“Why did I survive? I was a frail boy,
didn’t be pushy…not
strong…” Eli Weisanthal asked. His answer was that God needed someone to tell a
story. That was his mission in life, why he was born, why he lived, to witness the
horror and write about it and teach about it as a good educated man, with anger
but also with a sense of justice. Of the thousands of voices who survived, his
was the “tenor” for God. To sing the opera of evil, in words in 47 books, and
to countless students through the ensuing decades.
So who is the “voice”, the story
teller who witnessed and
survived 9/11? Do we have a survivor who was there, trapped, went through it
all, survived because God’s hand shielded him? And is this human being strong
enough to walk, as Weisel did, to recount the story, to make sure we never
forget?
Or has our world set up such a culture or society
that an
Eli Weisel survivor is not possible? Where are you, story teller for the damned
of that day? Where are your words, your strength, your anger? How many people
did Weisel help through his words to heal (if ever “healing” from such a wound
were possible), how much evil did he hunt down to justice? Is there such a
person walking our streets? Or were the WTC survivors all buried eventually in
the dust of their own pain, voices muffled, not one cry to ever more be heard?
