by Elie Wiesel
In my hotel room with Marion, Elisha, Sigmund, and Per, I review my acceptance “response” to Reagan. Later I have a copy dropped off at the White House. No one had asked for it; I consider it a matter of courtesy. I want the president to know in advance what I intend to say to him tomorrow. Who knows; a miracle is still possible.
A journalist calls: Am I aware of the secret meeting being held at this very moment, in my hotel, on a lower floor? Breger has brought together a group of Jewish leaders to discuss Bitburg and to exert pressure on them in the hope that they might put pressure on me.
There’s nothing surprising about this. Most of the Jewish leaders refuse to support me. They tell me of the importance of conciliating ethics and politics. Senator Lautenberg of New Jersey advises me to keep a low profile. Don’t make waves, he says, don’t rock the boat. Why be in conflict with the president? Other Jewish personalities also preach moderation, appeasement. After all, Bitburg is but one episode in the Jewish community’s relationship with the president. It is better to compromise. There will be other crises; we shall need the president’s goodwill. Amazingly, these are the same leaders who after the ceremony hasten to congratulate me and applaud my courage, adding: “You know that I was on your side, believe me, I was.”
The evening is hectic, interrupted by “urgent” calls. Insiders pass on the latest piece of information from “reliable sources,” or a last piece of advice. Elisha acts as switchboard operator, secretary, and spokesman. I am told that some reporters are spending the night downstairs, near the elevators, waiting for a scoop. It all reminds me of the old days, when I was a reporter.
Friday morning a limousine takes me to the studios of CBS, NBC, and ABC. It has been ages since I worked as a journalist, but today especially I would have preferred the role of interviewer to that of interviewee, perhaps because I know in advance the questions that will be put to me: Am I going to accept the medal from the president? (Yes—a refusal would mean offending the American people.) What am I going to say to him? (That he should change his mind.) What is my stand on collective guilt? (I don’t believe in it.)
At almost 10 o’clock we go to the White House. At the gate we run into the Israeli ambassador, my old friend Meir Rosenne, whom I have invited. Breger walks over; there is instant antagonism between us. Breger tells me I know his in-laws. To get into my good graces, he mentions the Talmud. Since I don’t react, he comes to the point: He feels my speech is somewhat long. In other words, he’d like me to shorten it. In other words, he’d like me to remove the critical passages.
I don’t react. In the antechamber I glimpse Rosenthal and Gelb. Marion joins us. The four of us retreat to a corner for a brief, last-minute consultation. I tell them of my hurried, unpleasant conversation with Breger and that I’m going to try to see the president before the ceremony. I want to try one last time to convince him. They’re skeptical, and so am I. I ask them what I should do if an attempt is made to cut my speech. “In that case,” Rosenthal says, “you don’t make a speech. You say thanks for the medal and you read your text in front of the cameras and the press, outside, on the lawn.”
Just then Breger comes running. Breathlessly he tells me that Donald Regan is waiting for me in his office. On our way there, Breger resumes the attack. I still don’t react. Regan greets me warmly. I ask him if he has read my speech. Yes, he has read it. No objections? Absolutely none. And the president? No objections. So it was only Breger who wanted to censor me. Why such zeal from a man whose roots, if not his emotional ties, are in Jewish Eastern Europe? Why would a Jew—an Orthodox Jew, to boot—behave so contemptibly? To win points from his superiors? His punishment follows almost instantly.
Regan escorts us into the Oval Office. With us is Peggy Tishman, an intelligent, elegant lady devoted to various Jewish causes who heads a cultural group that organizes an annual “Week of Jewish Heritage” event, which this year is under the president’s auspices. Why have the two ceremonies been linked? Probably an idea of Breger’s intended to minimize the importance accorded the event honoring me. Regan presents Peggy to the president, who politely says he knows who she is; then he presents me. The president interrupts him: “There’s no need; we know each other.”
Now comes Breger’s turn. Clearly, the president has no idea who he is. Regan has to explain to him that Breger deals with Jewish affairs at the White House. Poor Breger, who has been boasting everywhere about his personal relations with the president, who has been speaking on his behalf, supposedly expressing his wishes—I watch him turn pale: The president has treated him as one would a stranger.
