by Elie Wiesel
Parliament is in session. The hall is packed: The deputies have not closed their eyes since the beginning of the putsch. On some of the benches young “revolutionaries” are dozing. Owing to the lack of space in the galleries, we are seated among the deputies. Yeltsin is on stage witnessing a noisy debate. I don’t understand what it’s about, but the thought flashes through my mind that I could vote, like the deputies next to me, just by pressing one of the three buttons in front of me. Fortunately I see the world-famous Russian-born cellist Mstislav (Slava) Rostropovitch, who sums up for me what is being said by the representatives of the people.
We’re all waiting for Gorbachev’s arrival, but after several false alarms we give up. In fact, Yeltsin leaves, too. Outside a demonstration is taking place. On the balcony a dozen fiery speakers are haranguing the growing crowd, which keeps applauding.
Suddenly, I notice Edward Shevardnadze. A solitary figure, he keeps aloof from the people and their leaders. He seems remote, thoughtful. The bold minister of foreign affairs of perestroika hardly matters anymore. He is a “has been” who might as well be absent. When our eyes meet, we rush toward each other to embrace. He invites us—the two French parliamentarians and me—to his office in the early afternoon. I tell him: “I was watching you a moment ago. You looked sad, melancholy. Why? After all, things are falling into place. The putsch failed, perestroika is saved. Gorbachev is back in power. You should be happy.” He admits he’s not. How could he be? He tells us that everything is going badly in the country; it is coming apart. Poverty is so widespread that if the West doesn’t help, there will be famine. And anything could happen. We ask him why he is angry with Gorbachev, whom he has just criticized with astounding frankness in an interview. Yes, he is angry: He should never have gone on vacation to the Crimea; he should have foreseen the putsch, taken the necessary measures. No doubt there are other reasons he chooses not to discuss. To cheer him up, I ask as I’m about to leave: “Shall I have to call you Mr. President one of these days?” “Never!” he answers laughing. “I have seen the nature of power; I don’t want any part of it.”
His later accession to the presidency of his native Georgia confirms to me the popular wisdom that says no political figure should ever use the word “never.”
Gorbachev’s press conference, the first since his return from the Crimea, is tumultuous. His account of what happened to him is poignant. You listen to him, afraid to breathe, stirred by his courage. He tells of his comrades’ treachery, his feeling of isolation, and that of those close to him. One of the two most powerful people on the globe cut off from the outside world: How could it happen? If it hadn’t been for the loyalty of a small group of bodyguards, there would have been no way out. But why does he think it necessary to defend Communism? The disappointment in the hall is palpable. People continue to listen but in a different way. Does he realize that, for him, this is the beginning of the end?
The French ambassador takes us over to him. Three sets of security agents, automatic rifles at the ready, guard him. His face shows lines of fatigue, insomnia, perhaps bitterness. I am so moved by his appearance that I don’t hear what Vauzelle and Lecanuet tell him or what he says in reply. A French student acts as interpreter. He thanks me for having come from so far away. I transmit Mitterrand’s message to him, adding how pleased I am to be here. And that as a Jew, I really owe it to him; after all, he was the one who allowed the “Jews of Silence” to leave for Israel. I may be wrong, but I believe his eyes fill with tears. But all he says to me is: “I know who you are, but I did not know how influential you are.” Seeing my astonishment, he explains with a smile: “You must be someone very important; President Mitterrand has called me three times today, always about you.” I feel like answering him: I am the same man who for years wrote you letters and letters on behalf of Shcharansky, Sakharov, Slepak, and Nudel, the same man who for years implored you to speak out, preferably on television, against the anti-Semitism that is still rife in your country. But this is not the time. There will be other opportunities to speak of that.
In the plane that takes us back to France, I review everything I’ve just heard and lived through. Yeltsin’s populism. The passivity of the Muscovites. Gorbachev’s emotion. He above all is the object of my reflections. Rarely have I seen a man so disillusioned, so solitary. Almost all his friends betrayed him. Almost all his comrades abandoned him. His collaborators—almost all repudiated him. Moreover, he had been convinced that he held great power, when all that remained was illusion and memory. And his religion, Communism, is bankrupt. What is left? Nothing but ruins.
