by Elie Wiesel
Sigmund is against my quitting. So is Irving Bernstein. They urge me to wait—a few weeks, a few months. They say my resignation might be interpreted as an attempt to politicize the Council and its mission. In the meantime, Sonny and Bud have become more active, and they are clamoring for more authority, obviously at Sigmund’s expense. The feeling between the two factions is evidently one of animosity. I have to intervene more often, too often. How can I escape this atmosphere of arguments, of quarrels? I spend hours appeasing one side or the other—a waste of time. I don’t show it, but I’m losing patience, especially since I continue to have doubts about the very mission that has been entrusted to us. Who knows, perhaps the museum had been a mistake after all. And what if Jimmy Carter had been right? Jewish memory has survived without museums; it has survived thanks to writing, thanks to books, thanks to schools. In addition to the Day of Remembrance, we could have created archives and educational programs. All our problems, all our difficulties stem from the creation of the museum. Without it we would have been spared all these grandiose and expensive traps. Or we could have renovated the brick building that had been offered us. The Holocaust and luxury are incompatible. Now it’s too late; impossible to go back.
So we persevere. Sonny insists that we hire his friend Shaike Weinberg, former director of Beit Hatefutsot, the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv, who is now living in Washington. I hesitate. I know that museum. Young Israelis like it for its technical novelties. Here we call them “gimmicks”—gadgets, tricks, special effects. I worry that while this approach may be useful for children in secondary schools, it might not be right for a museum dedicated to the Holocaust.
In Washington, the administrative team is going through its own series of crises. Monroe Freedman has decided to return to academia. I propose to the White House to replace him with Leon Jick, professor of contemporary Jewish history at Brandeis University. He is turned down. I suggest Sister Carol Rittner. Suggestion rejected. Finally, an active Jewish Republican, Seymour Siegel, who was himself succeeded by Richard Krieger, succeeds Monroe Freedman.
Sonny and Bud are getting impatient. They’re having difficulty getting along with Sigmund, but toward Krieger they soon become downright aggressive. He refuses to be manipulated, which, in turn, exasperates them. As he is responsible for the implementation of the Council’s decisions, he insists on checking all expenses. Sonny has fits of anger. He wants nothing to do with either Sigmund or Krieger. He acknowledges my authority but not theirs. In fact, he would like to replace Sigmund as chair of the committee handling the construction of the museum. I am against it: I don’t wish to humiliate a survivor and a friend. Thereafter, Sonny turns openly hostile. Bud, of course, takes his side. In a way I understand them: Building is their business. Why do we get involved with it? If only we would leave him alone—that’s all Sonny asks. What does this museum mean to him? Just another building project? Nothing but a pile of bricks and cash? I refuse to believe that.
On July 2, 1986, I go to Washington one more time, hoping to restore peace between the adversaries. My notes from that day reflect my mood:
I cannot believe what I read and hear. What is happening to them? Why such antagonism? Why such hostility and suspicion? I once thought that our team would be inspired by the grandeur of its mission; I thought we would be happy working together, that the time between our meetings would seem long…. Instead, what do I see? Absurd rivalries, petty intrigues….
Once more I try to convince them. But peace lasts only until the next argument—especially since Sonny now has a new reason for being unhappy. The architectural design that had been approved in my absence has been demolished by an article in the Washington Post. We shall have to find a new architect. Arthur Rosenblat, a fine-arts specialist brought in by Sonny, suggests James Ingo Freed, a noted associate of I. M. Pei. I meet with Rosenblat and Freed separately. Both impress me favorably. But I wonder why, though both are Jewish, neither has ever felt the need to visit Israel. And what concerns me even more: Freed confesses to me that even though he’s a refugee from Germany, he has never been interested in the Holocaust. He has repressed his past. Should we hold this against him? I don’t think so; I like him and his work. I spend many hours with Freed, who wants me to share with him my vision for the museum. He listens silently. Occasionally he asks a question. Then another. He stays with me until he is sure he understands. I like his approach. I consult I. M. Pei. He confirms that Freed is excellent. I decide to hire him. I write the Council: “… By its magnitude, the Holocaust defies language and art: and yet one and the other are necessary to tell the history that must be told. In James Freed we have found an architect capable of mastering this unique challenge….”
Sonny and Bud favor his candidacy but remain on the offensive about everything else. Sonny has the support of his friend in Congress. Through his wife, an influential member of the Republican party, Bud has access to the White House. They are determined to reduce Sigmund’s influence. To my great surprise and chagrin, Miles Lerman rallies to their support. Not only has he become their defender, but their accomplice as well. He comes to see me to “confide” that if Sigmund is not removed from the museum committee, Bud and Sonny may well withdraw from the project. My instinct tells me this is so. In fact, I shall have proof of it a few days later. Bud comes to see me at home. After the usual banter, he comes to the point, an ultimatum: If I keep Sigmund, Sonny and he will call it quits.
Though Sigmund is unhappy when I tell him of the conversation, he agrees, though reluctantly, to give in. But I am not ready. There is another reason besides loyalty. Again, the same one—I refuse to humiliate anyone, especially a friend.
