Ethical antipodes

Catholic New Times, Nov 16, 2003 by Sava Bosnitch

Ann Pettifer's edifying assessment of Primo Levi's pronouncements and Eli Wiesel's silences (CNT, Sept.21) pointed to the antipodal impact that Auschwitz and the Holocaust had on these two survivors.

Their postwar attitudes towards the Germans revealed striking contrasts. Levi bore no grudges but strove to fathom the abyss of human inhumanity to humans. He even looked forward to a meeting with his German Auschwitz supervisor.

Wiesel remained unforgiving. Revisiting Germany in 1962, he concluded:" Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate--healthy, virile hate--for what the German personifies and what persists in the German."

In despair over the human condition, Primo Levi committed suicide before the inauguration of the "New World Order," one which Wiesel eagerly welcomed Surprisingly, the Nobel Peace Prize winner became an American interventionist cheerleader and an ardent advocate of U.S. "humanitarian" bombings and invasions.

Wiesel's pro-American stance is best illustrated by his disregard of his own globally publicized taboo: "To forget the victims of the Holocaust is to kill them a second time". Thus, in his 1995 piece "Bosnia and the Holocaust," Wiesel himself "killed" thousands of Jews a second time.

In observance of the U.S. policy of collusion with the Muslim-Croat alliance, Wiesel promptly "forgot" thousands of Jews killed during the WWII by the Croat and Muslim Ustasha. He thus relegated the Ustasha part of the Holocaust to an Orwellian memory hole.

Sava Bosnitch

Fredericton, N.B.