- [Narrator] Informed Sources is made possible by the Members of Thirteen [dramatic music] [police siren] - Welcome to Informed Sources, a weekly roundtable representing diverse perspectives on local issues.

We look at some of the week's top stories and some that deserve more attention.

I'm Andy Humm.

- I'm Utrice Leid.

- I'm Betty Lou Ebron, I'm sitting in this week for Juan Gonzales who is away on assignment.

- I'm Eric Breindel.

- As the Rodney King verdict reverberates around the country, we will talk in a moment about the ripple effect here in New York City.

In tonight's extended interview segment our guest is Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel.

He's here to share his vision and his views on the anatomy of hate.

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, Thirteen presents a special documentary on Poland's Lodz ghetto.

That's coming up at nine immediately following Informed Sources but first is New York reporters.

Let's talk about what happened in Los Angeles last night and through the day today.

Why isn't New York burning the way Los Angeles is?

- I don't think really you can expect that a continent away this city, the reaction to a trial in Los Angeles is going to provoke rioting, lawlessness, looting, and so far as we know a number of deaths.

It just doesn't make sense.

That's not the way riots generally occur.

Usually there's a provocation that takes place on the scene.

The scene here is California.

Utrice, do you disagree?

- Yes I do, and I don't call them riots, I call them uprisings because there's a very important political difference, The motivation for people doing things.

Certainly, violence is not a good thing and it is not to to be approved, but we have to always look at the root causes.

And here we have a system that evidently failed.

And it would promote predictable responses that we've seen.

I think we have to be clear.

I think there will be some reverberations in major cities, in any inner city community-- We have in New York City, for example.

Since Mayor Koch took office and up to now, in excess of 300 people, most of them blacks and Latinos who have been shot dead by police.

We do need police protection, but we need to have a system in which there is appropriate protection.

And as a history, because the current commission endorsed that view, the the congressional hearings-- that police activities in inner city communities is decidedly different from the activities in suburban white communities, and the systemic problems have to be addressed.

- I'm sorry, I think I have to take complete issue with the notion that looting of stores is in any way an uprising that's provoked by a political circumstance.

- [Andy] What was it provoked by?

- An opportunity.

Looting is provoked by opportunity.

Looting is robbery, robbery is to be punished.

Robbery is a crime, nobody benefits.

And I think that Mayor Bradley is right this morning in appealing to people to remain calm and in urging them to manifest the stress that they may have about this verdict in ways that doesn't bring violence to innocent people.

- Do you at all understand the anger that that people are feeling out there in Los Angeles that provoked this kind of a response as opposed to a protest march?

- How can you not understand?

I mean, to have these four cops beating up this guy on the street and for them to get off is just unbelievable to me.

On some level it's shocking but I think it's not unexpected either, especially if you're a person of color living in a community where you see things going on all the time, and you see the misunderstandings, and you see the bias that goes on on both sides.

- Okay, well, I wasn't in the courtroom and I don't know why the jury voted to acquit them because I think we really would've had to have watched the whole trial in order to have a clear understanding.

What I'm beginning to understand about the trial is that the fact that the chief victim, the sole victim, Rodney King, the man who was beaten so severely in those videotapes didn't take the stand is, at least in the view of some attorneys, a phenomenon that cast doubt in the minds of jurors.

And some people are saying that maybe the prosecution made an error in not getting Rodney King to the stand to tell his story of what happened.

- Well rather than analyze the trial, let's bring it back to New York.

What are black leaders in New York going to be doing?

- I mean, the question of black leaders, I think what are leaders generally supposed to do.

I think, again, we've had a congressional hearing in New York City, which the police department did not support; in fact, the PBA was outright against it.

We have a problem.

It is not unique to Los Angeles or New York City.

It is in fact, all over the country that police organizations generally are operating as paramilitary organizations that are a government unto themselves.

If we do live in a democracy, it should be that citizens who are to be protected by the police for whom they pay taxes, ought to have some level of input and control over this organization.

If the pattern should suggest, and it does suggest, that routinely the murders or beatings or abuse directed at people, usually the dynamic usually breaks out, white males against black males and Latino males or Asian males.

We do not have to be rocket scientists to know that something is systemically wrong.

- Here's a statistic that'll really grab you.

In terms of the New York Police Department: 13.5% of the force is Hispanic, 11.6% is black, 74%, three quarters of the force is white, and 0.8% is Asian.

I mean, this doesn't look anything like the population.

And if the cops don't look like the population, why should the population feel they can trust the cops?

- And the police don't come from the communities that they serve.

Many of them come from Long Island and Westchester, and even those who live in the city tend to live in the white areas of Queens and Staten Island.

I want to make another point, as a member of the City Commission on Human Rights, I had to listen to hearings on police misconduct all summer, and one of the things I found is that the system doesn't seem to work for anybody.

