April 19, 1985 was Bitburg. At the time Ronald Reagan was President and was scheduled to make a state visit to Germany, promising then Chancellor Helmut Kohl to go with him to a military cemetery named Bitburg. It was discovered a few weeks before the visit that the Bitburg cemetery contained not only the graves of ordinary German soldiers but also the graves of the murderous Waffen-SS. As Prof. Wiesel put it: "We couldn't accept that the President of the United States should pay tribute to SS graves. So we led a campaign to make him change [his mind]."

The campaign culminated on the 19th of April in the White House, where a ceremony took place to award Prof. Wiesel a distinguished Congressional Gold Medal. Prof. Wiesel's acceptance speech expressed his gratitude for the award but also protested President Reagan's forthcoming trip to Bitburg, saying to the President: "I belong to a traumatized generation. And to us Jews, symbols are important. And furthermore, I am commanded by my tradition to speak truth to power." Regrettably, President Reagan, who was visibly moved by Prof. Wiesel's plea, went through with his plan to visit the cemetery.

Though direct confrontation with the President over this issue came to an end, the event did not fade from Prof. Wiesel's view or agenda. Rather, for 23 years, he revisited the Bitburg Affair in his 92NY lectures--sometimes briefly, sometimes at considerable length. To mark the 40th anniversary of the Bitburg Affair, we share with you the stirring record of Prof. Wiesel's lecture comments over the years. His remarks add immeasurably to our assessment of the Bitburg Affair, expanding its meaning, deepening its implications, and sharpening our sense of what was lost--and also what was gained.

The Solitude of God, 10/31/1985
And since this is our last meeting this year--we always do it every year--I will tell you a story about recent events, and I will tell you something which I have not told since the event itself: about Bitburg. As soon as the President went to Bitburg, I stopped the debate. I had tried to maintain the debate on the level of dignity and Jewish honor, and [00:44:00] I fought, I fought every step. But the moment he went there, I stopped, because I felt it was useless to continue an acrimonious debate. It would have become acrimonious, at least on their side. Also, I am not a politician and I don’t need this kind of visibility. But may I tell you now what I think happened really? It happened by sheer accident. I am convinced that they didn’t even want to go there; they didn’t even know that it existed. I’ll tell you how it happened.

I was thinking about it in relation to the book of Job. Do you remember how Job began? After all, we have spoken about poor Job already twice in this series. The first lecture was about Job here, 19 years ago. It begins like a Kafka story. You know, Kafka begins a novel like The Trial, that one day, Josef K got up in the morning, and he said good morning [00:45:00] to the concierge, and she didn’t answer. Maybe she was busy. Maybe she didn’t hear. Maybe she didn’t sleep well. But he says, “Ah, she doesn’t answer. That means something is wrong with me. That means I must have done something wrong. That means I am guilty. If I am guilty, I’ll be judged. If I’ll be judged, I’ll be sentenced. If I’ll be sentenced, I’ll be killed.” So it begins like that, and at the end of the book, he is killed.

Now, how was Job? Job, I can almost visualize -- forgive me for imagining this scene, but from the text, I can visualize the scene. That day, God in heaven decided to have one of his sessions there, and all of his angels came. After all, who could refuse an invitation to God, you know? And there was also Satan, and he happened to be there. He wasn’t supposed to be there; he had other business to do somewhere else. But he happened to be there, so God saw him. He says, “Hi,” [00:46:00] and Satan answered “Hi,” you know, and God says, “Where do you come from?” “Oh, just around.” “Where were you?” “Down below.” “How is it?” “Good.” “Really?” “Really.” “Tell me, Satan,” says God, “did you happen to meet a friend of mine, you know, one named Job?” “Yes,” says Satan. “Don’t you think that he’s a good man?” At which point Satan is shrewd. You must give him that credit; Satan is not stupid. He understood that God was asking a leading question, that God wanted him to answer in a certain way. And this is, by the way, the injustice in Job. Usually it is Satan who is seducing and inducing. This time it is God who is doing the seduction; God is inducing Satan to speak evil of Job. And he said, “Yes, of course, of course he is good and he is God-fearing. Why? [00:47:00] Because he is rich, and because he has children, and they’re all good, and everyone is healthy. But take away his wealth, take away his children, take away his health, then we shall see.” So it begins like a casual conversation between God and Satan, and it ends in tragedy.

