Memory must bring people together

Elie Wiesel, Buchenwald survivor and Nobel Laureate, spoke just moments ago during his visit to Buchenwald with Barack Obama and Angela Merkel.

After saying that it is enough - there has been enough visiting cemeteries and enough weeping, he continued:

“Memory must bring people together rather than set them apart. Memories heed not to sow anger in our hearts, but on the contrary a sense of solidarity with all those who lead us. What else can we do except invoke that memory so that people everywhere will say the twenty-first century is a century of new beginnings filled with promise and infinite hope and that time’s profound gratitude to all those who believe in our task wishes to improve the human condition. A great man, Camus, wrote at the end of his marvelous novel The Plague, ‘After all,’ he said, ‘after the tragedy, nevertheless there is more in the human being to celebrate than to denigrate.’ Even that can be found as truth, painful as it is, in Buchenwald.”