- I'm Bruce Hoffman, I'm a professor here,
and also the chairman of
the executive committee
of the Center for Jewish Civilization,
it is very highly sponsored
involved this gathering,
reception, which follows, on
behalf of the Laqueur family,
Walter's dog, Shelev,who
has come from Israel,
specially for this event,
and his widow, Susi,
as well as the center
for Jewish civilization
I welcome all of you to this remembrance
of a very dear friend,
mentor, colleague, Walter.
It will be a necessarily brief service
since this day is in high demand
and we must vacate within this hour.
I will say a few words now about Walter,
followed by his editor, literary agent,
and long time friend, Joseph Spieler.
And then by Edward Luttwak,
a close friend and colleague
of Walter's for decades.
We will then move to a reception
in the Arrupe Residence Hall,
just a short walk from here.
After the
testimonials conclude,
I'll give you directions.
It's not very far, at all
and we'll have a reception.
I'll also have the opportunity
for anyone else to say
something about Walter.
Walter once observed that only pessimists
survived the holocaust.
Optimists believed that Hitler
could either be controlled
or that common sense and
decency would somehow
eventually prevail.
Fittingly perhaps, his
penultimate book was titled
Reflections Of A Veteran Pessimist.
Having spent some of my formative years
in a particularly nasty
and brutal dictatorship,
immunized me against
certain facile optimism
frequently found in the United States,
Walter explained.
But an overreaction had
also to be resisted.
Not every tin-pot authoritarian
leader is a Hitler
And not every dangerous
trend or development
leads to a cosmic disaster.
He's therefore, among
the last of a generation
that grew up in abject
sorrow but nonetheless
tried to build a better world.
Pessimism, coupled with
a predilection to avoid
the over-exaggeration of threats,
were traits that made Walter
among the finest analysts
and historians of terrorism-
the subject of his final book,
The Future of Terrorism, ISIS, Al-Qaeda,
and the Alt-Right, published shortly after
Walter's 97th birthday.
His death would be sufficiently
devastating to the field
of terrorism studies alone.
It is all the more
incomprehensible when one realizes
that Walter wrote seminal
works on Soviet and Russian
politics and history as well as on Europe
and the Middle East, communism,
fascism, intelligence,
in addition to the Holocaust,
Zionism, and anti-Semitism.
A particularly prescient example
of Walter's incisive analysis
may be found in Black Hundred,
his book on Russia's extreme
right, published in 1993.
Let us summarize the case
of the Russian nationalist,
he wrote.
Three centuries of Russian
history were undone
in a few days in August,
1991, as the result
of the weakness of the center.
To save the remnant,
a spiritual as well as
political renaissance is needed,
a return to the national
and religious values
of the Russian people.
It is pointless to embrace Western values
and to copy Western institutions.
The watershed, Walter astutely explained
is not between left and right,
but between those who believe in freedom
and humanistic values
in a state ruled by law,
and those who reject these
values with contempt.
His 2015 book, Putinism, not surprisingly,
was published to laudatory reviews
two decades later.
Walter was fluent in at
least half a dozen languages,
wrote or edited more than
fifty books that were
published in English and
three times that figure
if one includes foreign language editions.
He held academic appointments
at Harvard, Brandeis,
Chicago, Johns Hopkins,
Tel Aviv, and Georgetown
universities but himself never obtained a
university degree.
Hitler's rise to power
had disrupted an otherwise
halcyon childhood as an
only child growing up
in his beloved Breslau, Germany.
I once spent a lonely
week in the Sahara desert,
Walter began the memoir of his youth,
Thurday's Child Has Far To Go,
and during a long afternoon
walk, spotted on the horizon
a solitary wanderer.
As he came nearer I saw
that he was an acquaintance
whom I had not seen for years.
I have met friends and relations
in many unlikely places.
But in Breslau, the city of my birth-
where I had once been surrounded
by a fairly large family
and many acquaintances,
when I later returned
there was not a single soul known to me.
