And the Sea Is Never Full by Elie Wiesel

Author:Elie Wiesel [Wiesel, Elie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307764096
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-08-31T22:00:00+00:00

WHEN PRESIDENT CARTER appoints me to head the newly created Holocaust Memorial Council, I foresee the difficulties awaiting us. By now I am no longer a novice. My most urgent task is to establish a list—once more. It seems as though one does nothing else in Washington. I ask Arthur Goldberg to stay on with me. He declines; he does not believe in the museum: “You’ll see, it will be created at the expense of Jewish remembrance.” He feels that it would be better not to embark on a project that he thinks can only end in compromise. “I am your friend,” he tells me. “I know Washington. This is not for us.” I beg him to change his mind, to trust me, without success. I am deeply sorry.

Still, there is no shortage of candidates. As during the establishment of the President’s Holocaust Commission, we must take into account the religious and geographical considerations that influence all decisions on the federal level. But even that is not enough, and the White House calls us to account. It seems we have forgotten a factor that politically weighs more heavily than the others—the ethnic factor. After all, we are on the eve of an electoral campaign.

We have the first alerts, the first disagreements. The Council membership list evidently displeases the White House; “too many Jews,” the President is rumored to have said. His adviser Stu Eizenstat exerts pressure on us along those lines. The new Council director, the eminent law professor and civil rights activist Monroe Freedman, acts as our liaison to the administration. A distinguished-looking man who has returned to traditional Judaism thanks to his wife, Audrey, a convert, Freedman impresses people with his graciousness and precision of thought. Unlike many others, he is not in awe of Washington or power, and his integrity prevents him from getting involved in political maneuvers. He expresses a pessimism that events eventually confirm. Example: We are asked politely but insistently to accept a Pole, that is, a non-Jewish American of Polish origin. His connection to the Tragedy? None. He is to represent the Polish nation, which, undeniably, has suffered as well.

So my friend Arthur had been right. I call an urgent meeting with my close collaborators and ask for their advice: Should we resist the pressures? For Frank Lautenberg, industrialist and future senator from New Jersey, compromise is unavoidable; he thinks that a rejection would signify the end of the project, the end of the memorial. “Sometimes,” he says, “if it is for a just cause, one may sell one’s soul to the devil.” Siggi Wilzig, a Jew from Berlin and a survivor of Auschwitz, flies into a rage and—fortunately—puts him in his place. In Miles Lerman’s view, if it were a Ukrainian he would say no, but a Pole, that’s something else, less serious. How is it less serious? The discussion leads nowhere. As for me, had the White House asked us to nominate a Pole who had been a deportee or had

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