TV Review : Intimate Conversation With Elie Wiesel

Since Elie Wiesel--Holocaust witness, author, Nobel Peace Prize laureate--views his mission as asking questions, it seems right to ask one of Wiesel. During his hourlong discussion, “Moyers: Facing Hate With Elie Wiesel” (at 10 tonight on KCET Channel 28 and KPBS Channel 15), this survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald spends more time despairing over his failure to stop anti-Semitic inmates from beating his father than despairing over the crimes Nazis inflicted upon him .

Why?

A hint--with the ever-probing Wiesel, there is never a complete answer--may be in his response to host Bill Moyers’ question on what it is to be fully human. “When we are weak,” he suggests. It’s a self-reflection back on the young Wiesel, guilt-ridden that he lacked the strength to fight back, yet humanistic enough to never fully hate his Nazi captors.

Wiesel’s examination of his ability to rise above hate has led to his current campaign, conducted through a series of international conferences, to explore how the elimination of hate is a strength. Hate, he explains, consumes the hater more than the victim. Curiously, his model for this doesn’t at first appear to be the Holocaust: The Jews, says Wiesel, were a disposable thing in Nazi eyes, and “you can’t hate a thing.” Later in the conversation, though, he equates hate with Auschwitz, asking when humanity will turn the experience of hate into a warning.

Moyers points out this contradiction, and Wiesel disarmingly admits to it. But rather than giving off the sensation of seeing a personality trapped by his own words, the moment tellingly shows how Wiesel, even after writing dozens of books on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, is still struggling with this century’s tragedies. The camera closes in on his face, its wrinkled sadness suddenly changing into a warm smile, and the intensive intimacy is something rare for Moyers’ program, let alone television. Contradictions and all, it’s the best way to encounter a witness.