Challenge of Memory with Elie Wiesel and Rabbi Polak

ELIE WIESEL: This is Rabbi Polak. I'm sure you know him. And I think we agree that instead of me talking for long, he would talk a lot. And then I will answer.

RABBI POLAK: What would you like me to tell them?

ELIE WIESEL: Some stories.

RABBI POLAK: You really want me tell them stories?

[LAUGHTER]

ELIE WIESEL: So my time.

RABBI POLAK: OK.

Should I tell them some hopeful stories?

ELIE WIESEL: Anything.

RABBI POLAK: When I was a child and I was in grade-- when I was in grade one, I had just come to Canada. We had immigrated. This is about 1949.

And I didn't speak a word of English. It was my first day in school. It was in grade one. Was in a public school and I raised-- I had go to the bathroom.

So I raised my hand. The teacher said yes. And I said in Dutch I have to go to the bathroom. And teacher smiled at me and said what. And I then pointed, and she understood right away. And she told me to go to the bathroom, and I did.

And then I got lost. I didn't know how to go back to the room that we were in. And I saw a very old woman who must have been in grade seven, and I asked her how to get back to room 19. And she told me where it was, or she took me.

Matter of fact, I remember she first-- she told me where it was. Didn't know what she was talking about. So she took me by the hand and took me to the room.

When I got home that day, I told my mother my triumph. I said I got lost, and I spoke English. I said-- she said what room. And I said 19. She said but you can't speak English. What did you say? So I said I said [SPEAKING GERMAN]. And she started to cry.

She said that's not 19. That's not English. That's German. And she said I said how do I know German. And she said because when we were in the death camp, the commandant who was in charge of counting the people early in the morning used to take you on his shoulder when he counted the people.

And every morning in Bergen-Belsen, I was his mascot. And I sat on his shoulder. And he would count the people, and that's how I learned to count.

ELIE WIESEL: Well, I wanted you here for two reasons. First, you made me come here. But the most important reason is another one. I wanted to you students to realize that there are in your midst people, and you see them you're seeing when they are people just like other people who smile, who laugh, who tell jokes, who teach seriously, who drink wine and eat bread, chocolate, or cookies. And you don't realize that they have stories to tell, such stories that if they were to be known people would tremble.

And one of them is Rabbi Polak, but he's not the only one. I know of some in our own university who came from the same background, and they, too, are protagonists in a drama-- in a drama that will forever be remembered in history as the most awesome event. And therefore when you look at them, think twice what questions to ask, what stories you would like them to tell, why certain gestures appear to be clumsy or not, why certain words carry a special meaning, look better.

The idea of teaching this subject or telling these stories is to sensitize people that you should become more sensitive to yourself, to your parents, to your friends, to strangers, sensitive not only to the story that we try to tell about what happened in '33, '35 but about what happens even today because whatever happens today is always related to what happened then.