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.” |