To Miles, who tries to overcome my resistance in the name of a ruthless pragmatism—which I understand but reject—I respond that I cannot sanction publicly humiliating a man as devoted as Sigmund. “Moreover,” I tell Miles, “he is your best friend.” He replies that if I don’t submit to their ultimatum—he doesn’t use this word, but the sense is there—it means the end of the project. And, he insists, the project is more important than any individual.
This whole business upsets me terribly. What about friendship? How does one sacrifice a close friend? It was Sigmund who gave him his first chance and supported him inside the Council. He would not have been nominated if Sigmund hadn’t begged me to do it. And then hadn’t he learned yet that one human being is more important than all of man’s endeavors?
I feel exhausted and dangerously close to a red line that I am not ready to cross. On the one hand, I refuse to hurt a friend; on the other, I don’t want to harm a project that at this point has little chance of succeeding without Sonny and Bud. There is only one solution. Resign. I shall announce my resignation at the beginning of December, at the regular Council meeting.
En route for Washington one December evening, Sigmund and I stop off in New Jersey, where I am to give a lecture at a local university. Afterward, we have dinner with Sam Halperin, a survivor and a successful businessman, in the company of his associates. I don’t tell them of my decision; Sigmund and Marion are the only ones who know. Siggi Wilzig, bubbling over with energy, promises me that things would work better without Sonny and Bud. He guarantees that twenty-four hours after their resignation a new builder will put himself at our disposal. “I want to speak to him,” I say. He immediately puts me in contact with a famous builder, Bill Zeckendorf, who confirms what Wilzig has said. Only I am tired of all the promises of all these people, the ones I know and the ones I don’t. Whom can I trust? Nevertheless I try one more time. I say to Halperin: “You are in real estate and construction; why don’t you take over the project?” He answers that he cannot, that the moment is not right; he’s too busy with too many things.
That settles it. My absolutely final effort has failed. The next day I hand in my resignation to the White House. Everyone is astounded. Donald Regan’s reaction is: “What? You’re resigning? But the president has just reappointed you for another five years! Is it somet
hing we did?” He is worried about possible political consequences. I reassure him: “It has nothing to do with you.” My reasons are personal. This is not quite true, but almost. Since the Bitburg affair I have not felt right. How can I “serve” under a president who “objectively” (using Marxist terminology; once is not a habit) has whitewashed the SS by comparing them to their victims? But that is not the only reason.
Back from the White House, I know that word has leaked out. Sigmund is sad, but there is nothing he can say to make me go back on my decision. Marion is happy; Marian Craig, my loyal assistant, is unhappy. Miles suggests that I take a year’s leave. I shrug my shoulders. Yitz Greenberg and Alfred Gottschalk, president of Hebrew Union College, beg me not to abandon the project. I tell them that it’s too late. Technically that is not true: A simple call to Regan and everything could be as before. But that’s just it—I don’t want things as they were before.
The Council meeting is pathetic. There is a series of sentimental appeals imploring me not to go. With the exception of Bud and Sonny, almost all the members ask to speak. I would be too embarrassed to repeat what was said—yes, embarrassed, not flattered. They question me, plead with me, make me promises. Some use emotional arguments, others prefer logic. They are not unlike children fearful of becoming orphans.
As always, I listen to them attentively, just like at the university, where from the start I have always tried to set an example. I owe it to my students and to my colleagues not to let myself be distracted. I concentrate on what each one has to say. My personal opinion, or any comment I have, is given only at the end.
I look out over the assembled Council members with a mixed feeling of accomplishment and failure. All things considered, we did some good work. Sworn to preserve memory, we had all been resolute in fighting defamation and oblivion. We reached certain goals, fought certain battles, and obtained victories of which we can be proud. Not many. So what? I refuse to judge my colleagues, those who fell short. We all have our own way of doing what we consider to be our duty.
As far as I am concerned, I consider it my duty to relinquish the reins. I acknowledge my shortcomings: I am a poor manager, a bad administrator. I have problems giving orders, and I am incapable of hurting anyone, even in the name of supposedly sacred aims. I don’t like firing people. I abhor reprimanding, punishing. I would rather write, study, and teach than “preside.” In my letter to President Reagan, which I read to the plenary session, I suggest that since the project has now entered the practical, concrete phase, my successor ought to have the qualities required of a C.E.O., someone able to administer, organize, and navigate through budgetary labyrinths.
A few weeks later the White House appoints Bud Meyerhoff. Together with his friend Sonny Abramson, he will monitor the work of the Council. They bring back Berenbaum and Weinberg, take revenge on Sigmund (who will no longer be a member of the executive committee and will not even be reappointed as a member of the Council), and dismiss Richard Krieger and then Professor Eli Pfefferkorn—in short, all those who were close and devoted to me are removed.
From that time on, whenever a survivor comes to see me to tell me about what is going on in Washington during the meetings and behind the scenes, I stop him or her; I would rather not know. With my resignation I gave up the right to criticize. I want my successors to do their work without criticism from me. Once the project is realized and the museum is built, I’ll speak my mind—not before.
