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ISRAEL BONDS
Nobel Laureate
Searches
For History in Latvia
Story by Tim Boxer
Photos by David Karp
 LIE
WIESEL plans to take a crew to Latvia to search for Simon
Dubnow’s lost manuscript of the history of the Jews. “I am
convinced he buried his documents in Riga. I think I know
where,” he said at the annual Israel Bonds Holocaust Remembrance
Dinner at the Grand Hyatt in New York.
He said that the historian was murdered by
one of his students on Dec. 7, 1943.
“He was killed by the local head of the
Gestapo who in the ‘20s was a student of Dubnow. Although he was
not religious, Dubnow was shot down along with a rabbi, and their
blood intermingled.”
Wiesel is a teacher, but still cannot come to
an understanding of anti-Semitism. “I gaze at the storm clouds
gathering in Europe today and am deeply troubled,” he said.
“I have not understood the anti-Semites.
They live in an imaginary world, a world of illusion. If jews
control the world, why is there so much hatred for us?”
Menachem Rosensaft received the 2003
Elie Wiesel Holocaust Remembrance Award at the dinner and talked
about his father, a survivor of Auschwitz. The kapo in the
notorious Block 11, the so-called Death Block, asked his father to
lead the Yom Kippur service.
“Half naked, emaciated, starved, my father
chanted Kol Nidre from memory. He led the prayers that night and
the next day for his fellow prisoners. As a reward, the kapo gave
my father and the other inmates of Block 11 an extra bowl of soup
to break the fast.”
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