Confab Probes Implications of the Holocaust and Wiesel’s Writings

More than 40 of the world’s foremost authorities from this country, Canada, England. France, Israel and Norway met here and in Old Westbury, Long Island last week to discuss “The Work of Elie Wiesel and the Holocaust Universe.”

Prof. Irving Greenberg, chairman of the department of Jewish Studies at City College, who was the Holocaust conference chairman, assessed the meeting as “an event of cultural, religious and human interest.” The conference participants explored the significance and implications of the Holocaust as well as the work of Wiesel “who for over 20 years has witnessed and wrestled with the Incredible reality of this watershed event in human history,” Greenberg stated.

Continuing, he said: “All such writings and discussions are extraordinary because they are attempts to speak the unspeakable and to communicate that which can never be understood. Yet these disturbing facts, sometimes degrading, sometimes ennobling, must be confronted. The very credibility and existence of human society is at stake and this conference seeks to advance the understanding for mankind to overcome.”

The three-day conference was a project of the National Jewish Conference Center, the Department of Jewish Studies of City College CUNY, and the Strochlitz Foundation. A new annual award in honor of Wiesel to advance the study and understanding of the Holocaust was announced by Sigmund Strochlitz, founder of the Strochlitz Foundation, which will fund the award. The conference concluded with a public session held at the 92nd Street YMHA. It was chaired by Prof. Louis Finkelstein. Chancellor Emeritus of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

THEMES OF CONFERENCE

Uriel Tal, professor at Tel Aviv University, said in his paper that Jews were symbols for the Nazis of what they had to destroy to create a totalitarian state–transcendentalism and rationality. John Roth, professor at Claremont College, said that the work of Wiesel explores the reestablishment of human solidarity in response to the Holocaust, in other words, love over despair. The message of Wiesel, according to Roth, is one of struggle for life hope and affirmation.

A theme that emerged during the conference was that neither religion nor ethics can go on as before as a result of the Holocaust. A. Roy Eckhardt, chairman of the department of religious studies at Lehigh University, called the idea of the Jews as chosen people a dangerous one that must be opposed because it has led to assaults on Jews. Eckhardt expressed the view that the chosen people concept has caused people to view Jews as set apart from others, thereby leading to difficulties.

Greenberg said that many traditional moral standards shifted after the Holocaust. Among them, he said, is the attitude towards power. The Holocaust taught the importance of obtaining power rather than opposing and removing it, he said.

Thomas A. Idinopulos, professor at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, said that the Holocaust has had a profound influence on Christian thinkers. He said that the lesson of the Holocaust is that Christianity must reject the idea that suffering is a valid religious category. To the contrary, he said, suffering is wrong, a triumph of evil, and the past glorification of the crucifixion as a symbol of suffering was excessive.