It doesn't work for the people, and it doesn't work for the police.

The police are terribly overstressed, high suicide rate, many, many family problems because of their jobs.

They don't like their job.

They don't like going into communities and feeling like they're part of an occupying force, and yet that is how they are viewed in many of the communities that they serve.

- I'm glad you brought some of that up because if we use terms like paramilitary to describe ordinary people trying to do their jobs in a city where there's a huge crime problem and where lots and lots of people, including people of color, are very scared all the time, and say they're scared all the time, especially women-- - But Eric, they're scared of the police.

So what are we paying for?

- But this accusation is not coming from ordinary-- - I mean, they're not as scared of the police as they are of people who commit crimes.

- Former Police Commissioner Anthony Bowser had pointed out this problem repeatedly, that the police activity in communities of color, black communities, Asian communities, Latino communities, they really do operate in a decidedly different way and they produce decidedly different results.

If we look at the statistic, explain to me then how it is that the vast majority of people killed or brutalized by police are blacks and Latinos.

Does that suggests that blacks and Latinos have a monopoly on crime?

Or does it suggest that-- - Are you talking about people who were killed on the course of committing crimes?

[crosstalk] I mean, are these statistics about people who were totally innocent, or are these statistics about people who are apprehended in the course of committing a crime?

I urge you, I urge you against an orgy in cop bashing.

- I'm not discussing cup bashing here.

We not discussing cop bashing.

We are discussing here the operation of a city agency supported by tax dollars, that, according even to former police commissioners, needs reform of a substantial nature.

Simply because there is an implication of race and racism, which cannot be denied.

There's the question of how police operate with impunity apparently in some cases, because of the the nature of the crimes that are committed, and the disposition of those crimes.

- Do you feel that the reforms that are being proposed, community policing, are going to work?

Do they go far enough in terms of solving these problems?

- I think it's a good stab at the problem, but the problem is it's not that well coordinated at the center.

From what I can see is they're doing this, they're doing this, but there's no central organization where I can go if I have a problem as a police officer, as a Sergeant; there's just no coordination.

- I don't think Lee Brown is, for example, a racist of any kind.

And I think Lee Brown's effort to introduce community policing is an effort to address some of the problems which Utrice raises here.

Now, whether these reforms will work, we will learn.

Reforms, all city agencies need reform.

- It is clear that, despite all efforts at reform, police departments generally have remained remarkably immune to reform.

And that is a question.

- And in terms of securing justice, when police are ever accused of committing a crime, whether it's in the LA case or this case, there was this blue wall of silence.

Police officers never, ever testify against each other.

They just close ranks, and it often means that the problem goes unsolved; it's hard to get a conviction in a police case, misconduct.

All right, we're going to move on.

If you're a regular viewer of Thirteen, you've seen our recent hate-busters campaign.

In just a moment, Elie Wiesel joins us.

We'll talk about the anatomy of ethnic and racial hate campaigns and discuss a documentary coming up tonight, Lodz Ghetto, immediately following this broadcast of Informed Sources.

[dramatic music] Where and under what conditions did the seeds of hate find fertile soil?

This is the central question that drives the life work of our guests tonight, Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel.

We'll talk in a moment about the Holocaust documentary coming up at nine, Lodz Ghetto, a horrifying story that takes us back 50 years.

But first, Elie Wiesel, let's talk about the climate today.

- Professor Wiesel, on campuses there have been newspapers contacted and presented with advertisements.

These advertisements by so-called Holocaust revisionist assert, in fact, that the Holocaust didn't even take place.

Some have likened this to advertisements that might assert that blacks were never slaves in America.

Some campus newspapers chose to publish these ads, others didn't; some said we ought to publish them in order to refute them and raised First Amendment issues.

How do you feel the phenomenon of denial of this historical reality should be dealt with by young people?

- Some people are mentally deranged, others are morally deranged.

And these people belong to the second category.

They are morally disturbed people.

Never in my life will I accept to dignify them with the debate.

Now, I read some of the articles, pro and con.

I am for the First Amendment, but you know, in some countries in Europe, it is illegal.

It's a misdemeanor or a crime to write and to say publicly, that the tragedy did not occur.

Here, because of the First Amendment, everything is permitted.

However, if I were an editor of a student newspaper I would say to myself, why should they offer them a forum?

If they want to write about it, let them, but why my paper?

So I would have to say, no.

These people do not have the right to insult, to offend, to humiliate survivors and children of survivors to whom some memories are still burdening wounds.

- Not to speak of destroying history itself.

- Oh, what they are doing is...

I don't think they could do that because I don't think the Holocaust would be forgotten.

We have amassed so many documents, so many pictures.

I mean, photographs and the evidence from all sides is there to remain for all time to come.

