The voice of humanity

Decades after Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, who passed away on Saturday, and former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, survived Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany with nothing but the clothes on their backs, Wiesel penned a foreword to "Out of the Depths," the English translation of Lau's memoir, titled in Hebrew "Do Not Raise a Hand Against the Boy" -- a quote from the biblical story of the binding of Isaac.

Wiesel wrote that unlike the biblical story, in which both Isaac and Abraham safely return home after God's traumatic test, his own father did not make it out of Buchenwald with him. Neither his nor Lau's fathers survived the inferno.

Perhaps the secret appeal of this pale, gaunt Holocaust survivor, who came to represent the world's conscience, is embodied in the saying "The Torah spoke in the language of man." Wiesel had a rare ability to captivate his audience when recounting horrifying stories from the Holocaust, in a way that invariably left them deeply moved.

A pallid man with broken English immigrated to the U.S. and told his tragic story to people who had never heard of him before. Remarkably, anyone who heard him speak instantly became an avid admirer.

During one of my trips to New York, I attended a dinner party with dignitaries including former President Shimon Peres, Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Joseph Ciechanover, former IDF Chief Cantor Lt. Col. Aryeh Brown and Yisrael Lau's brother, the late diplomat Naphtali Lavie. They all hung on to Wiesel's every word. He left them hungry for more.

But his eloquence only represented the technical side of his talent, which served to grab attention. It was the message of his words that carried most of the weight, despite the repetitive motif -- the voice of conscience and its centrality.

Wiesel operated in favor of the world, but his sympathies lay first and foremost with the Jewish nation and its homeland. He possessed the kind of profound humanism that made him worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize 30 years ago, but he also recognized the realistic threats facing his people. One should always take the enemy's threats seriously and never indulge in delusions that they lack intent. He once remarked that "history has taught us to trust the threats of our enemies more than the promises of our friends."

With that lesson in mind, Wiesel opened diplomatic opportunities to Israeli leaders and was a regular guest at the White House. But he was never neutral when it came to matters essential to Israel's existence.