After we sit down, Peggy and I speak of our concerns, of what is troubling us. I say: “Mr. President, it’s not too late. Imagine for a moment the following scenario: You deliver your remarks, you hand me the medal, I respond, you already know my response. When I finish speaking, you return to the microphone and simply say: ‘Very well, I shan’t go.’ Do that, Mr. President, and people everywhere, Jews and non-Jews, young and old, Republicans and Democrats alike, will applaud your decision. They will say: ‘The president of the United States doesn’t really need advisers; he decides.’”
“Too late,” he says to me with a grave, sad smile. He has just spoken to Chancellor Kohl on the telephone. The German leader has told him that if the visit to Bitburg is canceled now, it will be a “national catastrophe” for his country. The president is committed. Break his promise? Unthinkable. I feel sorry for him. I know he feels trapped, and that if it depended solely on him, he would decide differently. The threesome of Regan, Deaver, and Buchanan have in fact made the decision in his place.
It’s almost 11 o’clock. We take our leave of the president and walk in the direction of the Roosevelt Room. Squeezed together like passengers in a subway during rush hour, the guests are already there. There are about forty people, fifty at most. Vice President George Bush is there, as are the president’s chief advisers, the four congressmen who had introduced the bill proposing me for the medal, and the press pool. NBC is broadcasting the ceremony live, as is CNN. Elisha and Marion are seated in the first row. Just behind them, Sigmund, Abe Rosenthal and his wife, Shirley, Arthur Gelb and his wife, Barbara. The president enters at precisely 11 o’clock. The audience stands, waiting for him to sit down. As always, images from long ago flash through my mind. I see myself back home, in my little town. It is morning. I’m going to shul. It’s winter. It’s snowing. I am alone in the street. No—not quite. I hear footsteps. Someone is following me. To assault me? To protect me? How does one measure the road from Sighet to the White House? The president speaks well, of Jewish history, Judaism, the weight of heritage, ethics and culture, Jewish suffering—no one can read a text as he does. But he is tense, as I am, and, evidently, as is the audience. There is a sense of history unfolding.
The president covers me with praise. He appears to be attributing to me everything that is good in the world at this moment in time. Do I feel flattered? No, not really. Embarrassed? Not that either. It’s something else. There is this sense of the unreal I have whenever I listen to people talking about me. This time it’s even stronger, as though I were somewhere else, centuries ago. I hear my name. I get up and approach the president, who, with a smile, offers me the pen with which he has just signed the Jewish Heritage Proclamation. Then he hands me the gold medal. There is applause. Who is being applauded here? The Jewish child from Sighet? Out of the corner of my eye I see Marion, and I look at Elisha. I feel emotion gripping me. That’s how it is; it is enough for me to look at my son to feel a lump in my throat. Has he any idea of what he represents for his father? I had not planned this, but as I leave the podium I walk over to him and place the medal in his hands.
In fifteen or twenty minutes I try to cover the entire problem, my entire life. With the respect due the leader of the world, with the affection I feel for the man who has always shown me friendship and understanding for Jewish concerns, I feel it is important to tell him that “it is not a question of politics b
ut of good and evil.” I stress that it seems to be the opinion of a majority of Americans that “that place is not your place, Mr. President. Your place is with the victims of the SS.” I say: “When the decision was taken to go there, you were unaware of the presence there of SS tombs. But now you know.” Therefore he should cancel. I tell him why. I dwell briefly on the immensity of the crimes committed by the SS. “I have seen them at work. I have known their victims. They were my friends. They were my parents….” I remind him that on another April 19, in 1943, the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto found themselves abandoned by the Allies; all the clandestine networks in occupied Europe received arms and money from London, Washington, even Moscow, all except the Jewish resistance fighters of the ghettos. I speak of their feelings of isolation, abandonment, of the hostility they had to face, and of the behavior of the free world’s leaders: Though they knew what was happening, they did little. In fact they did nothing to save the endangered Jewish children. A million Jewish children perished, I say; if I spent my whole life reciting their names I would die before I finished. “The Jewish children, Mr. President, I saw them, I saw them being thrown into the flames, alive.” Did I convince him? Television images show him overwhelmed, his face reflecting pain. Did I succeed in making him realize how deep a wound he was inflicting on countless victims, their families, their friends?