The world I had known as
a boy no longer existed,
and as I tried to remember
the people I had known
when I was 16, I realized
that most of them
had died a violent death.
Some were killed in the
ruins of Stalingrad,
others in Auschwitz, some
in 1948 in the battles
for Palestine.
Through the generosity of an uncle,
who sponsored him as a student intent on
pursuing a career in
medicine at the then-newly
founded Hebrew University in Jerusalem,
Walter made his way alone as a 17 year old
to British-ruled Palestine.
He thereby avoided the
horrific fate that befell
his parents and the six million other Jews
who perished during the Holocaust.
Once in Palestine, Walter
instead preferred the life
of an agricultural laborer
to university study.
He was a mounted auxiliary
policeman for a time
before finding his metier
in 1944 as a journalist.
Walter remarkably seemed
always to be at the center
of the defining events of his time.
The tearful farewell he bade his parents
at the Breslau rail station 80 years ago
was emblematic of the fate of thousands
of other young German-Jewish
children for whom
survival meant leaving parents most would
never see again.
Walter subsequently wrote
about this unique demographic
in his book, Generation Exodus.
He was a street away from
Jerusalem's King David Hotel
in July 1946, when his old
and dear friend from Breslau,
Irgun Zvai Le'umi, whose
was with his wife Elsa
who is among us today,
when Jewish terrorists
famously blew it up.
A few years later, Walter
was among the few outsiders
allowed to travel to the Soviet Union
and moreover to remote
corners of the Caucasus.
He taught at Harvard where luminaries
such as Henry Kissinger, Stanley Hoffmann,
and Zbigniew Brzezinski
were his colleagues.
Walter's life-long friends
from their childhood in Breslau
were the fellow distinguished
historians Guenter Lewey
and Abraham Ascher.
Walter became the director of both
the Wiener Library and
Institute of Contemporary
History in London where
together with another
German-Jewish emigre, George Mosse,
he founded and was co-editor
of the Journal of Contemporary History.
Walter was also the
founding editor of Survey,
an important Cold War-era journal
focusing on the Soviet Union.
But for half his remarkable life,
Walter lived in Washington D.C.
He joined what was then
the Georgetown Center
for Strategic and International Studies
and eventually became the chairman of its
International Research Council.
Walter was also appointed
university professor
at Georgetown in 1976,
where he taught until
his retirement in 1988--
thus accounting for the longest continuous
academic appointment Walter held.
He was very proud to have
taught one of the first
undergraduate courses on
terrorism ever offered
by a university.
Walter was also a typical Washingtonian.
A polymath born elsewhere,
who wandered far and wide
and had lived in a variety
of places before settling here.
He had the restless,
probing, and inquisitive mind
one encounters among this
city's smartest denizens.
In Walter, equal parts
skepticism and wonderment
made him the most appealing
of conference speakers,
dinner guests, mentors,
teachers, and friends.
Walter derived his greatest satisfaction
from the many interactions
and close relationships
that he hugely enjoyed with persons
decades younger than him.
These continued right up until his death.
A cadre of dedicated
young research assistants
faithfully arrived at his apartment daily-
in more recent years as
scribes and collaborators
because Walter's declining
health prevented him
from sitting at a desk and eventually
typing on a keyboard.
Writing was, indeed, as
intrinsic to Walter's existence,
as breathing. When fell
yet more ill two years
before his passing, Walter
told me that as long
as he could write, craft
commentary, review books,
and transform research into prose,
he felt productive
And moreover, he said
he was able to stave off
any depression about his
condition now, foreseeable death.
Perhaps because he grew
up in a place at a time
when free and open expression
was cruelly suppressed,
where books were routinely
banned and burned,
and any voicing of truth or demands for
justice were silenced,
Walter retained a life-long
commitment to democracy
and Western liberal values, as well as
to communicating his
thoughts and knowledge
to vast audiences, whether
in books, newspaper columns,
op-eds, or book reviews.
