The last question at the \u201cOn the Issues with Mike Gousha\u201d program at Marquette Law School on Thursday with Judge Thomas Buergenthal went to a retired Milwaukee school teacher who painted a gloomy picture of the state of the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cHumanity is having a real problem,\u201d she said. \u201cThese are horrible times right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buergenthal answered in a positive fashion: \u201cYou\u2019re too pessimistic,\u201d he said. \u201cThings are happening. They\u2019re not happening as fast as you and I would like it to happen. There are some bad things happening too. But overall, we are moving slowly, too slowly.\u201d He mentioned efforts by the United Nations and regional human rights organizations around the world that he thought were having positive impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do more harm to these developments if we think they\u2019re not working.\u201d He said. \u201cSo the trick is to stay with it.\u201c<\/p>\n
Buergenthal has stayed with it for decades. He is an authority on international and human rights law and one of the youngest Holocaust survivors. He is an emeritus professor of law at George Washington Law School and a former judge of the International Court of Justice at the Hague \u2013 among many distinctions and accomplishments. And he is author or co-author of numerous books, including a memoir, A Lucky Child,<\/em> about surviving Auschwitz as a child. In his early 80s, he is, in fact, one of the youngest survivors of the notorious Nazi concentration camp.<\/p>\n In the one hour session, co-sponsored by the Women\u2019s Philanthropy of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and the Edie Adelman Political Awareness Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation, Buergenthal took a gentle and generally upbeat approach to describing his life, including the impact of the Holocaust. His father died in the camps and Buergenthal was separated from his mother. She found him in an orphanage in December 1946, more than a year and half after World War II ended.<\/p>\n \u201cI probably sound like someone who always lives with what hits him, and that\u2019s true,\u201d Buergenthal said, referring to his resiliency in the face of severe circumstances in life.<\/p>\n He said there is a connection between his personal story and his selection of human rights law as a career. If there had been institutions like international courts in early 1930s, they would have saved \u00a0many people, he believes.<\/p>\n And courts, such as the International Court at the Hague are accomplishing more than many people say. They aren\u2019t meeting the need for human rights enforcement in the world, but they deserve support.<\/p>\n Gousha asked Buergenthal if the international community should be doing more about human suffering in Syria now. Yes, he said, but he pointed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel as someone showing the best of what a nation can do on refugee issues. Germany has accepted about a million refuges.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just need a few Merkels. . . . Governments are governments, politicians are politicians, one should never be surprised. . . .\u00a0 We can\u2019t be too optimistic because we\u2019re going to be disappointed,\u201d he said. \u00a0\u201cYou can\u2019t see the children without feeling like we have to do something, and the only one that has really done anything is Germany.\u201d He pointed to Hungary, which has been resisting immigrants, as a contrast.<\/p>\n But you can\u2019t give up hope even if we see things happening that are terrible, he said. The world needs more truth commissions, more international tribunals, and more heroic leaders.<\/p>\n But as positive as Buergenthal\u2019s tone was, it was certainly not without sadness. An audience member asked him if he was an only child. His answer was yes, but as the Jewish ghetto where he was a child was being broken apart by the Nazis, two neighbors each pressed a child onto Buergenthal\u2019s mother as she was about to flee and told her to save them. The children became like a brother and sister to him, he said. They did not survive the \u201cselections\u201d in the concentration camps. And Buergenthal teared up as he spoke, more than 70 years later.<\/p>\n