However, it is the cheapening, the trivialization, and the inhumanity today, which they demonstrate in telling children of survivors and their parents, look, your parents didn't suffer, they told lies.

Now why should I, if I was a child of survivors why should I accept that, to say that my parents lie to me?

- Elie, this question's a little bit tacky.

I feel it's very blunt, but it's something I'm very curious about.

I feel it's very well-documented, as you said, everything that happened to the Jews during the war, but there are also a lot of other terrible things happening today.

For example, during the war, there was a boatload of Jews who were turned away down in Florida.

And today you have the Haitians who are trying to come here and being turned away.

I do feel there's more empathy maybe for the Jewish community than the black community.

I may be wrong.

What I'd really like to know is, do you think that there's more discrimination against Jews than other groups, or is it simply that Jews articulate the problem better?

- One, I believe one should never compare anything to that tragedy, but I may use it as a reference.

If I do use it as a reference point, that I would say that anyone who hears about it, who studies it, will become more sensitive to other people.

Now, I, for instance, have written and signed petitions and sent letters in order to allow the Haitian refugees to remain here.

Even during the sanctuary movement I was for the sanctuary movement because I believe that even those refugees who came here because of economic reasons deserve to be here because we are a generous country, a hospitable nation.

We you should accept people simply if they need to find a home.

A parent who cannot feed his sons, a mother who cannot feed her children, their human rights are violated, and therefore I will accept them.

However, you must understand that during those years, the Jewish people were alone.

So terribly alone, no other people has ever been as alone as that people has been.

Abandoned by friends, allies, and perhaps by God himself.

So therefore we are more sensitive to it because it happened to an entire people and we almost lost the war.

In Europe surely we did, because we lost 6 million men, women, and children.

However, I would never say that because of that you should not think of other tragedies.

There are tragedies, and we must try to alleviate them.

But not, we should never compare them.

- Historians who have studied the subject such as Cheikh Anta Diop and WEB DuBois have estimated that the African Holocaust had claimed as many as between 60 million and 100 million lives over the course of the centuries that it occurred.

In as much as this African Holocaust and slave trade were critical to the economic development of many European nations, such as Britain and France and Portugal and Germany and Holland and Spain, is it unreasonable in your view, the demand by African leaders and many African-American leaders now that these countries have a continuing moral, and compelling moral, obligation to make whole the damage they have done.

- I don't know; I wouldn't really dare to enter this discussion because it will hurt you.

I don't want to hurt anybody.

You speak about the African Holocaust, I have to study it, I think ,in a deeper way to accept, if I do accept, your analogy.

But there was a tragedy, no doubt, catastrophe, no doubt, an injustice on on a cosmic scale, no doubt.

What should be done with it?

I don't know about the past.

What I do know now is those nations, because they are after all sovereign people, every human being is a sovereign person, irrespective of the color, or the ethnic origin, or religious creed, but we must help them.

I do feel that we must help the African nations.

Whether it should be related to what happened before or not, I don't know, not now, I have to think about it.

- One of the things I've read in your work is that you worry about survivors like yourself dying off, your generation going away, and then there will be no more survivors of this experience.

What gives you hope that your legacy will be carried on and will not be forgotten?

- Our children, we have extraordinary children.

I say "we" meaning all the survivors that I know, extraordinary.

They became philanthropists in the best sense of the word and the noblest sense of the word, meaning they love humanity.

They could do anything.

They had the right to do anything.

But they chose to help humankind.

Number one, number two, as I told you earlier there is now such a [indecipherable] of documents, into hundreds of thousands, that later on anyone who will want to know will know where to turn to find those documents, to find if not the truth, the truth was burdened together with the people then and there, but at least the deliberation of that voice and the fragment and reflection of that truth.

- Elie, can I ask you something about, what's perceived by many to be the rise, the renewed rise of antisemitism, of hostility of, and hatred towards Jews in America?

It seems that there was a long, if you will, golden period, the end of the Second World War into the mid seventies where antisemitism was very muted.

Suddenly, here in 1991 and 1992, we see phenomena ranging from a presidential candidate like Pat Buchanan, another presidential candidate like David Duke a pogrom in a community like Crown Heights, the first time in the Western world that a Jew was killed because he was a Jew.

Where do you think the period of sensitivity came to an end, and what do you think accounts for the willingness anew to engage in anti-Semitism?

What emboldens a Pat Buchanan?

Bill Buckley thinks that 10 years ago Pat Buchanan wouldn't have said these things, that something changed; what changed?

- Until maybe 10 years ago or 15 years ago we were shielded by the memory of the tragedy.

And anti-Semite, didn't dare say what he or she thought about the Jews because he or she didn't want to be on the same side, the same camp with an Eichmann.

And it was clear then that anti-Semitism led to Auschwitz.

That is the logical conclusion.

Then unfortunately, I don't know how to explain it.