Walter was an immensely
generous and kind friend,
mentor, and teacher to
generations of students,
scholars, policymakers,
diplomats, journalists,
and countless others.
His death is a loss of truly
incomprehensible dimensions.
A great man, a friend wrote
to me to express his sadness
at Walter's passing.
We could use his mind now more than ever.
Thank you very much.
- Hi. I'm Joe Spieler,
Walter's literary agent
friend,
and mentee in many ways.
Walter could talk, write about more things
than I have names for.
So I'm gonna talk about a few things
that I remember about Walter,
but I'll probably talk about him
with a lot less coherence than he could.
This, some of you may not be able to see,
is a little bear,
crafted by a Native American,
and given to Walter by him.
This bear
Walter kept with him
when he read, when he thought,
when, I suppose,
not that I thought
Walter ever did nothing.
But when his mind was idling
he would keep this bear in his hand,
stroke it, caress it,
as a kind of talisman.
As Susi pointed out to me that
the bear had been broken
and been reglued.
Now, I'm much more of a sentimentalist
than Walter ever was,
but it seemed to me
that this little bear
with a reglued head
symbolized, at least for me,
Walter's own life
which
in fact,
was shattered in ways
that until recently
were very hard to comprehend.
But, which now
seem to echo
in the present day.
And Walter
glued himself back together
to our enormous enrichment
and I don't think he'd be
happy for me to say this
but that's what I think this bear
represented to him.
Even if he wouldn't know it
or acknowledge it.
And now, I'm going to go to
my notes.
I first met Walter some forty years ago.
And to this day, when I think
to my own dying day,
I'll never know why
he thought, well,
this guy should be my favorite agent
and maybe I'll befriend him.
It was as great a gift
as I have ever received in my life.
And in that sense
it will probably be unmatched.
I found Walter gentle
as Bruce pointed out,
immensely interested,
keenly interested
in the lives of others,
and genuinely stubborn.
Now, Walter did publish
many, many books.
But in some sense, it was,
because of who he was,
and because of his own moral values,
he was somewhat a prophet without honor
in the United States and also in England.
I know his books were
published here and in England,
it became, after a while,
harder to interest editors
in publishing Walter.
And one day I said, Why?
And they said, one guy said,
Well, he writes too much.
I mean, can't he just
focus on one book at a time
and polish them?
And because I was
more intelligent than I am now
I called Walter
and I said, you know what Walter?
This is what this so and so editor said.
He said you write too many books
and then he wished you
would polish your books
and maybe write fewer.
And there was a pause
and then I heard Walter say,
in his wonderful soft,
middle European accent,
he said, I could spend time
to polish my books,
but I have so much to say
I have so much I want to write about
I would rather write more books,
less polished than fewer.
And in a sense that was Walter,
as Bruce pointed out,
the breadth of his interests,
the depth of his knowledge
which was encyclopedic
is unmatched in our time
And another reason that Walter,
perhaps
wasn't given a more popular accolade by
the greater culture
is that he was
left of center
when it came to values
to taking care of each other.
A state that looked after its citizens.
He was, in a sense, a cold war hero
when it came to the Soviet Union.
And for a long time, that was
politically incorrect.
And I think Walter paid a price
for his deep understanding and for his
resolute approach to what he saw
and to the history he explored.
I think that will change now.
And I think that Walter's
star will never dim
and within the years
to come rise very high,
and properly so.
I'd like to, even though he's not here,
thank Thomas Dunne and Thomas Dunne books,
he published Walter's last four books
including the Future of Terrorism
which Walter wrote with Christopher Wall.
Sometimes publishers, (mumbles)
it's an act of commercial guts
Walter hated exaggeration
and he would probably
be unhappy with me but
I'm gonna say some names
Herodotus (mumbles)
I think these are Walter's
historic, historian
companions and forebearers.
And I think it would be justified
to suggest
that he would be placed in their pantheon.
