Transcript: President Barack Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Elie Wiesel at Buchenwald

I was incredibly moved by Elie Wiesel’s speech today at Buchenwald, as well as those of Obama and Merkel. The Elie Wiesel Foundation For Humanity is one of my GPICT charities, and I wrote about it again today for the Huffington Post, urging people to donate to the Foundation, which is in dire need of funds after being totally fleeced by Bernie Madoff. Below is a full transcript of what was said during today’s Buchenwald visit; Wiesel’s whole speech is heartbreaking in many ways, but it’s the last line that’ll really get you, especially so close to Father’s Day.

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT OBAMA,
GERMAN CHANCELLOR MERKEL, AND ELIE WIESEL
AT BUCHENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP

Weimar, Germany

3:58 P.M. (Local)


CHANCELLOR MERKEL:  (As translated.)  Mr. President, ladies and
gentlemen.  Here in this place a concentration camp was established in
1937.  Not far from here lies Lima, a place where Germans created
wonderful works of art, thereby contributing to European culture and
civilization.  Not far from that place where once artists, poets, and
great minds met, terror, violence, and tyranny reigned over this camp.

At the beginning of our joint visit to the Buchenwald memorial the
American President and I stood in front of a plaque commemorating all
the victims.  When you put your hand on the memorial you can feel that
it has warmed up — it is kept at a temperature of 37 degrees, the
body temperature of a living human being.  This, however, was not a
place for living, but a place for dying.

Unimaginable horror, shock — there are no words to adequately
describe what we feel when we look at the suffering inflicted so
cruelly upon so many people here and in other concentration and
extermination camps under National Socialist terror.  I bow my head
before the victims.

We, the Germans, are faced with the agonizing question how and why —
how could this happen?  How could Germany wreak such havoc in Europe
and the world?  It is therefore incumbent upon us Germans to show an
unshakeable resolve to do everything we can so that something like
this never happens again.

On the 25th of January, the presidents of the associations of former
inmates at the concentration camps presented their request to the
public, and this request closes with the following words:  ”The last
eyewitness appeal to Germany, to all European states, and to the
international community to continue preserving and honoring the human
gift of remembrance and commemoration into the future.  We ask young
people to carry on our struggle against Nazi ideology, and for a just,
peaceful and tolerant world; a world that has no place for anti-
Semitism, racism, xenophobia, and right-wing extremism.”

This appeal of the survivors clearly defines the very special
responsibility we Germans have to shoulder with regard to our
history.  And for me, therefore, there are three messages that are
important today.  First, let me emphasize, we Germans see it as past
of our country’s raison d’être to keep the everlasting memory alive of
the break with civilization that was the Shoah.  Only in this way will
we be able to shape our future.

I am therefore very grateful that the Buchenwald memorial has always
placed great emphasis on the dialogue with younger people, to
conversations with eyewitnesses, to documentation, and a broad-based
educational program.

Second, it is most important to keep the memory of the great
sacrifices alive that had to be made to put an end to the terror of
National Socialism and to liberate its victims and to rid all people
of its yoke.

This is why I want to say a particular word of gratitude to the
President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, for visiting
this particular memorial.  It gives me an opportunity to align yet
again that we Germans shall never forget, and we owe the fact that we
were given the opportunity after the war to start anew, to enjoy peace
and freedom to the resolve, the strenuous efforts, and indeed to a
sacrifice made in blood of the United States of America and of all
those who stood by your side as allies or fighters in the resistance.

We were able to find our place again as members of the international
community through a forward-looking partnership.  And this partnership
was finally key to enabling us to overcome the painful division of our
country in 1989, and the division also of our continent.  Today we
remember the victims of this place.  This includes remembering the
victims of the so-called Special Camp 2, a detention camp run by the
Soviet military administration from 1945 to 1950.  Thousands of people
perished due to the inhumane conditions of their detention.

Third, here in Buchenwald I would like to highlight an obligation
placed on us Germans as a consequence of our past:  to stand up for
human rights, to stand up for rule of law, and for democracy.  We
shall fight against terror, extremism, and anti-Semitism.  And in the
awareness of our responsibility we shall strive for peace and freedom,
together with our friends and partners in the United States and all
over the world.

Thank you.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Chancellor Merkel and I have just finished our tour
here at Buchenwald.  I want to thank Dr. Volkhard Knigge, who gave an
outstanding account of what we were witnessing.  I am particularly
grateful to be accompanied by my friend Elie Wiesel, as well as Mr.
Bertrand Herz, both of whom are survivors of this place.