Back in Paris, I demonstrate my total ignorance of foreign policy as I present my report to Mitterrand. Gorbachev is not finished, I say with certainty. He will recover. And Yeltsin? the president inquires. Yeltsin? Not a chance! It would have been difficult to be more wrong.
Mitterrand remains in power, but the people are disenchanted. He drops dramatically in all the polls. His own party seems to be turning its back on him. Certain Socialist leaders tell me: “Before, he helped us; now he is in our way.” Others go further: “Before, he was the solution; now he’s the problem.” And others go even further: “If we lose, it will be his fault.”
All that is rather unfair. Few men have as broad a vision of the world. But it seems that the gods have abandoned him. In biblical terms one would say, Grace has left him. Before, people went so far as to like his failings, and now he is blamed even for his virtues.
In 1988, Jack Lang proposed to Mitterrand the creation of an international intellectual body whose purpose would be the exploration of the larger social and cultural themes that confront mankind at the close of the twentieth century. The president authorized the project. Two top advisers on cultural affairs at the Élysée—Laure Adler first, then Bernard Latarget—together with a representative of the culture ministry were to act as liaisons to the government. And that was how the Académie Universelle des Cultures was born. Among its members, many prestigious names of the literary, artistic, and scientific worlds. Ten Nobel laureates, a movie star, novelists, teachers, musicians, architects: Each occupies a singular place in his or her domain. We devise an exciting agenda: annual prizes, various scholarships and projects.
As usual, things drag. The inauguration—at the Louvre, no less—by Mitterrand takes place a few months before the legislative elections. As a result the promises and commitments made on the ministerial level are not fulfilled. The relatively modest annual budget of six million francs (around a million dollars) remains an objective, if not a dream. Nevertheless, the academy functions. Its first conference, held in the main amphitheater of the Sorbonne, deals with the problem of “intervention.” In Sienna, as guests of the municipality, academy members gather for a debate on “intolerance.” Whatever the academy does, it does well. It could do better—if it were given the means.
There is no doubt that Mitterrand could intervene to release the funds, even during the era of cohabitation, especially since this is a project conceived with him. I speak to him about it several times. Each time he replies that he will mention it to the prime minister and to the minister of culture. The last time I bring up the subject, he simply says: “What can I do? I no longer have the power I used to have.” I had never found him so pathetic. That was in 1994.
Until the Bousquet affair, I believed that history would be kind to him. Since then, I no longer believe it. And I say this with sadness. From now on, whenever the name of René Bousquet is spoken, another name will instantly come to mind: that of his friend François Mitterrand.
The Bousquet affair breaks into the news in September 1994 like thunder announcing the days of awe and anguish of the Jewish High Holiday of Rosh Hashana.
I am in Paris for the publication of Tous les Fleuves vont à la mer (All Rivers Run to the Sea). Invited by France-Inter radio for its 1 p.m. news program, I am waiting for my turn when I hear someone speaking about Pétain and Mitterrand. A staff member tells me the speaker’s name: Pier
re Péan. The man himself seems pleasant and restrained, but what he says nevertheless upsets me. How can he pronounce the names of Mitterrand and Pétain in one breath? I listen to him unaware that he will be the tangible cause of my estrangement from Mitterrand.
Even before I have a chance to read Péan’s Une jeunesse française,* I must endure the onslaught of the media as his revelations take on proportions reminiscent of the first stages of Watergate.
When I read the book, my first reaction is disbelief. I refuse to believe that a man like François Mitterrand could have concealed his Vichy past, formed intimate relationships with former cagoulards (members of La Cagoule, a clandestine right-wing organization), and become the friend of Bousquet, the French chief of police who, always surrounded by SS officers and the Gestapo, had organized the deportation of French Jewry. It couldn’t be. None of this fits in with the personality and life of the man I thought I knew so well.