I am gonna finish with
doing something Walter
would not approve of
but when you're somebody's agent, you can
Walter loved classical composer, as do I
but I have a particular tropism
for Gustav Mahler
And as I was thinking about speaking here
this one stanza from Mahler's song
Des Knaben Wunderhorn
kept insinuating itself into my head.
So I'm just going to read it in German
Susi please forgive me.
The last stanza.
It's about a drummer boy
who is meeting his fate
and he's saying farewell.
And I'm going to use the
idea of a drummer boy
because Walter, more than
once, in his writing to me
personally, and in our
many many conversations
of fulfillment would use the word tosse
Now tosse is a bell and
Walter has a wonderful bell
in his house
but a drummer boy is not so far removed
in a sense that a drummer
others (mumbles)
the march of something important.
So, the drummer boy.
Gute nacht.
Ihr Offizier'
Korporal und Grenadier
Ich schrei mit lauter Stimm
Von euch ich Urlaub nimm.
Gute Nacht. Gute Nacht.
Thank you.
- So, everything you heard
from the previous speakers
is correct. They didn't say
anything that is not correct.
However, I totally,
this is not what Walter
was currently at all.
My wife who is here, somewhere
and I visited him until recently.
I think my wife and I visited
just a few days before he died.
Now why did we visit him?
It wasn't out of a sense of duty.
My wife is the kind of
person with a sense of duty,
I do not.
I visited him because he was great fun.
He was always fun. He
was always interesting.
He always had great stories to tell,
about important things,
but also interesting.
And of course he had a
great sense of humor,
a certain specific sense of humor,
which is the kind of
gentle irony type of humor
the kind of humor that makes you feel good
and bad things that's not negative.
His first wife, Melanie, who sits there,
had the exactly the same sense of humor.
She would tell stories, lots of stories
to tell because her grandfather was a
medical officer in the first World War
and had all types of
adventures and was her father.
And she also is here,
Susi, who is currently his
second wife, had the same
exact gentle ironical
sense of humor and it meant
he was always pleasant
to go see. And Susie was
also dispensed alcoholic
beverages (crowd laughs)
but the fact is my wife
and I visited Walter
because it was fun, until the last days.
He, as you all know, chronologically
he remained productive
and to my annoyance, his
memory was entirely perfect
I would have discussions
about long-forgotten things
and he would remember exact names
and the dates exactly accurate which is
somewhat irritating to me as my brain
went to sleep and I
forget most of the time.
But anyway, I first met him in 1967,
because I was brought to him.
At that time, he was the fellow
who was running,
the Gilderhorn Institute,
he was associated with this General,
which was the principle
surveyor of information
about the Soviet Union.
And the first thing I
noticed about him at the time
would be something that
we have in fact today,
this fellow had written a hundred books
about the subject, was the
exact opposite of being
superficial.
I original was brought to him because
he wanted to write a
book about the 1967 war.
This was in 1967.
I had just come back from Israel,
actually had been fighting up north,
and then, so Walter asked
me the following question
Was the machine gun belt fed
or did you have a magazine?
Was it a magazine fed
machine gun or belt fed
machine gun?
And he asked hundreds of detail questions.
I was puzzled by this
because he was supposed to be
a conceptualizer or so,
and he was wanting to know
exactly what the weapon was
and what the suppression was.
Also his interest in weapons was curious.
You could associate somebody like him
he was already an established figure.
He had, years before,
written this book called
Communism in Russia,
Communism and Nationalism
in the Middle East, which
has put him on the map
for all kinds of people
including spies everywhere
and stuff like that.
And he wasn't stopping here, the (mumbles)
this and that, and there he was interested
in weapons, I found that strange.
It was years later, and this is a note
for anybody here who is
interested in writing
a biography, is this fellow
wrote two autobiographies,
failed to write an (mumbles)
which it didn't print.
And he was in Jerusalem
siege in Jerusalem,
and he was living somewhere
near (mumbles) I suppose
and overlooking an area called (mumbles)
and the war, that's where
the war was, actually there.
