Larson: Your earlier books, on which I interviewed you, had one word titles. In the title of this new book, you seem to think something between the three words of the title-“After the Darkness.” None can deny that light follows darkness.
Wiesel: The thinking process goes on; but it is mostly related to holocaust. Those nights lasted for 4 years and remember each year has 365 nights.
Larson: Today I wish to pose a philosophical question to you. Howsoever powerful may be the waves, their real nature is water!
Wiesel: I agree! I get your point.
Larson: As a highly responsible writer, who has won the respect of a great majority of leaders and readers, don’t you think that you owe a duty to the humanity to tell them to forget the bitterness of the Nazi years, and work for world peace?
Wiesel: We can work for world peace by remembering that six million Jews were slaughtered, most barbarically. The departed souls will not disturb your peace efforts in anyway. What does it matter for you if one Wiesel does obstruct the peace process assuming that what you say is correct?
Thousands of Satanic forces in the form of political leaders, military generals, business tycoons, the drug mafia, are out to destroy world peace anyway, even without the concentration camps. What have you to say?
Larson: The disturbing part about this book is that you directly write about the holocaust. These 42 pages and 45 photographs look like the charge sheet, from which there is no escape for those who committed those crimes! Your heart seems to take a positive turn, but your writing is as strong and biting as it was in Night.
Wiesel: The pages of human history daubed in bloodshed of the Nazi atrocities can not be white-washed so soon. Since, then nothing positive has happened in the world, to initiate the white-washing process. Do you think that the intelligence of Churchill and Roosevelt was that inefficient, that they could not get clues about the impending holocaust?
Larson: What are your feelings when your books are published?
Wiesel: I feel a part of the cancerous growth of the society is operated upon and the affected parts are removed.
Larson: Destruction of property and loss of lives is part of the war. Why do you make such a big issue of what Nazis did?
Wiesel: Is killing of innocent women and children en-masse has anything to do with the war? For six long years, from 1939 to 1945, this slaughtering of the Jews in one way of the other was going on unabated in the heart of Europe and nearly one third of the European Jews were wiped out.
The world leaders during that period were alive and kicking. Nobody offered to help to extinguish this fire, until they realized that the fire is reaching the portals of their Nations. Such callous attitude is unparallel in world-history
Larson: And those 45 photographs? Any specific purpose in publishing them in a small book?
Wiesel: The book has a great cause. Each syllable of the book is written in Jewish blood.
The photographs are mute witnesses.
Larson: Any appointments with the future?
Wiesel: So far disappointments only.
Larson: Any specific message for the Jewish people?
Wiesel: In whichever part of the world you are inhabited, never ever bear with slightest injustice. Strike at the roots of the evil-sapling and bury it then and there. A coward dies a thousand times, but the valiant dies but once. The say, do not strike; if you strike, strike so hard, that there is no need to strike again!
Larson: In the present set-up, with the strong presence of UNO, do you think such tragedies can repeat in future?
Wiesel: UNO is not a celestial Organization. It is formed by Nations—some of them may consider their own vested interests more important than the interest of UNO and the ideals for which it stands for.
