Modern Jews have the luxury of thinking however we want about the Holocaust — if we think about it all. For some, it is nothing, for others a distant familial memory. For a bold few, it can even be the object of humor. (Hungarian Spectrum)
Not so for Jews of earlier generations, for whom the smoke of the camps is far more pungent. And as survivors of the camps dwindle in number, their voices, their invocations to never forget, become ever more urgent.
And no voice is more urgent than that of Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, whose “Night” remains probably the most widely-read nonfiction chronicle of the six million who perished, not to mention those who live with the scars.
Wiesel is in the news today because he has returned a Hungarian prize he won in 2004. He no longer wants it, convinced that Hungary is “whitewashing” its collaboration with the Nazis, according to an AFP report.