MIPOTW: Last Memory

The Most Interesting Phrase of the Week 022809:
Ok, I’m cheating.  How ’bout that?  This one came from an article I read last week in USAToday.  It was part news story about Elie Wiesel’s foundation losing much of its funds in the Maddoff investment scam, part book review of Mr. Wiesel’s new novel, and part awesome interview with an uncommon man.  Breaking my own rules again.  Twice in one post.  Tsk. Tsk.  But… Two statements stood out:

The irony has been noted: “It takes an extraordinarily heartless conman to swindle a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Nobel Peace Prize winner out of all of his charitable funds,” wrote James Bone in The Times of London.

Can I get an Amen?

Wiesel, who teaches religion and philosophy at Boston University, is among a dwindling number of concentration camp survivors: “We’re an endangered species. Someday, there will be just one left. I don’t want to be that person. It would be too heavy a burden to have the last word, the last memory.”

But, he says, “I tell my students and my readers that whoever reads or listens to a witness becomes a witness.”

Moving.