We saw the area known as Little Camp where Elie and Bertrand were sent
as boys.  In fact, at the place that commemorates this camp, there is
a photograph in which we can see a 16-year-old Elie in one of the
bunks along with the others.  We saw the ovens of the crematorium, the
guard towers, the barbed wire fences, the foundations of barracks that
once held people in the most unimaginable conditions.

We saw the memorial to all the survivors — a steel plate, as
Chancellor Merkel said, that is heated to 37 degrees Celsius, the
temperature of the human body; a reminder — where people were deemed
inhuman because of their differences — of the mark that we all share.

Now these sights have not lost their horror with the passage of time.
As we were walking up, Elie said, “if these trees could talk.”  And
there’s a certain irony about the beauty of the landscape and the
horror that took place here.

More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage over what
happened have not diminished.  I will not forget what I’ve seen here
today.

I’ve known about this place since I was a boy, hearing stories about
my great uncle, who was a very young man serving in World War II.  He
was part of the 89th Infantry Division, the first Americans to reach a
concentration camp.  They liberated Ohrdruf, one of Buchenwald’s sub-
camps.

And I told this story, he returned from his service in a state of
shock saying little and isolating himself for months on end from
family and friends, alone with the painful memories that would not
leave his head.  And as we see — as we saw some of the images here,
it’s understandable that someone who witnessed what had taken place
here would be in a state of shock.

My great uncle’s commander, General Eisenhower, understood this
impulse to silence.  He had seen the piles of bodies and starving
survivors and deplorable conditions that the American soldiers found
when they arrived, and he knew that those who witnessed these things
might be too stunned to speak about them or be able — be unable to
find the words to describe them; that they might be rendered mute in
the way my great uncle had.  And he knew that what had happened here
was so unthinkable that after the bodies had been taken away, that
perhaps no one would believe it.

And that’s why he ordered American troops and Germans from the nearby
town to tour the camp.  He invited congressmen and journalists to bear
witness and ordered photographs and films to be made.  And he insisted
on viewing every corner of these camps so that — and I quote — he
could “be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if
ever in the future there develops a tendency to charge these
allegations merely to propaganda.”

We are here today because we know this work is not yet finished.  To
this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened
— a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and
hateful.  This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts; a
reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our
history.

Also to this day, there are those who perpetuate every form of
intolerance — racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism,
and more — hatred that degrades its victims and diminishes us all.
In this century, we’ve seen genocide.  We’ve seen mass graves and the
ashes of villages burned to the ground; children used as soldiers and
rape used as a weapon of war.  This places teaches us that we must be
ever vigilant about the spread of evil in our own time, that we must
reject the false comfort that others’ suffering is not our problem and
commit ourselves to resisting those who would subjugate others to
serve their own interests.

But as we reflect today on the human capacity for evil and our shared
obligation to defy it, we’re also reminded of the human capacity for
good.  For amidst the countless acts of cruelty that took place here,
we know that there were many acts of courage and kindness, as well.
The Jews who insisted on fasting on Yom Kippur.  The camp cook who hid
potatoes in the lining of his prison uniform and distributed them to
his fellow inmates, risking his own life to help save theirs.  The
prisoners who organized a special effort to protect the children here,
sheltering them from work and giving them extra food.  They set up
secret classrooms, some of the inmates, and taught history and math
and urged the children to think about their future professions.  And
we were just hearing about the resistance that formed and the irony
that the base for the resistance was in the latrine areas because the
guards found it so offensive that they wouldn’t go there.  And so out
of the filth, that became a space in which small freedoms could
thrive.

When the American GIs arrived they were astonished to find more than
900 children still alive, and the youngest was just three years old.
And I’m told that a couple of the prisoners even wrote a Buchenwald
song that many here sang.  Among the lyrics were these:  ”…whatever
our fate, we will say yes to life, for the day will come when we are
free…in our blood we carry the will to live and in our hearts, in
our hearts — faith.”

These individuals never could have known the world would one day speak
of this place.  They could not have known that some of them would live
to have children and grandchildren who would grow up hearing their
stories and would return here so many years later to find a museum and
memorials and the clock tower set permanently to 3:15, the moment of
liberation.

They could not have known how the nation of Israel would rise out of
the destruction of the Holocaust and the strong, enduring bonds
between that great nation and my own.  And they could not have known
that one day an American President would visit this place and speak of
them and that he would do so standing side by side with the German
Chancellor in a Germany that is now a vibrant democracy and a valued
American ally.