After the ceremony I am literally pulled out to the lawn, where I find myself facing the media. I never thought there were so many reporters accredited at the White House. Questions are flying from every corner. The coverage is live. How does one come up with ten original answers to ten journalists all asking the same thing?
My speech makes headlines everywhere. The New York Times, the Washington Post, most American newspapers reprint it in full. Newsweek magazine writes that my “impassioned plea was surely one of the remarkable moments in the annals of the White House.” Chris Wallace of NBC: “It was one of the most extraordinary scenes I’ve ever watched in my three years at the White House. Like a professor addressing a pupil, Elie Wiesel told the president that …”
Inside, champagne is being served. A marine officer hands me a sealed envelope; I withdraw to a corner to open it. It is a hastily scribbled note: “I’m in the office next door. I’m here on a mission, so I cannot show myself. I saw you on the screen just now; I’m proud of you.” I recognize the handwriting; it is that of Jacques Attali, at that time President Mitterrand’s special adviser.
The marine officer returns: Chief of Staff Donald Regan wishes me to join him in his office. To criticize me, to tell me of his displeasure? No: He congratulates me. And, interestingly, on the president’s behalf, he thanks me for my courteous and respectful tone. After all, I could have said anything I chose. I could have, with the whole country listening, flaunted my disappointment. We appreciate your moderation, Regan tells me. To show our appreciation we wish to propose the following: Come with us to Europe on Air Force One. Together you and the president have made history today, and that way you’ll continue what you started. I listen to him, thinking naively that I have prevailed. If I am invited to join them on the trip, it must mean that I have persuaded them. I instantly think of a problem: How am I going to come back? If I go to Europe with the president, how am I going to be back in time for my class at Boston University? After all, they won’t be giving me another plane, presidential or not, for the trip home. While these thoughts go through my mind, Regan keeps on describing our future exploits—a stop here, a reception there, the president will speak, I’ll respond…. The dialogue begun today will thus be continued for the greater glory of men of goodwill. Whenever he stops to take a breath, I ask: “And then?” Meaning: How am I going to get back to the United States? Regan, in full swing, can’t be interrupted. And then, he says, we’ll go here, there…. I insist: “And then?” “Then,” says Regan, “we’ll quickly dash to this place of damnation, Bitburg and….” This time I manage to interrupt him: “Mr. Regan, I don’t understand what you’re saying: I desperately don’t want the president to go there, and you want me to go there with him?”
(Regan later wrote in his memoirs that I had promised him beforehand not to make a speech when the medal was given me. My lawyers immediately demanded a retraction and an apology. Under the threat of legal action, he gave us both.)
• • •
During the weeks that still separate us from the fateful trip, people from throughout the country continue to exert pressure on the White House. Jesse Jackson comes to tell us that he is leading a delegation to Dachau, to see and to testify. Articles and letters from readers abound in the press.
To the end I cling to the conviction that somehow, at the last minute, the president will not proceed with the scheduled visit. I say so to all the reporters: He won’t go, you’ll see, he won’t go. I was mistaken. In the end, President Reagan did go to Bitburg. That day, I was in New Jersey for a conference. There was a television crew on-site, and I was asked to comment on the presidential visit live. I chose to dwell on the symbolic significance of his act: “With these few steps taken by the president, forty years of history have been wiped out.”
When the president and Kohl arrive in the former concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, Menachem Rosensaft (son of Yossel and Hadassah) and other children of survivors from this camp offer them a “welcome” that respectfully takes issue with the trip. The German police attempt to manhandle some of them, but, aware that the eyes of the world are on them, they decide to be more polite.