And the woman who lived
in the other apartment
who knew him as a journalist,
looked out one night
in the moonlight and saw
somebody snaking his way
like I said, like a snake,
and with a hand gun,
a pistol in his hand.
And he was going over and
crawling over the wall
like a snake, 'cause
there was, apparently,
somebody sniping at the building,
and so Walter crawled with a handgun
was snaking his way over these walls
who was taking pot shots at the building.
So the woman who wrote this (mumbles)
I discovered this a few years later
actually trying to write a book
about something about a number of things
because I got to know Walter
because I was supposed
to be working with him
on a book called 1967 War,
which I failed to deliver my part in.
Which he published, which
is a very good book.
Which has done extremely well.
I have subsequently failed
to publish another book
which Speiler, I have a
long sequence of failures,
I've never published anything with Walter.
He was much too much fun to be with.
So future battle with
Walter will have to uncover
the things that his fellow
wrote two autobiographies
accurately failed to mention
and the other thing uncovered was
the fellow was a lot of fun.
He was fun.
First of all, he was always
interested in something.
Very intensely interested which filled him
with life and sentiment
and this is leading to the problem that
Josh Speiler mentioned
and the second thing was he always
had wonderful people with him.
Melanie, his first wife,
she was a great woman.
Then they had questions and contributions
Susie, his second wife,
enabled him to function
at 98 percent effectiveness.
Even as he declined in mobility.
He was a lucky person in the people
he had around him, he knew it.
He would give them optimism.
Now, the other thing about superficiality
in somebody who writes so many books.
When I first met him in 1967
I was not especially interested
in the cold war at all.
I think like his abstract wars,
far away, I like the
ones where you get a gun
and shoot somebody.
Much more satisfactory.
But he was talking about the Soviet Union
and you couldn't help but listen.
At that time, in 1967, we
were deep in the cold war
and a lot of people were writing about
the Soviet Union and some of them had been
to the Soviet Union.
Being gone to the Soviet Union,
an experience several people had,
meant that you went to Moscow,
and you saw a certain number
of streets and buildings
and perhaps you met a
certain number of people.
Then of course, you went to Leningrad
and the culture is so (mumbles)
a you walk down the prospect
and you saw a number of people.
But when Walter went
and then was mentioned by Bruce,
he did not go to Moscow and Leningrad.
Because of knowing a current family
that found refuge in
what was the Soviet Union
he went and visited his relatives.
And of course he was
communicating with his relatives
and the second generation thereof.
And where were they?
They were in middle of (mumbles)
The middle of (mumbles), so cold,(mumbles)
which was the last part of Russia.
But the effect of this was,
that everybody else's
point of view was this
paper mache of
Moscow then St. Petersburg.
Here, they took a real (mumbles).
He actually visited the
real existing Soviet Union
because he would cross and take the train,
go there and arrive in this
remote, provincial town
and therefore he had a sense of reality
of what the Soviet Union really was.
And this meant that when he talked about
the Soviet Union, he had
a level of authenticity,
from his simple yet directness which was
typical of Walter, the man who supposedly
necessary superficial 'cause he covers
so many areas. In reality was extremely
not superficial, was very specific
and was able to build his concepts from
individual tiny pieces.
And he was very good,
in the very last book
(mumbles) sitting right here,
it was a collection of essays
and the biggest one
was mentioned Putinism.
Putinism, in this country,
his literary agent
could tell you how many copies he's sold
I would not.
But Putinism was very successful in Italy,
in Germany, and several other
countries it encountered.
When I actually read the book,
I discovered that Walter
was the only person
who had made the effort to find out
where this Putin, former
deputy mayor of Leningrad
and St. Petersburg, obviously former KGB.
Where did this guy steal his ideas from?
As you know, all (mumbles)
they actually get their ideas
from long-forgotten scribblers.
