And the Sea Is Never Full (55 page)

Other conferences follow.

Spring 1992: New York is in the midst of a full-blown racial crisis. Riots are raging in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, when we hear from the governor of New York State, Mario Cuomo: “You are arranging conferences on hate everywhere except in our city. Do you really think that we don’t need one, that our ethnic problems are solved?”

Together with the governor, we organize a seminar to be held in autumn. Its title: “To Save Our Children.” To save them from hate, of course. There is little time to prepare it. Marion, who is directing the foundation, and Arnold Thaler, her associate and vice president of the foundation, work tirelessly with the governor’s staff. Lists have to be drawn up, invitations sent out. It is imperative that every segment of the community be represented: Jews, Christians, Blacks, Hispanics; sociologists, educators, philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists, journalists … and more.

Two plenary sessions introduce the meetings of the commissions. Everything seems to be under control. Then comes the explosion.

A young man bursts into the hall where participants are dealing with problems of education and the media. He protests against the gay community’s lack of representation. He is actually wrong: the executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project is a full member of the conference. The intruder considers this inadequate and demands that a homosexual participate in every committee. Boston University President John Silber answers him with great logic and characteristic calm: How does the young man know who around
the table is homosexual, and who is not? And what if they all were, without advertising it? I was not present when the incident occurred, but all the participants I question are unanimous: Silber never raised his voice. Nevertheless, the next day the executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project declares in plenary session that he feels compelled to withdraw from the conference.

A Long Island newspaper reports the incident, blowing it up out of all proportion. For their part, the Boston dailies, which rarely miss a chance to attack Silber, take up the item, adding additional negative comment. In the end, the ombudsman of the
Boston Globe
, after seeing a videocassette of the session, publicly declares that Silber had acted appropriately.

June 1995: another international conference, this one devoted to young people and entitled: “The Leaders of Tomorrow.” This time young people, facing “leaders of today,” are participating in the debates that take place in Venice’s San Giorgio, the beautiful home of the Cini Foundation. Thirty adolescents between the ages of fifteen and nineteen represent the two sides of several areas of conflict. From the Middle East: Israelis, Egyptians, Jordanians, and Palestinians. From Ireland: Catholics and Protestants. From Yugoslavia: Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians. The others come from various African countries and the United States.

In a short time the frontiers disappear and a moving camaraderie develops. A young African American who has already been in prison seventeen times evokes his experiences; the others show great empathy. Bonds are created between the Israelis and the Palestinians. When a young Bosnian forcefully demands on a direct satellite line that First Lady Hillary Clinton make promises for his people and his country, the entire group gives him its support. As always, Hillary is brilliant as she responds to frequently confrontational questions.

Yossi Beilin, Israeli deputy minister and one of the secret negotiators of the Oslo Peace Plan; Uri Lubrani, the legendary savior of distant Jewish communities, and Itzhak Rager, the mayor of Beersheba converse with the Jordanian ambassador to Italy and the PLO representative in London.

Former Irish terrorists sit, for the first time, on the same stage as their enemies of yesterday. Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who is the United Nations prosecutor, charged with arguing cases of crimes against humanity, is speaking of the relationship
between justice and memory. Silber speaks to the role of education. Bernard Kouchner, former and future French minister of human rights, later to be appointed U.N. administrator of Kosovo, pleads for intervention wherever humanity is at risk. Susanna Agnelli, foreign minister of Italy, discusses the problems of individual conscience confronting men and women in power.

We have barely returned to New York when we plunge into preparations for the next conference, scheduled for December in Hiroshima. Its theme is “The Future of Hope,” and our cosponsor is
Asahi Shimbun
, the most important Japanese daily. The conference opens with a concert in
Asahi Shimbun’s
great concert hall in the presence of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko.

Ten Nobel laureates; a former Japanese prime minister; Takako Doi, chairperson of the Japanese Parliament; former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger; French Culture Minister Jack Lang; the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa; several nuclear experts; economists; important journalists—all participate energetically and passionately in debates that begin at eight o’clock in the morning and end late in the evening. In this place our preoccupations seem urgent.

Yugoslavia recalls us to reality.

The Destiny of Sarajevo

S
ARAJEVO’S RECENT TRAGEDY
began in 1991. A wave of murderous violence and hostility sweeps over former Yugoslavia, now shattered. Democracy was not successful in establishing cooperation among its varied and hostile ethnic groups. On the contrary, all it did was release repressed antagonisms. A bewildering fact: Under Tito the various communities had lived peacefully side-by-side. Could dictatorship, when it is marketed “with a human face,” be more beneficial than democracy? With respect to Yugoslavia one might well think so, but I don’t believe it; nothing can and nothing should be substituted for a government based on freedom.

Once again bombs are falling on cities, civilians are assassinated, children are massacred. Will it never stop? Will the twentieth century be nothing but a bloodstained itinerary leading from Sarajevo to Sarajevo?

Dubrovnik is buried in ruins. Other cities follow. Homes are abandoned, families uprooted, haggard mothers and exhausted old men are in full flight, driven by an ancestral terror.

God in heaven, what is there to be done?

Most Americans don’t even know where some of these places are. Bosnia? Whom does it belong to? And the Krajina, where is it? Other unfamiliar names flood the news: Banja Luka, Srebrenica, Tuzla. The geography lessons we are learning are tragic.

Ministers and diplomats now say with regret that they should never have recognized these states. I hear it at the Élysée, and it is confirmed at the White House. Everyone I speak to blames Helmut Kohl, the German chancellor, the first to recognize Croatia’s independence. And it was he who immediately afterward exercised unrelenting pressure on his Western allies to support his policy.

