s a threat.
Greene: Do you harbor anger or hatred from your personal history?
Wiesel: Anger, yes. Hatred, no. I was spared, really. Many of my friends carried hatred a long time after the war. But I came to France immediately after liberation. I didn’t go through the DP [displaced persons] camps. I plunged into study, and that saved me, and it saved my sanity and it saved me from hatred.
I never believed in collective guilt. I’ve repeated it hundreds of times. I don’t believe in collective guilt, therefore I don’t believe in collective punishment. I don’t believe in that—or in collective pardon, by the way, because everything’s personal. The children of killers are not killers but children.
But, I am angry, very often. When am I angry? I’m angry when I witness injustice and I’m helpless. I’m angry now because of Darfur, for instance. I have been screaming and screaming and screaming about Darfur since the very beginning. My voice was among the first voices to be heard. I’m angry because we scream and scream and scream and nothing happens.
Greene: Do you despair about the increasing phenomenon of Holocaust denial?
Wiesel: I think it’s serious, but I would not really allow despair to enter my psyche. Despair is never an option. Despair is never a solution. Despair is a question. Despair means give up, and we should never give up, nor should we ever give in.
Greene: For many Holocaust survivors, there has been a trajectory of memory, if you will. Immediately after the war, many chose not to look back, but today, as survivors are aging, many have chosen to speak more openly about their traumatic experiences during the Holocaust. Memory and remembering have informed so much of your writing from the beginning, though. I wonder, what does memory mean to you at this point in your life?