What really hurt and disappointed me? That when Sigmund was excluded from the executive committee, of which he had been a part since the beginning, not one survivor rallied to his support. A comrade, a colleague had been humiliated, and they all looked away. The same was true for Pfefferkorn. No one spoke up to save the job of this Holocaust survivor.
How can these people labor for remembrance of the past when in the present they flout the dignity of living people? But then, perhaps, I expect too much of them. They are human, hence capable of anything. Just like everyone else.
This said, the new team deserves praise. Miles and Bud excel in the art of collecting funds. People who refused to help earlier now show themselves more generous. The New Jersey group’s gift comes to several million dollars. The project is taking shape. Hundreds of specialists are at work.
• • •
January 1993: I visit the essential part of the museum, and my first impression of the building itself is positive. But paradoxically, the museum, by trying to say everything, does not say enough. Yes, there are the ghettos, the yellow stars, the terrified men, the starving children, the corpses in the street, the cruelty of the torturers, the misery of the victims. You enter through the cattle car imported from Poland. You walk on the cobblestones of the Warsaw Ghetto. “Identity cards” are distributed at the entrance. These things are designed to make things look authentic, to give the visitor the impression, if not the feeling, that he or she is there. Upon leaving, the visitor will be able to say: “Now I know everything; I understand.” Later he or she will say: “I was there.” I had a different vision of the museum. I should have liked the visitor to leave saying: “Now I know how little I know.”
And then: There is this huge bas-relief that shows—yes, shows—the process of annihilation. The Polish sculptor has depicted the inmates upon arrival, upon assembling at the ramp. He “shows” the selection, the march to the “showers;” he “shows” the members of the Sonderkommandos pushing the victims into the antechamber to undress and then into the gas chamber; then you “see” the corpses being “treated” by the “dentists” before being sent to the furnaces. You “see” it all. You “see” too much.
That is how it is: By trying to illustrate too much, reveal too much by contrived means, it all becomes too facile.
The men and women who have gone through concentration camps and try to speak of it know the boundaries of language. They speak in order to tell us that no words can possibly communicate the unspeakable. In trying to show everything, you conceal the essential. It is not by “seeing” the ramp in Birkenau that the visitor will feel what those newly arrived Jews felt as they moved toward the selection. In this case the saying “less is more” is apt.
Also, though the building is powerful, you become aware of the magnitude of the ambition and the means expended. As though it had been decided that this museum had to be “the best, the greatest in the world.” All these computers, all these videos, all these ultramodern technical and electronic effects, all those buttons to press, all those photographs accumulated to shock you, make you weep. It is an enormous enterprise worthy of our capital. James Freed has produced an excellent piece of work. If there is fault, it lies with those who conceived and shaped its content.
Publicly I have said nothing until now, but in truth I would have preferred a more sober, more humble edifice, one that would suggest the unspoken, the silence, the secret. I think of a talmudic saying: The children of Israel deserved to be delivered from Egypt because they had safeguarded their mystery. Here, the sense of mystery is missing.
And yet…. Upon revisiting the museum sometime later, I change my mind to some degree. It is undeniably impressive. The first section, which covers the rise of Nazism in Hitler’s Germany, is excellent. The maps, the statistics, the photographs are magnificent. The same is true for the way the lack of any “response” from the Allies and the neutral countries is presented. The builders’ devotion is so evident that I silence any impulse to criticize. In fact I often praise the museum in public.
I take part in the official opening, together with Presidents Bill Clinton and Chaim Herzog, on April 19, 1993. Once again, it is that symbolic date: the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
It is raining that day and it is cold. I am soaked, and so is my text. I had worked on it until three in the morning and now it is illegible. I have no choice but to improvise. I evoke the genesis of the project under President Carter, the deep reasons that impelled me to give it form with the words: “For the dead and
the living—we must bear witness.” I tell the story of a woman in her kitchen, preparing for Passover in 1943, discussing the news from Warsaw. She wonders: “Why did the young Jews there think it necessary to rebel? Couldn’t they have waited quietly for the end of the war?” My speech ends with this small sentence: “That woman was my mother….”
Three weeks before the opening, Bud Meyerhoff, my successor as chairman of the Council, is suddenly stripped of his functions. Why? There are bizarre rumors. Some say that, together with his deputy, William Loewenberg, he refused to invite Chaim Herzog to speak at the inauguration.
Now and then, members of Congress and members of the Jewish community call, asking me to return to my old post, which Miles has been coveting for a long time. Sigmund is for it, but Marion is dead set against it. Friends point out that now that the museum exists, I would no longer be burdened by administrative tasks. I refuse. Having been gone for almost seven years, I don’t feel I should take up the reins again. Though the idea of launching a project never fails to seduce me, once a project is realized I tend to lose interest.
Besides, the museum does very well without me. The public is lining up outside, people from all over the world, Jews and Christians, young and old—altogether more than two million visitors in a year. It is impossible to get tickets without waiting days, weeks.