The tragedy has become a subject for civilization and the moment that happened, the shield was gone.

The moment you can say that, whatever you want to say about it you may say because of who knows what, or commercial reasons, or psychological reasons, it's a matter for psychiatrists and politicians; the moment it became a vehicle to be used for any purpose, then the effect was gone and the shield is therefore no longer here.

And... and Israel.

Israel, I think, has been for my people, for your people, for our people, the central point in our life, the central source of consolation, and perhaps of hope in the life of my generation and yours.

Then Israel, because of the political or geopolitical situation in the Middle East, has provoked anger in some quarters.

And that anger, the moment it was served against after all 3 million Jews in Israel, the why 3 million there then why not the others as well.

So first of all, they attack Israel, and then they attack those who love Israel, And those who are friends of those who love Israel.

The limits were gone, the frontiers were abolished.

- Is there a common bond you think, between, and I would like to know what you think of it, how you define that, between people such as yourself who have come out of an awful experience that is psychologically marking and almost permanent in your life.

And people, say, within the native American community here, who contest exactly the same thing has been done to them.

African-Americans who say in this country, Frederick Douglass had written that he estimated as many as 10 million Africans in America were were killed during the course of slavery.

What kind of obligation, or is there an obligation, to make known that holocausts of any type are repugnant, that we must continually put them before the people internationally, that there must be speaking out of all, whether it's in Afghanistan, whether it's in Tibet or China or wherever.

What duty does a person, a survivor of the Holocaust?

I mean, I know you have personally been very very vocal on the international level.

But of all people within the same circumstance.

- On one hand, we have no duties at all.

I could very well say, look, I paid my dues.

I don't need anymore, I paid my dues.

Again, what I said earlier, about the the philanthropy of the survivors, the humanity of these people, if you check a little bit you will see, all the tragedies that you mentioned I spoke up against, because I feel that I speak about the Jewish tragedy, because I am a Jew.

Actually I am trying to prevent other tragedies against other people.

Not similar, because again I don't like to compare.

However, I do believe that when I speak as a Jew, then those who are not Jewish have learned something.

How to speak about their own past, their own experience.

But I cannot ignore to my Jewishness.

I don't even want to transcend it.

What I do want is within that particularism is to find a universal application, just as from within in my Jewishness.

I can apply and imply anything that is not Jewish simply because what is human should be emphasized.

- Mr. Wiesel, and you have spoken up.

You've also spoken up for the other victims of the Holocaust.

You've spoken out for gay and lesbian rights at the Human Rights Campaign Fund, I've heard you mention that in your speech before the president.

What kinds of reactions do you get from other survivors when you do talk about the other survivors of the thing, do you ever get bad reactions from that?

- Everybody gets a bad reactions to it.

I would be frightened if I only got praised.

But mostly, most people, most survivors, understand it.

Of course they understand because what do we want, really?

We want the memory to remain, but not because we believe that the dead should be protected; it's too late for the dead.

We are now speaking clearly about the future of our children, about their children.

Speaking for the whole world, the whole world has become a small planet.

I would almost say a ghetto, the world has become a ghetto.

And whatever will happen to one community in that ghetto will affect all the other communities.

- Along that line, what is happening in terms of, in your mind, in terms of Jewish-black relations, which we always thought were very strong ties, but it seems there's so much animosity now.

- It's a source of anguish and distress.

But I know of some projects, and I'm involved at least in one with people from both communities trying to do something about it and we meet regularly, we have worked out projects that I hope within a year you will hear about the results.

- I'm gonna ask a very simple question but I imagine the answer would not be.

But you have devoted the last couple of years, several of the last couple years, to the study of hate.

Have you found out yet what makes people hate?

- Yes.

Religious fanaticism, envy jealousy, bigotry.

But what I also found out is that children begin to hate only at the age of three, which means they are learning how to hate.

And since they learned how to hate, I think we can also teach them how not to hate.

So it is an optimistic evaluation, really, of hate.

However, to give you the full genesis, I don't know the texture of hate, really.

Because if you take A plus B plus C, do you get hate?

I've been working on it for the last four, five, or six years, having conferences with the heads of States, and the religious movements, and the professors of psychology.

People don't really know exactly the answer.

- Elie Wiesel, thank you for joining us tonight.

And if it's not too editorial, thank you for your life's work, what you've done.

- [Elie] Thank you.

Remember if you have a comment about one of the issues that we've discussed on tonight's Informed Sources, we'd like to hear it.

Write or fax us: Thirteen WNET, New York, New York, 10019.

Or you can send us a fax at [212] 582-3297.

That's it for tonight's Informed Sources.

Join us next Thursday night at 8:30.

I'm Andy Humm, good night.

And stay tuned for the Lodz Ghetto.

[dramatic music] - [Narrator] Informed Sources was made possible by the Members of Thirteen.