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at The 92nd Street Y, New York. Supported by The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity
May 28, 2008
In preparation for the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht and fearful of it being overshadowed by the coinciding 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Professor Wiesel evokes the history of Kristallnacht. He retells the story of Herschel Grynszpan, who sought vengeance on Nazi Germany for expelling Polish Jews from the Third Reich, his family included. Since Grynszpan’s assassination of a German diplomat in Paris became the pretext for the atrocities committed on Kristallnacht, Professor Wiesel questions when vengeance is justified. From the story of Dinah’s rape in the Torah, to Mordechai’s refusal to bow down to Haman in Megillat Esther, to the resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto, he considers how Jewish tradition generally opposes vengeance but that, as with everything else, there is ambivalence and there are exceptions. After WW2, the Germans were afraid that Jewish survivors would become avengers but Professor Wiesel teaches us that we are a people of memory, not for the sake of morbidity but in order that our past will not become someone’s future.
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