And he, Walter, wanted
to look for these long-
forgotten scribblers.
And the book is highly
interesting because it tells you
you know, where his ideas are from .
I happen to know Putin personally.
I knew him when he was mayor of Leningrad
and I saw him a couple years ago.
And when Putin actually speaks,
he has an intellectual construct.
I've never seen one article about Putin
in any press that mention
what this construct was,
and that is what this book revealed.
That is why serious people
discovered in this book,
details, facts and
backgrounds that go way past
commonplaces and simple things
that people say about him.
So, this Walter, (mumbles)
everything you heard them say is true
and I will surely find there
is another Walter out there
especially the Walter that
was so much fun to be with.
Thank you.
- There's an opportunity,
should anyone wish to contribute
we're a little bit less
pressed for time in this venue
than we were in Gaston Hall.
So if anybody'd like to say a few words,
I know Dr. Professor Walter
Rozh, please step up.
- Thank you.
I wanted to do something very contemporary
which is read you an email.
It's from a gentleman
named Walter Laqueur.
Sent to me November of 2017.
I could have read one of many
in which I could make my point.
He writes, dear Walter,
that's my name, Walter.
His name was Walter, his
Hebrew name was Ze'ev.
My Hebrew name is Ze'ev.
Dear Walter, my memory has gone.
All I remember is that you are Walter one.
'Cause we would write to each other
and he would say Walter one
and I would say no you're
Walter one I'm Walter two.
And he would never accept that.
And he asked me the name of a
particular editor of a certain
journal 'cause he had an article
to submit when he was gone.
In the previous week he had
published three articles.
I mention this and I read this email
Because on October first,
the day after Walter's death
I found one of the saddest messages
or saddest conversations I ever had.
It was a phone call from Susi
and she said simply, Walter,
you're no longer Walter two.
You're now Walter one.
That of course, isn't true.
There will never be
another Walter, Walter one.
This is a man who
whose life summarized the last century
and the early part of this one.
But,
when he would call me Walter one,
I would protest,
I would insist two or Walter the younger
even though I'm not
exactly a spring chicken.
(crowd laughs)
But it was a joke, a running
joke we used to have.
And it always
provoked in me
a smile.
And it was the kind of smile
but not as refined
as he would have
when he would talk about
the many things he wrote about.
And the many things in
the contemporary world
it was a kind of wry,
wry humor.
That was the source of
his Walter one address.
Even though he talked
about terrible things.
He talked about, as you
heard from so many others,
he talked about
the Holocaust
weighty subjects,
Russia, Zionism,
Germany.
Terrorism, of course.
Which is how Bruce and I got to know him.
Bruce was a little kid and I
invited him to a conference
where Walter spoke.
And I always remind him that
he was a little kid at the time
and he actually did
something with the subject
and I am very proud of you Bruce
and I'm sure Walter was as well.
So
I just
feel
that
Walter's passing
was in a way the passing of a chapter.
A chapter that encompasses a great part
of the last century
And
the part of the century
that we now live in.
A period
I don't know anybody else like him.
I don't know anybody,
anywhere, in Washington,
New York, America, Europe.
I don't know anybody like him.
He was a phenomenon.
And there's nobody
actually there were efforts
Mr. Speiler, you referred to Herodotus
great historians and people
who have synoptic vision
who had that kind of scope.
He had scope, but he also had humor.
And there is
just simply
no one to replace him, and for that
I grieve
but I also celebrate.
(audience claps)
- I'm Jeffrey Irvine, I met Walter
either in the late 70s or early 1980s
and I we shared interests
in history of Germany
and history of Naziism, but
in the 1980s, our common
interests were the Cold War
in Europe and the Soviet Union
My boss at Harvard
University, David Landis,
once said to me, Jeffrey, when we're gone
no one can take our books away from us.
And I think it's important to remember
the books that Walter wrote
that they're gonna be
around for a long time.
Whether it's books that he
wrote with Richard Reitman,
or others, Walter introduced
something seemingly
obvious, but very important
here in Washington DC.
