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Elie Wiesel (C) in Brussels with Avi Tawil (L), director of the European Jewish Community Centre, and Yossi Lempkowicz, director of the European Jewish Press (EJP).
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BRUSSELS (EJP)—Jewish author, Holocaust survivor, scholar and human rights activist Elie Wiesel has not yet make his choice for the November election of a new US president between Democratic Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.
In an interview with EJP, Wiesel, a US citizen who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, says one must wait for the upcoming tv debates between the two candidates.
“First of all in the US the vote is secret. But to be honest, I need to know better the two candidates in order to judge them and make my mind,” says Wiesel.
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Elie (Eliezer) Wiesel was born in 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania, now part of Romania. He was 15-year-old when he and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz. His mother and younger sister perished in the camp. Elie and his father Shlomo– a Chassid or Orthodox Jew of Hungarian descent- were later transported to Buchenwald where his father died before the liberation of the concentration camp in April 1945. After WWII, Wiesel studied in France and later became a journalist. In 1955 he became a US citizen and moved to New York.Teaching has always been central to Elie Wiesel's work. Since 1976, he has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, where he also holds the title of University Professor.
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He was on Friday in Brussels to present his new book written in French “Le cas Sonderberg” (The case Sonderberg), a novel about the confrontation between the younger and older generations in Germany.
“It’s quite too early. The two candidates appear good for their public, their adherents, their fans. But the American electors base their votes on the debates where there is no cheat. With three presidential and one vice-presidential debates it’s rather difficult to cheat.”
Wiesel explains he already met Obama before the electoral campaign while he spoke to John MacCain earlier this year in Davos, Switzerland, in the framework of the annual world economic summit.
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'Le cas Sonderberg', Elie Wiesel's new novel, published in French by Grasset publishing house. The book is about the confrontation between younger and older generations in Germany, and the theme of culpability.
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I will probably meet them again,” he says, hailing the presence of a Black candidate and of a woman, Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska and McCain’s running mate, in the race.
In the interview, Wiesel said he doesn’t fear a return to the “cold war” between Russia and the West following the crisis in Georgia.
“The cold war never served anything. I think the Georgian president made an error when he provoked the Russians. But in the same time I believe that Putin was wrong in sending tanks into Georgia which recalls us the time of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.”
“Cold war must remain an event from the past not the future,” he stresses.
Elie Wiesel’s Foundation for Humanity will host later this month French President Nicolas Sarkozy as guest of honor at the organization’s annual event in New York. “Personally I owe a debt to France, the country that gave me a home in 1945 with some 450 other Jewish teenagers who survived the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Wiesel welcomes Sarkozy’s role in securing the release of Ingrid Betancourt and of the Bulgarian nurses in Libya. “Also, no other president did what he did this week when he took in Damascus a personal letter of Noam Shalit addressed to his son Gilad,” the Israeli soldier kidnapped more than two years ago by Palestinians near Gaza.
Wiesel appears to be rather optimistic for the Mideast peace. “I am convinced that peace is near.”
The problem, he says, is not between Israelis and Palestinians “but rather between the Palestinians themselves.” “The real conflict is between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the territories. Israel could make an agreement with President Mahmud Abbas. I think there will be an agreement soon.”
Wiesel , who will turn 80 at the end of this month, doesn’t have any regret to the fact he turned down two years ago an offer to become Israel’s president. “Not a second. It is not for me. I am still the yeshiva boy who loves devoting my time to studying, teaching and writing. I am not a public nor a political man."
