AN ODE TO THE HOLOCAUST VICTIMS

This is the full English text of a tribute by Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel to Holocaust victims that was read Tuesday at a ceremony at the site in Berlin where Nazi leaders planned the “Final Solution.” Wannsee--a warning. Wannsee--the end--the final solution. The target: Jews, all Jews, everywhere. Only Jews. What does a Jew today feel in this place, marked by evil and malediction? Fear and trembling, anger--incommensurate anger, helplessness and grief--infinite grief. Cry? One must not cry here! If you begin, you will not stop. How many tears does one shed for thousands of communities? How long does one lament the death of tens of thousands, of hundreds of thousands of innocent, abandoned, forsaken victims? If only the walls could speak, If only the trees and clouds could testify. We need to hear them, for most German men and women, in the past, refused to speak, refuse to remember. It is here that, in a businesslike atmosphere of banality and efficiency, 12 German high government officials, in the name of their criminal leadership on behalf of their nation, condemned the entire Jewish people to death and oblivion: teachers and their pupils, brides and grooms, intellectuals and workers, rabbis and their disciples, young revolutionaries and old dreamers of Zion. All were doomed. Simply, solely as Jews. At that time, children were still playing in the streets of Sighet and Saloniki. Others were still begging for bread in the ghettos of Warsaw and Bialystok. Still others were praying for the coming of the Messiah in the hidden bunkers and attics of Vilna and Lublin. Here they were already dead and they did not know it. It is Jewish history that the Germans tried to annihilate here. It is Jewish memory that Germany tried to eradicate here, forever. That is what a Jew remembers in Wannsee. But Wannsee also means for us Jews that memory is stronger than its enemies. It means that Jewish hope has vanquished fear. It means that when we Jews visit and listen to the somber and dark echoes at Wannsee, we aim at preventing future generations from inheriting our past as their future.