I’m convinced that that’s how it happened in the White House. Kohl came to see the President, and Kohl at one point said, “Mr. President, you know, a few months ago I happened to be in France, a visit with President Mitterrand, and we had a good idea. You know, former enemies. We went to a cemetery, Verdun.” And President Reagan said, “Oh, very nice.” And Kohl said -- and Kohl said, “It was a great photo opportunity. We took each other’s hand. [00:48:00] And it was great. It was a very great thing.” And the President said “Oh, yes, very nice.” And Kohl said, “Maybe we should do it when you come to Germany too.” And the President said, “Why not? Of course.” That’s how it began. And once it began, it had to follow its course, like in a Greek tragedy. You couldn’t stop it. Which means we should be very careful with what we say and with what we don’t say--and the way we say it.

Was it wrong? I think that, unfortunately, it was a mistake on behalf of our government. It didn’t even help Kohl, as you know. I always marvel at the way God chooses to punish sometimes, in an indirect way, but Kohl didn’t win the election that he wanted to win, and it will leave a mark. Still, the worst part of that episode was not really [00:49:00] the going to Bitburg itself -- well, maybe politically he had some reasons -- but what was worse was the equation that he made. The President made an equation a day before Yom HaShoah, the day before the ceremony. I knew about it because a friend of mine, who is a very great newspaperman, called me up. He said, “Do you know what he said?” And I didn’t believe him, so he read to me the wires, that the President made an equation between the victims and those soldiers who were, at best, on the side of the killers. That is terrible, meaning it goes against everything that we have tried to do. It goes against memory, against justice. At that point, what can you do except increase that memory and teach more and write more [00:50:00] and speak and share?

In Modern Tales, 11/8/1990
But then I don’t trust Kohl either. Why? Because Helmut Kohl was the man who engineered Bitburg. He engineered Bitburg for one purpose alone: to whitewash the SS. So now it’s clear that he is engaged in a process totally to rewrite history, and that bothers me, disturbs me, pains me.

The State of World Jewry 1993, 12/3/1992
[00:18:00] Well, the world is not in our hands. The world has been, for the last 2000 years at least, in different hands, and it didn’t do so well. Now, anti-Semitism today is a problem that the Jewish community cannot not face. I must tell you my feeling that, if our leaders would be leaders, what they should do now is concentrate on that issue right away, and make it a priority. Because things are happening, and what we see happening is not good. Not only Germany, where I am shocked but not surprised. Since 1985, since the Bitburg affair, it declined -- I mean, the moral situation of Germany declined, and it was [00:19:00] clear that they were heading towards this. To have the neo-Nazis, to have the parades in the streets, and to have young people shout in the streets, “Deutschland erwache,” “Germany awake!” This is the slogan that existed, that was heard, that reverberated throughout Germany in the time of the pre-Hitler domination of Germany. Now, I don’t think that it’s possible for Germany to take power again -- I mean, Nazis to take power and establish another system, a cruel system of the Holocaust -- I don’t believe that. However, what I do believe is that Germany is facing a tremendous moral problem--and the fact that Germany has not, until now, used all of its resources to deal with that problem, worries me very much.

Building a Moral Society, 3/4/1993
Question: One of the acts that you’ve done that received an enormous amount of publicity and was extremely important was your statement to President Reagan before Bitburg. Were you nervous before you did that? What went through your mind?

EW: I’ll tell you something. I am afraid of a policeman more than the President. Really. I’m not joking. I’m a refugee at heart. I remain the refugee. When I see a policeman, my God. When I drive, and take my wife, and I have to make a U-turn, I stop and she makes the U-turn. When I come back from Europe, you know, I never buy anything -- I don’t have time, I don’t know what, I don’t dare -- I never buy anything, and yet I’m afraid the customs officer will look at me and say, “Ah.” [00:30:00] The President? Why should I be afraid of the President?

Now, on the other hand, look, I knew what was at stake. First of all, what very few people know, that before I gave that address before the Senate, when they gave me the Congressional Gold Medal, I sent him my speech. Derech Eretz, you must have respect for the office because he represents the American people. So I sent him my speech with a note: “Mr. President, this is what I’m going to say. There is still time to change.” And then I met him before the ceremony and we spoke, and I said to him, “Mr. President, look, you still have time. You will be the hero if after you give me the medal and after my speech you come back and you simply say, ‘Okay, I am not going.’” You see, I gave him advice. He didn’t listen. But I felt mainly, really, I felt -- [00:31:00] not afraid, it was not fear -- I felt a responsibility. Because at that moment, it is the Jew in me who spoke, and therefore I felt that whatever I said somehow would imply, involve the Jewish people or Jewish honor. And for me it’s very important; Jewish honor is a very important concept. That was my main...

