Legendary writer says ‘think higher, feel deeper’

Written by Ken Borsuk, Staff Reporter
Thursday, 05 November 2009 00:00

When noted author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Eli Wiesel came to Brunswick School Tuesday afternoon he came with a simple goal of offering a handshake to the students.

Mr. Wiesel is a professor at Boston University and the author of 57 books including Night, a memoir of his experiences during the Holocaust, including being imprisoned in concentration camps and being liberated by American troops at the end of World War II. He travels the world and lectures extensively about working toward peace and tolerance and combating indifference, and he brought that message to Brunswick this week.

Even after everything he had been through, Mr. Wiesel talked about how he has never given up hope for humanity and shared the words of a poet that “sometimes a handshake has the weight of a poem.”

“I share a handshake to you young students,” Mr. Wiesel said. “It is a poem celebrating your youth.”

Brunswick Upper School teacher Paul Withstandley, who introduced Mr. Wiesel, called him “... a true teacher to all mankind on the subject of humanity.”

“To say it is an honor to host him at Brunswick is a gross understatement,” Mr. Withstandley said.

During his address, Mr. Wiesel discussed the meaning of Night and said while on one level it was about the grotesqueness, the absurdity and the ugliness of war, it was also about the greater question about why the Holocaust happened to the Jewish people. He said there were roots in anti-Semitism and people in power finding a convenient scapegoat, but that wasn’t the complete answer because it didn’t explain why a cultured, educated country such as Germany, which had given so much to the world through writers and composers and philosophers, would allow it to happen, not just to Jews but to the Slavic people, gypsies, homosexuals and everyone else killed by Hitler.

Mr. Wiesel said his first book contained nothing but questions about this, saying that when evil conquers the territory of the heart, nothing can stop it. He discussed the philosophy behind the idea that everyone in a society is replaceable if they don’t meet the standards set and how he completely “resents that statement with all my heart.”

“No human being is replaceable,” Mr. Wiesel said. “The functions we perform are replaceable, but not the human being. I believe every human being is in their own way uniquely unique. There will never be another you or you or you or I.”

Mr. Wiesel said the goal of the Nazis was to kill Jews twice, first in the gas chambers or with bullets and then to kill the memory of them by burning the bodies. When asked by a student why he traveled everywhere telling people this story instead of trying to forget the horror, he said it was because he never wanted to lose the memories.

“To forget would give the enemy a posthumous victory,” Mr. Wiesel said. “I don’t want that victory to prevail. Never.”

Mr. Wiesel told the students he had to wait 10 years before writing Night because he was afraid he didn’t have the right words to use. He compared this to great writers such as Franz Kafka and James Joyce being unable to ever write about World War I.

“There are no words for certain tragedies,” Mr. Wiesel said. “There are certain tragedies that contain so much pain and so many tears and so many siren screams that there are no words for them. So the silence became its own language.”

After concluding his address, Mr. Wiesel took questions from the students including one about what can be done to prevent future tragedies like the Holocaust and Cambodia and Rwanda from taking place. He discussed a presentation he gave to the United Nations General Assembly called “Has the World Learned At All?” and how he concluded that it hadn’t.

“The world has not learned, which is a very sad statement,” Mr. Wiesel said, “and the answer to how to keep it from ever happening again is to not relinquish your own responsibility. As you go to university and make new friends, remember the mantra I tell myself. That is ‘Think higher and feel deeper.’ If you do that, you cannot go wrong.”

Brunswick senior Gus Ruchman told the Post that the entire presentation was “incredibly powerful” and that he was so impressed by everything Mr. Wiesel had to say, particularly his message that the students shouldn’t shirk their responsibilities as human beings.

“There are some things in history and life that are just unimaginable,” Gus said. “But to hear about them first-hand from someone who was there just provides a whole new context to view the world through.”

Headmaster Thomas Philip told the Post after the speech he hopes his students contextualize the depths of the horrible time frame Mr. Wiesel struggled to survive through and apply it to the world today.

With character education such a critical part of Brunswick’s curriculum, Mr. Philip felt it could help shape the students as well.

“I think the lesson to take away from this is that civilized people have the capacity to do wonderful things and terrible things,” Mr. Philip said. “I want them to realize how they can use all their gifts for the good of the future.”

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