By Carolyn Yeager
Updated on Jan. 24, 2011
What makes Jews special? Are they like "other people" or are they not? Here is one confusing answer from the world's most famous holocaust survivor.
As I was compiling the particular sections in All Rivers Run to the Sea that reveal, in one way or another, Elie Wiesel's sometimes certain, sometimes probable links to the Mossad and it's precursors, I came across this interesting passage that shows something a little different-but equally important to the understanding of Wiesel's views on crime.
Thus, I'm taking a short detour on the way to the promised "Elie Wiesel and the Mossad," part two, but I will get there eventually.
On page 288 and 289 of Wiesel's first memoir dealing with his life up to 1968 or thereabouts,
1 he writes that, after his arrival in New York in 1956, his editor in Israel, Dov, suggested a report on organized crime in America. Wiesel tells us that when doing the research he discovered some Jewish names among the underground crime figures, even some working for the Irgun.
I'm sure that doesn't surprise most of you reading this, and certainly not me, but Wiesel claims a different response:
These revelations came as a shock to me. I simply could not imagine a Jew becoming a hired killer. Yes, I had too idealistic a view of Jews, but the fact is that in Eastern Europe my people might have been criticized for just about anything, but not involvement in murders. Jews may have been guilty of lying or cheating, fraud or smuggling, theft or perjury, but murder was unimaginable.
Elie-who had worked for the Irgun for years in Paris; followed every fragment of news about the events in Palestine from at least 1946 on; was in communication with many of the behind-the-scenes characters responsible for the successful ascendance of the state of Israel-this man was shocked to learn that Jews were among the world's killers, hired or not?
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