But you know, they didn’t understand it. They didn’t know what was happening. Because the President read the speech, or at least I think he did, and then I made my speech, and they didn’t. . . I don’t like lashon hara (you’re going to write a book about it)--but there was a Jewish advisor to the President, oy un vey. He’s the one who tried to prevent me from really speaking, not the President. [00:32:00]

And when I finished speaking--before that, we were supposed to have the ceremony in the East Room, which has three hundred seats, but then the Bitburg affair began and they changed the place for the smallest room in the White House. Thirty people were there, including the Secret Service. They thought they were going to get away with it quickly. Little did they know there was going to be live television and so forth.

So once we finished, the chief of staff called me and he said, “Look, on behalf of the President and myself, we want to thank you for the way you spoke, with respect, and therefore you made history today. And we have a suggestion: The President would like you to come with him on Air Force One.” I usually use the shuttle, you know. Air Force One? And I said, “What for?” He said, “You come with us to Europe.” And [00:33:00] naively I thought that means that I convinced the President. I said, “And then what? Where are you going?” He said, “We go to France, and only you speak and he speaks. Then we go to Portugal, only he speaks and you speak.” And each time I said, “And then?” I was only afraid of one thing, that I will have to come back and teach my class in Boston. How would I come back? Would they give me Air Force Two? . . . I said, “And then?” And we went on and on. Then we go Bonn, and then we go to Bergen-Belsen; you speak, he speaks. I said, “And then?” He said, “And then we quickly go to Bitburg.” I said, “Mr. Regan, I don’t want him to go; you want me to go?” So how could you be a moral advisor to the President?

Contemporary Experience, 11/4/1993
[reflections on writing the two volume memoir, All Rivers Run to the Sea/And the Sea is Never Full]
And then I’ve been involved, after all, in so many [00:44:00] events. At first as a journalist, as a student, and then as a teacher, a writer, the Bitburg affair. How many of you, for instance, know that during the Bitburg affair the pressure on me not, quote, “not to antagonize,” unquote, the President, didn’t come from non-Jews? It came from Jewish leaders. The worst pressure came from them. On the contrary, the non-Jewish community was perfect. It’s only when it turned out well that all the same leaders called me up and saying, “I was with you. I was with you, of course.”

I can’t believe it. There was even a Jewish senator who applied heavy pressure not to antagonize. You know, we have a long agenda, the old story. I hear now the same thing, by the way about--we are trying, some of us are trying to help poor Johnathan Pollard. We have to help this man. (applause) [00:45:00] And we hear, again, we hear people tell, people told me, “don’t do it. Don’t overdo it, a long agenda.” Nonsense. When we deal with compassion, when we deal with morality, when we deal with Jewish ahavat Israel we cannot wait. We must do what we have to do--and do it sooner rather than later.

All Rivers Run to the Sea, 11/9/1995
[The assasination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, a close friend of Elie Wiesel, occurred a few days earlier]
And, and, and I don’t understand. That evening the telephone, of course, as in many places--probably with you-- didn’t stop ringing from all over the world, and especially from Israel. The next day [00:08:00] I was invited by President Clinton to go with him on his Air Force One to Israel. I must tell you that I was ready to accept it for the good reason and for a bad reason. The bad reason being that I had already been once invited by a President of the United States to join him on Air Force One. That was President Reagan. When he wanted to go to Bitburg. It’s incredible, but he thought that by bribing me with Air Force One, not only would I stop him from going, I would go with him. I didn’t. So here came the other, President Clinton’s invitation, and we went.

A Yearning for Learning, 3/30/2006
Moses wasn’t the [00:47:00] only unhappy prophet in our history. Most of them were. And their words still reverberate in our collective consciousness. What we need, really, today, is a prophetic voice. What we need in America and what we need in the whole world, a prophetic voice. Simply to to say certain things that must said, even if they are not heeded and heard. The words of the prophets, therefore, are special.

What do the prophets teach us? They had no titles, no official functions, no personal wealth, and no legal protection. All they had was a passion, a burning passion for justice. And their instrument was language. What a language! Language was their tool, their weapon, their trademark, their style, their personality. [00:48:00] Open any page and you will quickly identify its author. A page of Isaiah is as only Isaiah could have written it, and now we discover pages of Isaiah and Ezekiel that are in manuscripts of the Dead Sea. So, it’s baffling how old texts come back to us after 2,500 years. When they spoke, people listened. Yes, they listened, although prophets rarely sought to please the crowd. Quite the contrary, the role of the prophet was to displease the mighty and the wealthy, as they spoke what I invented: “truth to power.” I used it when I spoke to Reagan during the Bitburg affair. And you know, some words have a good destiny. It was picked up; books now are being written, “truth to power,” and it’s good.

