Can their Voices Go Unheard?

IN 1996, Elie Wiesel confided in a letter he sent to me on a subject related to the American attitude toward postwar refugees: “Even among the best, very few liked the Jews.” It took me a few years of ar- duous research work to fully under- stand the meaning of that assertion to which I soon tried to find limits. Resorting to history, I came across several occurrences of hostility toward the Jews in the American refuge of the oppressed, although, of course, no event could compare with the methodical and massive destruction of European Jews by the Nazis during World War II.