But Bosnia is far from our concerns, too far for most people to pause over its fate. Go there? How? On whose behalf and to do what? So there is Bosnia, abandoned, betrayed, removed from our preoccupations. Later, in August 1995, Croat Serbia shares the same fate.

And time is passing.

I feel guilty that since 1988 we have not been able to overcome the financial difficulties and create an association of Nobel laureates. It could have intervened in Bosnia, sounded the alarm, saved some children, helped their mothers. We could have given the victims human and moral support and testified on their behalf.

And time is passing.

My personal involvement dates from July 1992, when I receive a call from Israel Singer and Elan Steinberg, directors of the World Jewish Congress. They show me a letter from Dobrica Cosic, president of the Federal Yugoslav Republic. Evidently he had written to Boutros Boutros-Ghali, secretary-general of the U.N., asking him to appoint me to head an international commission to investigate the situation in prison camps for Bosnians in Serbia.

The world media are talking about these camps. The televised images arouse indignation everywhere. Systematic humiliations, rapes, arbitrary arrests, deportations, summary executions—all are part of a policy of “ethnic cleansing.” Everybody is accusing the Serbs. Some people do not hesitate to use the words “concentration camps,” “genocide,” and even … “Auschwitz.” I do not. I have never wavered in my affirmation that Auschwitz is unique and will remain so.

What could be achieved there by a single individual, one who has no power and represents no one but himself? Nonetheless, does one have the right to remain neutral, to stay on the sidelines, to keep silent?

After several conversations with State Department and U.N. officials (Boutros-Ghali claims not to have received the Yugoslav president’s letter), Singer, Steinberg, and I decide to fly to London to meet President Cosic and other leaders of the former Yugoslavia, who are there to take part in an international conference. They are Slobodan Milosevic (Serbia), Radovan Karadjic (Serbian Bosnia), Alija Izetbegovic (Bosnia), and Franjo Tudjman (Croatia), the last an author of an anti-Semitic work denying the Holocaust. For obvious reasons I do not wish to meet Tudjman; he will be excluded from the list.

The four leaders insist that we travel to their countries. We
demand guarantees and total freedom of movement and action. We must be able to go anywhere and meet anyone at any time. And what about the camps? Cosic, Milosevic, and Karadjic protest vehemently. They all blame the media. So then, there were no atrocities, no rapes? Oh well, here and there a few unfortunate incidents, that’s all. As we don’t bother to hide our skepticism, Cosic summons Karadjic and appeals to him in our presence to shut down all the camps on his territory in “our honor.” Karadjic commits to do this. In writing. I have his signed letter. Why not announce it officially at the conference? Fine, they’ll do it.

Of them all, Cosic seems to me the most open, the most understanding, the most human. A seventy-three-year-old novelist, he impresses me favorably. As usual, am I too gullible? I tell myself that if the reports of Serbian atrocities are true, he may not be to blame. The crimes may be perpetrated behind his back.

His opponents send me pamphlets and articles to prove his share of responsibility for the “ethnic cleansing.” His friends provide me with the same kind of documents on Alija Izetbegovic and his project for a Greater Islamic Republic in former Yugoslavia. The people in charge of propaganda of every kind are not sitting on their hands.

Meanwhile the violence continues to rage in the Balkans. And what about Cosic’s promise and Karadjic’s commitment? Null and void, as they say. In November, Ted Koppel of ABC’s
Nightline
devotes two programs to the Balkans. David Marash’s report is gripping, full of harrowing images, heartrending testimonies. Invited by Koppel to comment on them, I speak of the horror the images arouse and the feelings of helplessness I experience. I plead for a summit meeting in Sarajevo.

That is when I decide to go there.

My principal fear is that of being manipulated by one side or another. I must at all costs avoid being turned into a propaganda instrument. Cosic conveys his assurances in that regard. I refuse all dinners, cocktail parties, receptions. I am not coming to savor the undoubtedly delicious specialties of Yugoslav cuisine, but to see the prisoners, speak to the victims. Belgrade agrees to my terms. Am I right to trust Cosic? For all practical purposes, he is my host. He is the one who sends four airplanes to Geneva to take me and my delegation to Belgrade. The group includes a number of our foundation members as well as several journalists: Abe Rosenthal, Marc Kravetz, David Marash, and others. (An Italian journalist has joined us. His pro-Serb
sympathies render him suspect to certain correspondents based in Belgrade, where, I was told later, he falsely claimed to be my representative.)

Immediately upon landing I make clear to the local press that no one will take advantage of this visit. We have come with the sole object of uncovering the facts and making them known. At the president’s palace there is another press conference with Cosic. I repeat our demand that our visit not be used for propaganda purposes. Cosic says: “All we want is for you to know the truth.”

He takes me by the arm, and I think he is going to accompany me to the door. Wrong. He leads me to a sumptuous dining room where a huge banquet has been laid out. I find it difficult to restrain my frustration and anger. From the very beginning, I had asked specifically that the program not include any lunches, dinners, receptions, or cocktail parties without which, evidently, diplomatic life would founder. But I am not a diplomat. I sit down across from the president and ask for the floor, not to propose a toast but to make a short statement: “I am a Jew, and this is Friday evening; my place is not here but in the synagogue….” I stand up, shake a few hands, and leave, followed by the whole delegation.

The synagogue, destroyed during the Occupation and recently restored, has few members. Many have left for Israel; the community is disintegrating. The Chief Rabbi, a frail and sad old man, officiates in a low voice. He reminds me of the frightened rabbi I met in Moscow in the sixties.