They could not have known these things.  But still surrounded by death
they willed themselves to hold fast to life.  In their hearts they
still had faith that evil would not triumph in the end, that while
history is unknowable it arches towards progress, and that the world
would one day remember them.  And it is now up to us, the living, in
our work, wherever we are, to resist injustice and intolerance and
indifference in whatever forms they may take, and ensure that those
who were lost here did not go in vain.  It is up to us to redeem that
faith.  It is up to us to bear witness; to ensure that the world
continues to note what happened here; to remember all those who
survived and all those who perished, and to remember them not just as
victims, but also as individuals who hoped and loved and dreamed just
like us.

And just as we identify with the victims, it’s also important for us I
think to remember that the perpetrators of such evil were human, as
well, and that we have to guard against cruelty in ourselves.  And I
want to express particular thanks to Chancellor Merkel and the German
people, because it’s not easy to look into the past in this way and
acknowledge it and make something of it, make a determination that
they will stand guard against acts like this happening again.

Rather than have me end with my remarks I thought it was appropriate
to have Elie Wiesel provide some reflection and some thought as he
returns here so many years later to the place where his father died.

MR. WIESEL:  Mr. President, Chancellor Merkel, Bertrand, ladies and
gentlemen.  As I came here today it was actually a way of coming and
visit my father’s grave — but he had no grave.  His grave is
somewhere in the sky.  This has become in those years the largest
cemetery of the Jewish people.

The day he died was one of the darkest in my life.  He became sick,
weak, and I was there.  I was there when he suffered.  I was there
when he asked for help, for water.  I was there to receive his last
words.  But I was not there when he called for me, although we were in
the same block; he on the upper bed and I on the lower bed.  He called
my name, and I was too afraid to move.  All of us were.  And then he
died.  I was there, but I was not there.

And I thought one day I will come back and speak to him, and tell him
of the world that has become mine.  I speak to him of times in which
memory has become a sacred duty of all people of good will — in
America, where I live, or in Europe or in Germany, where you,
Chancellor Merkel, are a leader with great courage and moral
aspirations.

What can I tell him that the world has learned?  I am not so sure.
Mr. President, we have such high hopes for you because you, with your
moral vision of history, will be able and compelled to change this
world into a better place, where people will stop waging war — every
war is absurd and meaningless; where people will stop hating one
another; where people will hate the otherness of the other rather than
respect it.

But the world hasn’t learned.  When I was liberated in 1945, April 11,
by the American army, somehow many of us were convinced that at least
one lesson will have been learned — that never again will there be
war; that hatred is not an option, that racism is stupid; and the will
to conquer other people’s minds or territories or aspirations, that
will is meaningless.

I was so hopeful.  Paradoxically, I was so hopeful then.  Many of us
were, although we had the right to give up on humanity, to give up on
culture, to give up on education, to give up on the possibility of
living one’s life with dignity in a world that has no place for
dignity.

We rejected that possibility and we said, no, we must continue
believing in a future, because the world has learned.  But again, the
world hasn’t.  Had the world learned, there would have been no
Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.

Will the world ever learn?  I think that is why Buchenwald is so
important — as important, of course, but differently as Auschwitz.
It’s important because here the large — the big camp was a kind of
international community.  People came there from all horizons —
political, economic, culture.  The first globalization essay,
experiment, were made in Buchenwald.  And all that was meant to
diminish the humanity of human beings.

You spoke of humanity, Mr. President.  Though unto us, in those times,
it was human to be inhuman.  And now the world has learned, I hope.
And of course this hope includes so many of what now would be your
vision for the future, Mr. President.  A sense of security for Israel,
a sense of security for its neighbors, to bring peace in that place.
The time must come.  It’s enough — enough to go to cemeteries, enough
to weep for oceans.  It’s enough.  There must come a moment — a
moment of bringing people together.

And therefore we say anyone who comes here should go back with that
resolution.  Memory must bring people together rather than set them
apart.  Memories here not to sow anger in our hearts, but on the
contrary, a sense of solidarity that all those who need us.  What else
can we do except invoke that memory so that people everywhere who say
the 21st century is a century of new beginnings, filled with promise
and infinite hope, and at times profound gratitude to all those who
believe in our task, which is to improve the human condition.

A great man, Camus, wrote at the end of his marvelous novel, The
Plague:  ”After all,” he said, “after the tragedy, never the
rest…there is more in the human being to celebrate than to
denigrate.”  Even that can be found as truth — painful as it is — in
Buchenwald.

Thank you, Mr. President, for allowing me to come back to my father’s
grave, which is still in my heart.

END                  4:25 P.M. (Local)


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