It feels weird to say this, but one of my all-time favorite books is Night by Elie Wiesel. It’s weird to say one of my favorite books is a holocaust story. But I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise—I’ve already blogged about how I love sad songs and sad books and sad movies. And cemeteries! I think a lot of people might think I’m morbid, but I don’t feel morbid. I’m not fixated on death, or even fascinated by it. IMO.
But I am fascinated by the capacity for evil that humans have. I always want to try to understand it. I think if I can understand the motives for it, what causes it to happen, then it won’t seem so awful somehow.
Part of that might come from growing up in a town with one of the worst and most notorious serial killers of all time, the Green River Killer. I went swimming and fishing in the Green River as a kid. My dad’s cousin was the principal at a high school for troubled teens, and one of his students was one of the Green River Killer’s victims. As an adult I worked at a bank across the street from a motel where he picked up one of his victims.
It was such a relief when they finally caught him. It’s strange, growing up and living in a place where an uncaught serial killer had been for years. When they caught him, he was living in the town next to where we lived.
Anyway, Night is a heavy book. It’s short, and it’s brutal. And brutally honest. Wiesel talks about his experience as a teenager in concentration camps, losing his family, and losing his faith in God. One of the most powerful lines in the book for me is short and simple:
I was 15 years old.
It comes after describing a horrifying scene. He was being transported in a train car with a bunch of other concentration camp prisoners. I think they were in a cattle car. He and the other passengers are all starving, and one of the guards thinks it’s funny to toss some crusts of bread into the car and watch the prisoners scramble and fight over it. Wiesel witnesses one starving man kill his own son over a crust a bread. And the chapter ends with that one simple sentence:
I was 15 years old.
I get teared up just thinking about it.
Wiesel survived the holocaust and became a writer and a university professor. He and his wife run a charitable foundation. And I recently learned they were swindled out of not only their personal fortune, but also the foundation’s funds, by Bernard Madoff.
It boggles the mind. Well, the holocaust boggles the mind—or beyond-boggles it. A money swindler is unfortunately not that mind-boggling. But that he could do it to someone like Elie Wiesel. And to Wiesel’s foundation. I’m guess I’m not that concerned about Wiesel losing his personal fortune—of course he earned every penny of it, and he’s very old, but he still has an income from teaching. And he has a new novel out, which I’m going to make a point of buying just as a little personal show of support, as lame as that sounds. But to steal from his foundation that does so much to help those in need—that’s mind-boggling.
I read an interview with Elie Wiesel about Madoff, which can be read here. He talks about the outpouring of support his foundation has had from the American people:
And it’s incredible the generosity of people who want to help. It was just something about the American people. Just as in 9/11. [It] was the greatest tragedy, but it also brought out the best in the American people. I was here then. And to see people on the street, strangers, would speak to one another, would share the pain, give bottles, they stood in line to give blood…. And so, here again, the generosity, it cannot compensate, but it shows again, a human being is capable of both very great, good things, and very horrible things.
At the end of the interview, he says this:
To my students, and sometimes my leaders, I say whatever you do in life—medicine, business, engineering, architecture, journalism, whatever you do—think higher, and feel deeper.
So, my question is: Are you someone who is contributing to society in a productive way, or are you someone who is a drain? I think most people can say they are productive members of the human race, rather than a drain. But I think it’s a worthwhile question to think higher, and feel deeper, about. What are you contributing to the world?