Elie Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor, leader of the Holocaust remembrance movement, Nobel laureate and advocate for subsequent victims of genocide. His passing on July 2 should encourage all of us to pause and reflect on the things he stood for and their relevance to our contemporary world.
Among many other achievements, Wiesel led the effort to found the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Sara J. Bloomfield, director of the museum, wrote in a July 6 OpEd recirculated in the BDN that “I sensed that one of the great sorrows in Elie’s life was the failure of the world in the face of genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. He recognized that giving a voice to victims was necessary but insufficient. Action was required.”
I recently visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is a powerful reminder, not just of the horrors of Nazi brutality and racist ideology but also of the failure of the rest of the world, including the U.S., to act when Jews, Roma (Gypsies), gays and others were imperiled.
Of all the many lessons the museum conveys, two stood out for me.
First, as the Nazi persecutions intensified in the years after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, many Jews sought but were denied refuge in other countries.
We know in retrospect what the “Final Solution” to the so-called “Jewish problem” turned out to be: mass murder on a scale that may have been hard to conceive of before it happened. The persecutions that began in 1933, however, should have been enough to open the hearts of people in other countries, but they weren’t. People in many nations, not just Germany, held stereotyped and mistaken beliefs that Jews caused the global economic collapse and wanted to rule the world. And the results were tragic.
Second, persecutions of people based solely on who they are continue to this day, and actions to aid those who are being persecuted are as urgent now as they were during Hitler’s time.
I was especially moved by a temporary museum exhibit featuring filmed interviews of Syrian teenagers in refugee camps in Lebanon. These teens mourned family members and friends killed in the civil war in Syria and worried about those still trapped in that war-torn country. They were saddened by the abrupt halt in their schooling, and they seemed unable to make meaning of their present lives.
Some Americans believe we should keep all Muslims out of the United States because of the deaths caused by a few individuals who were Muslim and who proclaimed an Islamist ideology. They overlook the fact that most Muslims do not share that ideology and seek to harm no one. More than 10 million Syrians, mostly Muslims, have either fled their country or are internally displaced, but the U.S. cannot agree on admitting 10,000 of them, carefully screened, as refugees.
Some Americans also believe that the only immigrants who should be allowed to live in America are those who are here legally. Yet, we forget that it is we, through our elected representatives, who determine who is “legal” and who is not. Our laws welcome some groups of people and exclude others, based in part on stereotyped misconceptions of who they are, just as in the 1930s America turned away Jews fleeing Nazi persecution.
According to data from the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. grants asylum to 78 percent of Chinese citizens who apply, accounting for 45 percent of all U.S. asylum requests granted. But while violence related to Americans’ illegal drug use rages in Mexico and Central America, only 11 percent of asylum seekers from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are granted asylum.
A statement from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum notes that “Wiesel envisioned a ‘living memorial’ that would forever serve as a warning about the fragility of democracy and the dangers of unchecked hatred. He firmly believed that a memorial unresponsive to the future would violate the memory of the past.”
Congress has failed to revise our immigration laws to acknowledge current world realities. As a nation, we can do better in creating a welcoming and safe place for those who are victims of persecution and violence around the world.
John Maddaus is a professor of education at the University of Maine in Orono.