God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes

Menachem Z. Rosensaft, who was born in the Displaced Persons camp of Bergen-Belsen, is general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, and teaches about the law of genocide and war crimes trials at the law schools of Columbia and Cornell Universities. Appointed to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, he is founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, senior vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants and a past president of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald, has been the preeminent voice of conscience and Holocaust memory throughout the seven decades since the end of World War II. In 1984, Professor Wiesel delivered the keynote address at the First International Conference of Children of Holocaust Survivors in New York City, and he has graciously allowed us to publish excerpts from that address as his charge to the post-Holocaust generations as we explore who we are, what we believe and what we stand for in the pages of this book.