My friend Jean-Claude Kuperminc asked me to write a few words about Nahum Goldmann, whom my husband and I knew well.

My name is Bettina. I am a writer living in Paris. I have not always lived in Paris, nor been an old lady, but a child born in Berlin in the nineteen twenties of the twentieth century. A very fortunate child since I not only survived, but was not hurt in the years in which one and a half million Jewish children were killed and many more lost their parents or were separated from them and had to be hidden to escape deportation.

Nahum Goldmann was one of those who had foreseen the tragedy – not in its amplitude of course – and had alerted the communities wherever he could. Even during the war, he never ceased trying to save lives. I think that he would have loved to be here with you today. The subject was important to him as was everything to do with education, learning.

‘The 2016 Nahum Goldmann fellowship. Program’. The date would have made him say with a smile: sorry, as if he had been held up in a traffic jam – I was born a little too early, since I had to be present in that terrible twentieth century. It was a big job as you know. But Jean-Claude will be with you and I know that he will speak about what he and I believe in as we share the same commitment to Jewish culture and love of books.

Books are part of our identity. We are the people of THE BOOK, the Bible. In our long history, the years in the diaspora have made us the people of BOOKS since we had to live in lands of other cultures, read and express ourselves in different languages while remaining faithful to our laws, our values and we of course acquired new skills. And laughter. Whatever the circumstances, Nahum Goldmann loved sharing a joke. I remember meetings in which he started by saying that he did not know exactly what he would speak about, only what he would not speak about. Here, today it would have been Mister Trump and his wall, Maduro and Madame Rousseff. He would add whatever name or subject in the news that day. He was extremely well informed and laughter was his favorite applause. Laughter is of course a very topical subject today with fanatics killing those who laugh, and organizing contests of Shoah cartoons: jokes about the tragedy of the Jewish people. Self deprecation is the essence of the very different Jewish humour.

Nahum Goldmann was a master of this humour. He had a huge stock of Jewish jokes and was always happy to add a new one that would become part of his public meetings. Fortunately he was also very funny at home. He enjoyed discussions in public, but did not speak much in private. Most of his free time he spent reading – history, philosophy, a vast range of subjects, including the novels of the day, and always the classics in several languages. He loved the theater, in Paris re-reading in the afternoon the play he was going to see in the evening.

Music was important to him. He never missed a concert of Isaac Stern or Fischer-Dieskau. I remember our joining him and Alice, his wife, at the Grange du Meslay- Richter Festival to hear the then young Israeli violinist Pinhas Zuckerman. When a few years later the other great Israeli violinist Yitzhak Perlman was revealed to the public, Zuckerman changed instruments and became a great viola player and conductor.

Nahum Goldmann was proud of his friendship with Isaac Stern who kept him informed of the dates of his concert tours. He talked about musicians, rarely about great political figures whom he also knew well. The exception was Pierre Mendès France whom he admired, and for whom he had a genuine affection. They were very different but shared ideas, ideals. Both were deeply involved in endeavours to broker an Arab-Israeli peace process and met with Sadat. Their last action together was after the invasion of Lebanon in July 1982, an appeal for an Israeli withdrawal.

Nahum Goldmann died shortly after, August 29 saw Mendès France at the Senate ceremony in honour of Nahum Goldmann on October 13. He died five days later, October 18.

Small talk bored him. He liked to eat, served it quickly so that he could leave the table and relax with a book, or listen to music in the living room while we went on chatting with Alice until it was time for Jacques to drive them home. When we left them he thanked with that wonderful smile. The smile of a man who expressed himself so well with words: his way of using everything to reach out to the other. That is perhaps one of his secrets, his relationship to the o t h e r even in private life. And in politics, always the will to listen to the other’s point of view, to discuss, to try to understand.

Everything was on the table. Respect of the sanctity of life was the only restriction. The historic event of Jewish survival as a people was all important, but the memory of the slaughter, the suffering of individuals throughout the ages was ever present and with it, the will to prevent a future similar fate. He would perhaps have talked to you about this, as the future of one part of the Jewish people is in your hands, the diaspora, all important to the existence of Israel. The interaction of Israel and the diaspora was a major preoccupation for Nahum Goldmann. It will be so also for you especially in a world of globalization and new technologies. Nahum Goldmann used his knowledge of Jewish history and his personal equation of imagination, power of persuasion and love of the Jewish people for leading in the second part of the twentieth century the programs of reconstruction of the Jewish institutions that had been destroyed in its first part, as well as inventing new ones. Those of you who will choose to pursue this work in the twenty-first century, will also draw on your knowledge of Jewish history and the different personal equations of each one of you. I think that he would have insisted on the value of your individual talents, loves, ambitions and courage.