Bitburg is a turning point. Kohl knows it, and we know it. Relations with Germany are changed forever. The SS, former or current, will no longer be considered outside the law. Bitburg will remain a “response” to Nuremberg.
Never before and only rarely afterward did I receive so much mail, extraordinary not only by its volume but by its content. By standing up to the most powerful man in the world, the former refugee in me had in just a few minutes touched a thousand times more people than I had with all my previous writings and speeches.
One evening, dining at a restaurant with Marion and friends, I notice at the other end of the room an admiral in full uniform celebrating a birthday with his family. Suddenly he sees me. He gets up and walks over to our table, salutes me, and thunders: “I am Admiral ________. And I must tell you: Though the president is my commander in chief, it is you I am proud of.”
A news commentator later said to me: “In fact, Bitburg did do some good; it allowed you to teach America something about history and remembrance.”
Perhaps, but I could have done without it.
• • •
Just as sin begets sin, so shame begets shame.
The spectacle of the cemetery visit will be accompanied by presidential statements that many consider more offensive, more outrageous than the visit itself. To justify his decision Reagan declares that the SS buried in Bitburg were victims in the same way and to the same degree as the prisoners murdered in the concentration camps. The angry reaction of the survivors surprises no one. Never before had anyone dared push blasphemy as far as in this odious comparison. To thus link the SS to their victims transcended the limits of decency.
Hadassah Rosensaft, a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, whose candidacy I had presented to the commission and later to the Council, calls me in despair: “How could he, how dare he say what he said?” She tells me that she is now sorry for not having voted for the collective resignation of the Council. I try to calm her: “In two days we’ll have another session. If a new proposal to resign collectively comes before us, will you vote for it?” Her answer is instantaneous: “Absolutely. You may count on me.”
This session is as tense, as agitated as the last. The president’s ill-chosen words weigh on us. It is impossible to ignore them, brush them aside—or, as they say, “live with them.” What line of conduct are we to adopt? Sigmund renews his motion to resign as a group. I note with sadness that he and I are still in the minority. In the end, only Irving Bernstein, Bob McAfee
Brown, Siggi Wilzig, and Norman Braman vote with us. Most of our colleagues—including the survivors—oppose the motion. I am the last to take the floor. I say:
There comes a moment in the lives of every one of us when we must justify our presence. For us, this is the moment. I cannot quite see how we can continue to serve a president who has just insulted the memory of our dead. Since we have been appointed by him, we have only one option: to signify our disagreement by resigning. Otherwise we lose the moral right to defend that memory. Our resignation will leave only a small trace, but a trace nevertheless: Two or three phrases in this document will recall that we were able to resist the temptations of cowardice.
I slowly look around the table. The uneasiness is tangible. Many eyes are cast down. The meeting is still in session when I am asked to step outside for an urgent call. New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg is on the phone. He seems beside himself with fury. He has learned that some of us are thinking of resigning. He warns me and asks me to warn the others on his behalf that if they resign, he will take steps, he will denounce them to the media, and then we shall learn what he’s capable of. I don’t argue. What’s the point?
That day, the day of the shameful vote against collective resignation, I decide that I have had enough. At the first opportunity I shall hand in my resignation to the president. Marion agrees. In fact it has been months, if not years, that she has been urging me to quit. Washington is taking too much of my time. I am forced to spend hours and hours on the telephone. And then things are not right with the Council: too many intrigues, too many jealousies; endless ideological and ethnic quarrels; requests from one side, recriminations from the other; Washington millionaires who are grumbling, philanthropists who have other priorities, money that’s not coming in fast enough. I had stated from the start that collecting money was not my forte. With Sigmund’s help, Miles is doing the best he can, but it is going slowly. We have hired professional fund-raisers, but their advice costs us more money than they bring in. I use my lecture tours to support Miles’s efforts. There is no lack of promises. I try to motivate some of the Hollywood moguls. Steven Spielberg sets the example. One of the moguls will install an electronic system in the future museum, another will take care of the video systems. But there is little progress. I no longer have any “influence” on nominations. The signals are anything but ambiguous: I am not to expect any cooperation from the administration.