True, from time to time, I had heard rumors, mostly vague. The person telling me this or that would be content to grin at me with an air of complicity or allow a sentence to go unfinished. Like everyone else I ascribed all this gossip to right-wing propaganda. I would wonder what else they would invent to harm him. I rejected these defamatory reports; I refused to discuss them. Rabbinic law teaches that it is forbidden not only to spread calumnies but even to listen to them.
Péan’s book is something else. These are not calumnies. In light of his revelations, and those they lead to, my attitude has become untenable. How can I defend a political figure who praised Bousquet even after he had been indicted and convicted of crimes against humanity? He said he found him “sympathique” and saw him “with pleasure”! Was that all he could say about the former accomplice of the SS? To Nicole Leibowitz-Boulanger of Le Nouvel Observateur, I admit feeling pained, offended. I say the same on television, and to audiences that come to hear me in Nancy, Lille, and elsewhere. But I refuse to go any further. It is not in my nature to join a mob, especially since Mitterrand is ill, seriously ill. The public’s reaction is hostile. Here and there people tell me they cannot understand how I could be the friend of the friend of Bousquet. My answer: “The president honors me with his friendship; I owe it to him to listen to his explanations. The sooner the better.” But we are getting close to the Jewish High Holidays, and I must go home for Rosh Hashana.
It is when I come back to New York that I pick up the echoes of Mitterrand’s television interview with Jean-Pierre Elkabbach. I experience the same shock and outrage that is expressed by the French press. Some of the comments are offensive, but they come from precisely those who until recently showed him nothing but loyalty and affection. I hear disillusioned remarks from all sides. How is it possible that a man so intelligent, knowledgeable, and informed could not have been aware of the anti-Jewish laws of Vichy? The plundering, the persecutions, the arrests, the roundups—how could he have failed to know about them? And the “Vél d’Hiv”—he claims not to have known about that either, he who always wants to know everything? And if he knew, is it conceivable that he remained indifferent, which would be a thousand times worse? I find it difficult to cope with this affair, which gets more poisonous by the day. Abandoned by many of his political allies and personal friends, Mitterrand balks instead of confronting the problem. Or so I am told by a close female aide who when she dared to suggest to him that a new course of action was necessary, drew his wrath. That same day she handed him her resignation—which the president refused. Will he ever understand what is happening to him?
I call Anne Lauvergeon, who has succeeded Attali as the president’s right hand. Anne is discreet, superbly intelligent, and highly effective. She knows the depth of my dismay and appreciates my restraint. An appointment is made with the president for the week of Sukkot.
The welcome is friendly as always. The president’s face is marked by his illness, his gaze crossed by somber shadows. His voice is tense, broken. He is tired and speaks to me of the treatment he is undergoing. I wonder how I shall bring myself to ask him the questions that are sure to pain him. But I have no choice. As an opening, I quote to him a saying of Rebbe Nahman of Bratzlav, already reported in the first volume of my memoirs: “The world is mistaken about two things. First, it is wrong in thinking that a great man is incapable of making mistakes; it is also mistaken in thinking that once the mistake has been made, the great man ceases being great.” I feel that I have offered him a good way out, but he refuses to take it.
