Though others are interviewed, the bulk of this compelling and beautifully produced hour belongs to Elie Wiesel, one of humanity’s most powerful witnesses. It also speaks to the power and necessity of storytelling. Though Wiesel is well known, it is still deeply moving to hear this intimate, philosophical conversation. Particularly when Holocaust deniers, not yet shamed into silence, continue to spout fantasy, and large numbers of anti-Semitic groups flourish. The program locates us in the land of disruption and horror through three briefly limned experiences. One woman recalls arriving at Auschwitz where that day Mengele’s pointing decided their fates. She says, “I was not supposed to stay alive because I was not supposed to tell the story.” Abraham Foxman recounts being saved by his brave gentile nanny. Wiesel describes hearing about Jews being massacred from a local man who’d been deported, escaped, and returned. People didn’t want to hear it, Wiesel says: “No one believed him. I didn’t believe him, but I liked stories, so I was the only one to listen to him.” Not long after, Wiesel’s family was on its way to a camp. His mother and baby sister were immediately killed. It is, according to Wiesel, “sheer luck” that he survived.

During Josephson’s time with Wiesel he plays tape of a wonderful polish diplomat recounting a meeting with Roosevelt that prompts Wiesel's thoughts on Roosevelt having turned away the Jewish refugee-laden ship, the St. Louis, sending it back to Germany. This combination of probing questions and archival tape encourages the interview to range wide: God, faith, hatred, Israel, the late Pope, the ability of art to truly represent the horror – “It’s difficult to put in words things that were in the domain of the unspeakable.” But the unspeakable is a constant. Trials are finally being planned for some involved in Cambodia’s massacres, there are trials in the Hague, and now movies about Rwanda. Reporters bear witness to the genocide underway in Darfur. As Wiesel says: “The desire to bear witness must prevail.” This hour bears honorable witness and can be aired through April 30, 2006. Air it soon.