Book Notes - Witness

During the past week, I read the book Witness - Lessons from Eli Wiesel's Classroom. The book was written by Ariel Berger. This book had a lot of interesting stories and quotes, but I was not as impressed with it as I had hoped. There were too many stories by the author about his own life which I found distracting from why I wanted to read the book in the first place: to hear Eli's view on life and his experience as a Holocaust survivor.

Eli Wiesel is best known for his Holocaust testimony and for the universal lessons he has from his experience of this tragedy. In May 1944, Eli was deported with his family to Auschwitz. His mother and younger sister were murdered upon arrival, Eli and his father endured forced labor and then forced to march to Buchenwald where his father died. American soldiers liberated the camp on April 29, 1945. Eli was 16.

When asked how he kept going after the Holocaust and how he didn't give up, Eli said that it was due to learning. "Before the war, I was studying a page of Talmud and my studies were interrupted. After the war, when I wrote to the orphanage in France, my first request was for this same volume so that I could continue my studies from the same page, the same line, the same spot where I had left off. Learning saved me." 

He encouraged everyone to tell their stories because if even one person learns from it - how to be more human - you have made your memories into a blessing. We must turn our suffering into a bridge so that others might suffer less.

History is a narrow bridge. We have different memories of the trauma in our memories. We try to forget, and, in truth, some things we must forget a little bit simply in order to function. And yet, if we truly allow ourselves to forget, history may well return to us.

Never allow anyone to be humiliated in your presence.

Moral education tells people what they need to hear, even when it is painful. When moral education works, students investigate and embrace new ways of thinking. They learn new habits of questioning and ultimately find a deeper sense of common humanity. Students who experience this become sensitized to suffering. They read the news differently. They are no longer able to pass a homeless person on the street without offering at least a smile. You speak up when they overhear a bigoted word or see a bully, Inaction is no longer an option.

If you look away from suffering, you become complicit, a bystander. Silence never helps the victims, only the victimizers.

Faust's dilemma is that without knowledge we are nothing but with knowledge,we are dangerous. It depends what you do with that knowledge - gratify the darkest impulses or help your fellow man.

Hatred is a kind of cancer, and unlike anger, it serves no purpose.

Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it by trying to make the world better. Our children show us the connection between ethics and beauty - that it is beautiful to make the world more human.

Small moments make a big difference.

Modest acts of kindness are more significant than we recognize. It does not have to be newsworthy. You just need to look out for the outstretched hand. You just need to touch one person every day with compassion.

The question is: How real are other people to you? Do you feel their suffering? Does it actually keep you up at night? We need to find a balance between sleep and paralysis. Start with one person. A person is not an abstraction. Don't just write a check. Help them with something. Help them somehow with your own effort. Your own energy. Buy them food and bring it to them. Help them find shelter. Speak to them. Take the time to really speak and listen.

You must turn hate into something creative, something positive. If you are a teacher, you turn it into good teaching. If you write, turn it into good writing. Express what you feel and not the hate.

In Auschwitz, a woman named Roza Robota smuggle grains of dynamite under her fingernails for weeks in order to collect enough to bomb the crematorium. She and others were responsible for the revolt in October 1944. She and three other women were hanged and executed. They shouted a biblical phrase: Be strong and of good courage.

In 1945, Jews came out of ghettos and forests. The partitions had guns. They could have set the world on fire. It didn't happen. With very few exceptions, they did not seek revenge. They sought victory through life. Survivors as a group have advocated hope, not despair. Generous generosity, not bitterness. Gratitude, not violence. They chose to help families to rebuild decimated communities, to become philanthropists and doctors to find a way to help others. That is the revenge of the survivors: new life, new families, new communities helping others making the world better.

When two people come together to listen, to learn from each other, there is hope. This is where humanity begins with peace. Begin where dignity begins - in a small gesture of respect in listening. Hope is a gift we give to one another.

It means learning, thinking higher, and feeling deeper, always challenging yourself to dive into the great texts, stories, and ideas in search of wisdom.