Wiesel: Germanys Should Look to Past : Reunification: Nobel Peace Prize winner, speaking in Newport Beach, calls for an analysis before rushing ahead so that the painful past won’t be forgotten.

NEWPORT BEACH — Nobel Peace Prize winner and concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel told a crowd of about 800 people Sunday that he fears the idea of German reunification is moving forward without enough reflection on the past.

Wiesel, 61, said he was pleased that the Berlin Wall was breached on Nov. 9, touching off the possibility that East and West Germany could be reunified.

But he told the audience at Temple Bat Yahm that he is worried that Jewish and American representatives are not part of the groups in Germany that are discussing how to bring about reunification.

“This is what worries me so terribly,” he said. “Simply, Germany decided to go ahead (with the idea of reunification), and they go ahead.”

It was done, he said, “without an analysis.”

He said he fears that in the rush to reunify, the painful history of the Jews in Germany’s concentration camps, and the loss of American lives during the war, could be lost and forgotten.

“Indifference is the source of all evil in history,” he said. “We must measure events today in light of the past.”

Wiesel spoke for about an hour and then took about half an hour to answer a few of the 100 written questions submitted by the audience.

Wiesel, whose parents and younger sister were killed during World War II, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his continuing message to mankind of “peace, atonement and human dignity.” He was cited as being “a messenger to mankind” committed to the philosophy that “the forces fighting evil in the world can be victorious.

He is the author of more than 30 books and plays and has received more than 100 international awards and 50 academic degrees. An author and humanities professor at Boston University, he has become known as the literary conscience of the Holocaust.

Wiesel was invited to speak at Temple Bat Yahm as this year’s Norman Schiff Scholar, which was established in memory of one of the temple’s founders.