Still, is it true? Is it power? Truth has its own power, [00:49:00] whereas power without truth is doomed to fail. With words and deeds, the prophet never hesitated to disturb the established order and accepted authority. The harshness of Isaiah, the pacifism of Jeremiah, the appeal for hope of Ezekiel, the quest for human compassion of Amos and Habakuk, study them and admire the way they challenge resignation and overcome despair, and the way they go on relentlessly to speak for justice and compassion.

A Woman in Hasidism, 4/19/2007
[introductory remarks]
In parentheses, today is April 19, and therefore I think for some people younger people wouldn’t know that. It’s a kind of, for me, an anniversary: April 19, 1985 was Bitburg. This name maybe doesn’t appeal much to the young people here, but 22 years ago its name reverberated throughout the planet. At the time Ronald Reagan was President, a good man, a good heart filled with warmth. And he was going on a state visit to Germany promising then Chancellor Kohl to go with him everywhere, and they decided to go to visit [00:11:00] a cemetery, the cemetery was Bitburg, a military cemetery.

And the problem was we discovered a few weeks before that that it contains some 30 SS graves. And we couldn’t accept that: that the President of the United States should go and pay tribute to SS graves? We led a campaign. We waged a kind of, really, a kind of campaign to make him change. I met him. And then on the 19th of April in the White House there was a ceremony, and I spoke then to the President. And – it’s an anniversary, just a few words--I said, “Mr. President, I would not be the person I am, and you wouldn’t respect me for what I am if I were not to tell you also the sadness that is in my heart for what happened and what is going to happen. [00:12:00] What can I do,” I said. “I belong to a traumatized generation. And to us Jews, symbols are important, and furthermore, I am commanded by my tradition to speak truth to power.” And this expression was lucky. And so many people now use it, and I enjoy it. You say in Yiddish, I shep nachas. You know, some words -- books were written called Speaking Truth to Power by Anita Hill, Cuomo-Kennedy, (inaudible). Whenever politicians speak with courage they say “I speak truth to power.” And it’s good that some of my words at least are being adopted.

A Tribute to Elie Wiesel at the 92nd Street Y, 10/2/2008
As for Arthur [Gelb], you bring back memories of course. We were together, I remember: Elisha, our son, Marion, my wife, and I, the day before, and actually, we were lobbied by Jewish leaders not to speak up. They said, “Come on, we have long view of history, we need a President.” And I simply said, “look, it’s a matter of conscience,” and therefore, I had to speak up. And it’s true, it wasn’t easy, because I liked Reagan. I had very good relations with him. And I had to pain him. [00:37:00] But what, Arthur, you don’t remember, maybe, that they even tried -- they sent one of their aides to make me shorten my speech. Then, you were there, and you were my advisor. I asked you -- you had something to do with it. I asked you what to do. What should I do, then? And then you said, “No. Don’t shorten it. And if there is a problem, simply don’t speak, just give a press conference outside. We will have hundreds and hundreds of journalists.” I didn’t shorten it. Also, what the White House didn’t realize -- it’s true they tried to limit what they called the damage. But it was a live broadcast (laughs) on television. So it’s true that I failed, that my life is not [00:38:00] filled with victories like that. My life is filled, really, with much more defeats. But the efforts were there. And it’s true, when I said I belonged to a tradition that commands me to speak truth to power. This formula became very popular. Now, you have many people writing books called “truth to power”--it’s okay. I don’t mind it. I have enough words, they can use them, why not? But, one more thing, Arthur. I come, as you know, as you have seen, from very, very poor, little town in Romania, which later became Hungary. And I -- I am a kind of what you call a galut Jew, which means I never lived in Israel. Therefore, I am a refugee at heart. Even now, in America--I lived in America all my adult life--I am a refugee at heart. [00:39:00] I’m afraid. If I drive a car, Marion and I, and I have to make a U-turn, I stop the vehicle, change places, let her make the U-turn. She is not afraid of policemen. I am. And here I am in the White House, with the most powerful man in the world -- where in hell did I get the courage to say -- to oppose the President of the United States? Who with one word, can send thousands of people to war? And later on, I understood--I was asking myself the question, and later I understood: after the war, I met Jewish leaders who, during the war, had seen Roosevelt. And I asked them, “How come that you didn’t speak up with more force? With more vigor? How come?” And they said, “When you are in the Oval Office, you cannot say ‘no’ to the President of the United States.” So, I think in my subconscious, I wanted to prove to them, “You can.”