Professor Elie Wiesel, D.H.C. Washington, DC
Honorable Doctor Honorius Causa of Warsaw University! Distinguished Guests! Dear Friends! Today one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in Poland bestows honors on a remarkable individual, a distinguished person most deserving of academic honors, who for decades has taught the world the absolute evil of the Holocaust, how to gauge its historical legacy and why we must in global chorus declaim: Never Again! A Nobel Peace prize recipient, internationally recognized and honored by the leading nations with their highest decorations! The fact that my country, Poland, is today honoring Elie Wiesel as well moves me personally to no end, as a Pole, and makes me proud to offer some reflections about this remarkable man, as President of the Republic of Poland from 1995 to 2005 and now as chair of the European Council for Tolerance and Reconciliation. What is Elie Wiesel’s legacy? Most importantly, he survived the nightmare of Nazi crimes, Nazi death camps! And he found the strength to make what he lived through his life come alive to all of us. He made it real, spoke about it, asked questions, compelling us to listen to his wisdom drawn from real experience—to reexamine history and consider why the Holocaust? How was it possible for the Holocaust to happen in the heart of civilized Europe, a continent of great philosophers, contributing much to world learning and cultural heritage steeped in humanism? Why was the world complacent? Why did it choose not to act and closed its eyes to Nazi brutalities? What were the underlying causes of hatred that led to such a horrendous crime?
In one of very few interviews in the Polish press, Elie Wiesel said: „Hatred is irrational, a disease. It is infectious and this is why it must be a cured […] But I don’t believe this disease manifests itself separately. The organisms that catch it are susceptible to it. A person capable of hatred wants to hate. The individual is well prepared to hate-- knowing it exists is also ready for it, educated in it, and ready to kill. I don’t believe in collective hatred, in an epidemic that infects a group and absolves one of personal responsibility. If one assumes that the Holocaust resulted from indifference, then the boldest attack on that indifference has to be attributed to the 27-year-old diplomat Jan Karski, the emissary of the Polish Underground State. He was an eye-witness to the Jewish tragedy […] and brought it to the distinguished leaders of the free world, the gist of his report. Nothing happened. The mission of this brave Pole was a failure. He turned out to be a missionary out of Franz Kafka's deck of cards. He brought truth no one needed. It was invaluable, however, because it showed the consequences of indifference.” Recounting Elie Wiesel’s wise observations, I should add it was he who returned Jan Karski to world’s collective memory. After the war Jan Karski wanted to forget, chose a scholarly career at Georgetown University. None of his students or colleagues knew about what he did during the war, not only for Jews but for humanity. In 1980 Elie Wiesel persuaded Karski to report again, and this time publicly. I am well aware that Eli Wiesel disturbed Karski’s silence but justifiably so: For what he had done for humanity, Jan Karski did not deserve to be honored by silence. Today I would also like to thank Elie Wiesel for restoring Jan Karski to the world, for making one of the great figures of the 20th century known to the world. Karski’s lesson—his historical legacy—is that everything ultimately depends on us—that we must struggle individually against indifference and be on constant vigilant alert. I want to thank Elie Wiesel for his remaining on „vigilant alert” looking out for those who can be preyed upon by hatred and intolerance. Poles and Jews – “the two saddest nations on Earth”, as the Polish-Jewish poet Antoni Slonimski had said – have a common interest in that. All in all, having our Polish-Jewish experience of the tragic war, we both know that even whole nations are expendable. Therefore the waning of tolerance should be of concern to us living in times of rising ideological extremes, not unlike those that emerged 1939.
I would like to thank Warsaw University for its recognition of Elie Wiesel and welcoming him among its distinguished honorees. The symbolism that this much deserved honor comes from Poland, a nation uniquely torn by WWII, to someone so defined by WWII is itself a moment reverberating with history. Nor should we disregard the fact that the ceremony is taking place at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, a world center dedicated to the memory and education about this horrendous crime—an institution that is in large measure the passionate initiative of the hero of our event. Let me finish with traditional academic greeting in Latin: AD MULTOS ANNOS! LONG YEARS, DEAR PROFESSOR WIESEL!
Aleksander Kwaśniewski President of Poland (1995-2005) Warsaw, the 22nd June 2012