U.S. Liberty Imperfect, Holocaust Survivor Says

America has some smudges on its record on liberty, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said Sunday during closing sessions of Liberty Weekend’s symposium, “Liberty--The Next 100 Years.”

Wiesel said he found America’s record less than perfect due to its opposition to the sanctuary movement, its jailing of some refugees and its preservation of immigration quotas.

“Liberty in our country is not in such good condition, as a result,” said Wiesel, a Boston University humanities professor and chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

As a child, Wiesel was incarcerated in Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.

Instead of resisting the sanctuary movement, under which illegal immigrants from Central American countries are sheltered, Wiesel believes, America should “let the people in.”

“I think we should change the law to let them in,” he said. “We can afford bringing in more people. A father who cannot feed his family is not free.”

But Fletcher Byrom, panelist and past chairman of the prestigious Committee for Economic Development, saw the threat to the nation’s freedom coming from the economic quarter.

“We are destroying the economy of this country and, if that is so, we probably are endangering liberty more than anything we discussed during the last few days,” said Byrom, former president and chief executive officer of Koppers Co. Inc.

Predicts ‘Weak Nation’

“By the turn of the century we will be essentially a weak nation,” he said.

“My sense is that the way our political system operates today, it is incapable of meeting the nation’s needs.”

Byrom said his concern stems from the terminal condition of heavy industrial production such as the steel industry and the battered condition of the secondary industries.

“I am concerned, further, that by the turn of the century, we will be 15 million trained workers short because of the condition of our education system,” he said.

He said the shortage will occur as the result of failure today to provide 4-year-olds the opportunity to start schooling early so that they can be prepared to work in the industries of tomorrow.