Wiesel calls all to be 'witnesses'

Be yourself, speak out and “don’t give evil a second chance,” Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel told an audience of Chapman and Orange County high school students who turned out to hear the human rights leader Monday morning.

“Goodness has as much mysterious power as evil has,” Wiesel said, speaking in Memorial Hall. “It is possible for hope to become reality. It’s not easy. So what. Why should it be easy?”

Wiesel’s visit to Chapman was part of an anniversary salute to the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education, formally celebrated at a Sunday gala. In a wide-ranging speech laced with parables, gentle humor and stories, Wiesel told his Memorial Hall audience that by virtue of listening to his story and the stories of others, they were now witnesses for the witnesses, an acknowledgement to the shrinking generation of Holocaust survivors. Who is to tell their stories when they are gone?

“You are,” he told the mostly-young audience.

Holocaust survivors will die off, perhaps “in 20 years” Wiesel jokingly replied to a student question that wondered what the world would do in “10 years or so” when all the survivors were gone. But the power of those memories can live on, he said.

“He or she who listens to a witness becomes a witness,” he said.

Wiesel urged his audience to take the task of witness to heart, to be ready to speak out and resist indifference to any assault on human dignity.

“The human condition is vulnerable,” he said, describing the Holocaust as a time when people forgot their humanity.

And yes, despite the driving cause of “never again,” it does happen again, he said.

“Why Congo? Why Darfur? Why Cambodia? I don’t know,” he said, suggesting that perhaps it takes more than a few generations for the lesson to sink in.

Wiesel’s comments followed a screening of
The boys of Buchenwald
, a 47-minute documentary on the child survivors of the Buchenwald concentration camp, of which Wiesel was one. The film revisits several of the orphans as they ready for a reunion and reflect on the challenges of rebuilding their lives after the war. Prior to the film and speech in Memorial Hall, Wiesel, author of 50 books including his memoir, “Night,” met with a small group of students in Leatherby Libraries.

Sunday night Wiesel was the honored guest at the gala celebrating the 10
^th
anniversary of the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education and the 25
^th
anniversary of Marilyn Harran, Ph.D., professor and Stern Chair in Holocaust Studies at Chapman and director of the Rodgers Center. More than 500 people attended the gala, where Wiesel spoke for about 20 minutes and praised Harran for her “exemplary” work at Chapman. See coverage of that event
here
in the Orange County Register.

Wiesel first visited Chapman five years ago to help dedicate the Sala and Aron Samueli Holocaust Memorial Library and to receive an honorary doctorate.