Washington DC often runs
on political scientists.
And or people educated
by political scientists
who for many decades in
this country, were told
that whatever Vladimir
Putin or Leonid Brezhnev
or take your pick, says
about how the world works
should be taken seriously,
because after all
they're politicians and we
all know that politicians
say one thing and do another.
But obviously, the fact that Walter
Walter's life was
shattered by the Holocaust
made a deep impression on
him and thousands of others
who thought about a man who said things
and did exactly what he was going to do.
And that insight, that
sometimes people say things
and do exactly what they
said they were going to
is something he introduced
into the policy world
of Washington DC.
And he introduced it to
the Defense Department
and to the State Department
and to the Intelligence
Agencies, and he introduced
it to people who had been
educated by political
scientists who had told them
that you should never pay
attention to what people say
because they never believe
anything they say in public.
It's a lot of baloney.
We're all too sophisticated
to believe anything
that anyone says in public,
because it's all rubbish.
And Walter knew that wasn't true.
And book after book after book,
he made that central point.
Whether it was about anti-Semitism,
whether it was about Al-Qaeda,
about the Soviet Union,
about the Red Army Faction, about the PLO.
When they say they're
going to do something,
as crazy as it seems, believe them.
Not every crazy person in
this world who says something
lunatic is going to do what
they, will do what they
say they will,
but it's not sophisticated to assume,
as generations of policy
makers of this country
and elsewhere have concluded
that they will never
say what they're gonna do.
And that's a fundamental
insight that is in many
of his books, many of his essays.
And last thing I want to say about Walter
and I don't want to tear up,
he was the least pretentious famous person
I'd ever met in my life.
He was a famous man.
He was a famous man when
he was 50 years old.
He enjoyed fame for half of his life.
He was famous around the world.
He knew Henry Kissinger, they
were on a first name basis.
And there were many other famous people
I don't know, he knew them
on a first name basis.
But when I went to have tea with Walter
on those many afternoons with Susi,
he was utterly unpretentious.
And there wasn't the slightest hint
that he was a very very important person
and that I was a very unimportant person.
And he made all of us here
today, and many others
feel his love, warmth,
friendship and respect.
And
He passed that on to me, I hope.
To Richard, to many of us.
And so yes,
Walter is not with us anymore
but he has set an example
that I think is alive in
many people in this room
and many other people around the world
who he touched.
So, that's what I wanted
to say. Thank you.
(applause)
- I am the aforementioned
Richard Breitman,
formerly of American University.
I had the extraordinary privilege
and extraordinary experience
of writing a book with Walter.
Which is a long story,
and I will shorten it to just two
elements.
I made
I stumbled onto a discovery which Walter
was very much interested in
and that brought us together.
And
fortunately, he offered to work with me
and I did a lot of the archival research,
and he did a lot of the
interviews and contacts
and it turned out, writing.
My previous experience with
co-authorship was mixed.
I worked with a colleague who was
a little slow
and I got impatient and
well I got paid back
for it (audience laughs)
because I couldn't keep up with Walter.
I was at least 25 years younger
and I was working very hard
and for every chapter that
I wrote, he wrote three.
And what was
more extraordinary is that
I would
raise a problem and talk about
where we might find
information in the archives
to answer a particular question
and he would nod and agree
that it was a good question
and that if we could find the material
that we would write about it.
And then he would say,
but here's what you're going to find.
(audience laughs)
And he was right.
So, he could have written
a little more speculatively
without the detailed evidence,
but I never quite understood
how he was able to reach
the judgment.
His experience, both
personal and intellectual
was so vast, that he figured out the logic
of the situation and the people
and he came to a tentative answer
and then we worked it out as best we could
with the evidence, so
I had a wonderful time
doing that book with Walter.
And it brought us close together
and we stayed in touch over the years as
Carol and I did with Susi as well.
Thank you very much.
(applause)
