All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [177]
It was in the early 1960s that an old dream, as mad as it was vain, reemerged: to start a Jewish magazine. Michel Salomon, editor in chief of l’Arche, and Shuka Tadmor, U.S. correspondent for the Israeli daily Lamerhav, were ready to dream along with me.
I had met them at more or less the same time, Shuka in a UN press room, Michel in Stockholm, Pilley at another conference of the World Jewish Congress. Aware of my financial difficulties, Teddy had persuaded me to join his team of interpreters again. Michel was in Stockholm on assignment.
A digression. It was also in Stockholm that I did a series of interviews with a Finnish physiotherapist I met through a Jewish leader, Dr. Hillel Storch. The man’s name, Felix Kersten, was familiar to me. I had read somewhere that Heinrich Himmler had been among his patients. Himmler, it seems, suffered from terrible stomach trouble, and Kersten treated him often, sometimes daily. What did the SS Reichsführer talk about as his healer massaged his pain-racked body? According to Kersten, everything, including the Jews. And their extermination? Rarely. But let me quote from our conversation:
“Did Himmler confide in you, Mr. Kersten?”
“Yes.”
“Did he sleep during massages?”
“Sometimes.”
“So it would have been possible for you to press a little harder on his neck, for instance?”
“Yes, that possibility was open to me. Although … the hallway and nearby offices were full of SS men.”
“But you could have killed him.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you spare his life? Because you were afraid to lose yours?”
“No, it wasn’t that. I told myself I could have some influence over him. And in fact, I did save human lives. Toward the end of the war I was the one who persuaded him to evacuate the last camp prisoners instead of killing them. I was the one who set up the meeting between Himmler and Dr. Michael Mazur, the delegate of the World Jewish Congress.”
Kersten was a strange man. I felt uncomfortable in his presence, perhaps because he was the only man I knew who had maintained close relations with Himmler. What did he leave unsaid?
Let me go back to my publishing dreams: the weekly magazine that would be the salvation of its founders, if not of all humanity, which, surprisingly, seemed not to care at all.
The project was quite clear in our own minds. A Jewish weekly patterned on Time, appearing in three languages: English, French, and Spanish—in full color, if you please. We would solicit the most prestigious bylines: Walter Lippmann for politics, Leonard Bernstein for music, Saul Bellow for literature. We would have vast political and cultural influence. We would discover young talent, encourage original ideas and social initiatives. Jewish life would never be the same. All we needed was the modest sum of one hundred thousand dollars to launch it. I tried to interest the president of the World Jewish Congress, Nahum Goldmann, who advised me to visit the superrich Samuel Bronfman in Montreal. We also decided to try our luck with Philip Klutznick, former president of B’nai B’rith. He advised us to go see Nahum Goldmann.
Then one day Shuka called me with good news: He had found our dream patron. His first name was Oscar, and he was rich and ready. He was prepared to meet with us whenever we wanted. Michel caught the first plane from