He tells me squarely that he has made no mistake. None? None. Hence no remorse, no regrets. The anti-Jewish laws of Vichy? Never knew about them. But as a civil servant of Vichy, had he not been asked to fill out a questionnaire in which he was required to declare that he was not a Jew? No, he was not a civil servant; he had a contract. And what was the difference? Precisely that he was not required to fill out that questionnaire. In short, he had done nothing wrong. But what about Bousquet? How could he have maintained friendly relations with this high Vichy official, an associate of the SS chiefs Heydrich and Oberg, who had organized the deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz? He shrugs his shoulders and replies that when he made his acquaintance, Bousquet had already been rehabilitated by the courts and was being received by the cream of financial society. In fact, there were in his entourage several very well known and respected Jews. How then could he, Mitterrand, have doubted his innocence? Moreover, they were not friends. They had seen each other only a dozen times and had never addressed each other by the intimate tu. As I insist on the strangeness of their relationship, he finally concedes that perhaps he should have shown himself “more vigilant.” I suggest to him that he take advantage of a future television interview to make a statement: “I was young and inexperienced; when one is young, one does things that are sometimes foolish; but after all, since then I’ve done other things.” I tell him that if he says that, the public will turn the page. He refuses. I say to him: “Even God admits to having made a mistake; read Genesis. But you have never made a mistake?” Then I suggest to him that we meet once more to record a conversation that would get to the bottom of the matter. I explain to him that I must understand. It is indispensable for me to understand. We shall then publish it somewhere. Mitterrand agrees but asks me to address my questions to him in writing beforehand.
After another hour and a half of discussion he accompanies me to the door, more cordial than ever. Did he know that we would not see each other again? With a heavy heart I linger in Anne Lauvergeon’s office before leaving for the airport. I tell her how unhappy I am with the conversation. Why had I not been able to pierce the shadows in which the president has wrapped his past? I tell Anne of my certainty that this affair will leave a black stain on Mitterrand’s passage through history; his tendency toward equivocation is doing him harm. I tell her of my suggestion for a recorded interview.
My questions—on Vichy and Pétain, the wreath and Bousquet, his writings for an anti-Semitic magazine, and the Francisque medal (Vichy’s highest decoration)—I fax to Anne for transmittal to the president. Did he read them? Certainly. His reaction is negative. Is he annoyed that I am not ready to be his defender? I am sure of it. In any case, he does not think he has to justify himself. In other words, he will not respond to my fax. There will be no further interview. No further dialogue.
I am disappointed. Sometimes I tell myself the word is not strong enough. For suddenly I understand that there’s a coherence and a logic in Mitterrand’s political course. His refusal to investigate the Nazi past of certain Frenchmen and to bring them to justice, his annual custom of secretly arranging to place a wreath on Pétain’s tomb, his links to former members of La Cagoule and other Nazi collaborators, his determination to suppress that part of his life, his habit of surrounding himself with Jews—all this must have an explanation.
I cannot believe that he wanted to deceive me, that I had been both dupe and victim of his genius for manipulation. I want to believe that there must be some other explanation. Would he give it
to me, if only to complete our book of conversations that the publisher Odile Jacob is dying to publish? It is a project conceived long ago and that in the end becomes grafted onto the Vichy-Pétain-Bousquet affair, adding a new unpleasant angle.
• • •
Jack Lang had had the idea for the book since 1985, and the president liked and accepted it. Lang used the preparation for the Nobel laureates’ conference two years later to broach it again even more forcefully. Were there some ulterior motives connected with the presidential elections in May? Perhaps—but I don’t see how a book like that could have been of use to the Socialist candidate. The Jewish vote? It was his to start with. And then a book, especially a book with two authors, isn’t written in three months. And Jack knew of my reluctance to intervene in French internal affairs. Anyway, the project didn’t tempt me, as though I had a foreboding that, for me, it would become a source of great disappointment. As for the president, he procrastinated. Months went by. He was not in a hurry. Nor was I.
But Jack Lang was impatient: “These dialogues, they must be done; this has been drawn out far too long.” In the end, he got his way. In the excitement of the conference that took place in January 1988, I settled down to the task. The idea was to have a dialogue between two men linked by friendship but seemingly separated by everything else: ethnic origin, social position, religious education. It was to be a book of open-ended conversations, discussions on general, timeless themes. After considering the matter for several weeks I drew up a table of contents: power, friendship, war, childhood, death, God, the Bible, Israel, faith, writing. Attali thought it was fine, and the president approved. Our first subject: childhood, of course; comparing his with mine. The childhood of a leader who has reached the summit of power and that of a Jewish writer who will never succeed in tearing himself away from his yeshiva.
