When Elie Wiesel speaks to an audience, as he has thousands of times, as he will in War Memorial Auditorium tonight, he is never alone on stage. He brings with him the memory of being a Jewish boy thrust into the horrors of Nazi Germany in 1944. And together we walk toward the new millennium, carried by profound fear and extraordinary hope. Wiesel, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, has written 40 books since the French novelist Francois Mauriac, in the mid-1950s, encouraged him to break his silence about his experiences at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. That has been an ongoing theme of Wiesel's as a lecturer, author and college professor.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Sometimes we must interfere. When Wiesel speaks, he tells stories that he believes must be remembered. It is not a Jewish message, but a human message. He speaks as a survivor for all those who cannot speak. It was Wiesel's commitment to speaking out that first brought him and Davis together in 1967, Davis said.