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Elie wiesel speech about indifference
Elie wiesel speech about indifference
Elie wiesel speech about indifference
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Many people wonder how could horrible things be aloud to happen. When people simply do not care, what can be the result? Indifference is the defining word that describes people who have a lack of interest, concern, or even sympathy. In Elie Wiesel’s “Perils of Indifference” speech, he is conveying that indifference is worse than “hate” or “anger” (Wiesel 311). In 1999, Wiesel presented a very strong emotionally spoken speech to President Clinton, other members of Congress, friends, and other officials from around the world in an attempt to connect to the audience’s emotions and to help people understand more about indifference. He delivered this speech to inspire the American people to take action in times of human suffering and violence …show more content…
Wiesel endured much horrors in the world and he has worked his entire life to help get rid of hatred and ignorance from the world. “Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from Goethe's beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald. He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again” (Wiesel 310). This quote from Wiesel’s speech is located at the very beginning of his speech because he wants to build credibility with his audience. He is showing that he had first hand experience of being in the Holocaust. It allows the audience to visualize a young Wiesel being part of the Holocaust having dealt with the pain, punishment, and starvation. Wiesel describes himself as a Jewish boy “without joy in his heart” because even though he finally had his freedom, he felt much compassion from the American soldiers. This quote lets the audience know what the speaker went through and how it affected his world view. Elie Wiesel is a good source to hear about indifference towards World War II from because he lived through it. This quote impacts the meaning of the speech because its lets the audience know a little background information on what happened to Wiesel and we know that what he is saying is truthful because he tells us about what he saw, what he was thinking, and …show more content…
One of these ways included respecting the First Amendment right of freedom of religion. Wiesel recalls how it felt to be the subject of apathy, and the reason it might have been the indifference of God that was the most troublesome to reconcile with, “We felt that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him” (Wiesel 311). He is distinctly using strong feelings and Gods name because he is reaching out to certain people in the audience who are understanding of religious beliefs. By associating himself with his religion, Wiesel took advantage of the ideological acceptance of freedom of religion; an acceptance taken seriously by his particular audience. His solid point of view and morals closes this paragraph with the strong and unforgettable statement, “Man can live far from God – not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering” (Wiesel 311). The meaning of this quote restates Wiesel’s values and strong religious beliefs. Wiesel recalls with great detail the hopelessness and desolation that people could not resist while the holocaust changed millions of people lives. Wiesel is recalling the sense of abandonment that the jews endured. The jews in the concentration camps were puzzled over the evil that the Nazi’s inflicted upon them, but what they found most difficult to accept was indifference of God. This quote can be
He experiences numerous people being hanged, beaten, and tortured daily which changes the amount of faith and trust that he has in Humanity and God. He sees faithful and courageous people crumble in front of his own eyes before their lives are stolen. Towards the end of the book, Wiesel is in the hospital at the camp for surgery on his leg and the man in the bed next to him says something that is bitterly true, “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people,” (Wiesel 81). Wiesel doesn’t argue with this, which shows that he had lost his faith in humanity, and doesn’t know who to trust. Wiesel is also naive and vulnerable at the beginning of the book. He refuses to touch the food at the ghetto and strongly considers rebelling against the officers at the Concentration camps. At the same time, he is also a strong and fairly well-fed boy who does not grow tired easily. He is shocked that the world is letting these barbarities occur in modern times. Over time, he grows accustomed to the beatings and animal-like treatment that is routine at the camps. “I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked….. Had I changed that much so fast?”
Most people have never experienced anything near as awful as what Wiesel experienced. He was one of the only people who found a way to hold onto their faith. Many made excuses not to perform rituals and eventually lost all faith. Wiesel was weakened, but remained faithful. Akiba Drumer, a friend of Wiesel, tried to convince himself that it was a test by God. However, Akiba also lost faith. “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” (Wiesel 34) This quote was from a small portion of Wiesel’s “Never Shall I Forget Poem.” It showed how Elie lost faith in God when he saw what the Nazis were doing to families and children. This quote shows how the religious part of Elie was “murdered.” Elie seemed to become foreign and isolated from his people. He seemed to be just going through the motions during his time in the camps. “In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger.” (Mauriac XXI) This quote shows how Wiesel felt like he was a stranger to the religion, community, and faith. Elie Wiesel couldn’t understand why God would hurt people, and most of all why he was spared. “And question of questions: Where was God in all this? It seemed as impossible to conceive of Auschwitz with God as to conceive of Auschwitz without God.” (Hope, Despair and Memory) This shows how Wiesel couldn’t grasp the reasoning behind God. He wanted
An estimated 11 million people died in the Holocaust. 6 million were Jews. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel tells his story as a Holocaust survivor. Throughout his book he describes the tremendous obstacles he overcame, not only himself, but with his father as well. The starvation and cruel treatment did not help while he was there. Elie makes many choices that works to his advantage. Choice plays a greater factor in surviving Auschwitz.
In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the author displays the transformation and the evolution of the average human being, through a horrible experience that he personally went through. When he is transported from one place to another, forced to leave everything behind, to go live in the ghettos, then in a horrible concentration camp. In the concentration camp Elie experiences numerous events that challenges his physical and mental limits. Some of these events made him question his faith, and whether there is such a thing as God, turning him from a conservative Jew to a reform Jew. Elie doesn’t love the concentration camps, yet he doesn’t hate it, in fact he does not care anymore. At a conference in 1986 Elie explains “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference”. (Elie Wiesel), meaning that opposite of love is not hate, it’s getting used to use to the situation, to the point that the person doesn’t care whether what is happening is right or wrong. In the novel Elie experience physical, mental, and spiritual pain, that test his humanity and morality.
Many people have given speeches like his, but the significance of this lecture was the passion he showed and still felt for this Earth, and its people, after all the horrible events that had happened to him in his life. He tells anyone who will listen to his speech to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. Wiesel vocalizes that being a bystander and allowing bad things to happen is just as bad, in his mind, as being the person who actually does those bad things. Elie Wiesel says, “In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman.” Through his speech he tries to get anyone that is willing to listen to stop just accepting that the world is evil. He tells them to try and change it. The audience in the room he was speaking to never stood up and applauded. Instead, the audience gave Wiesel their undivided attention, never saying a
Inked on the pages of Elie Wiesel’s Night is the recounting of him, a young Jewish boy, living through the mass genocide that was the Holocaust. The words written so eloquently are full of raw emotions depict his journey from a simple Jewish boy to a man who was forced to see the horrors of the world. Within this time period, between beatings and deaths, Wiesel finds himself questioning his all loving and powerful God. If his God loved His people, then why would He allow such a terrible thing to happen? Perhaps Wiesel felt abandoned by his God, helpless against the will of the Nazis as they took everything from him.
The truth is, he took a vow of silence about what had happened in the concentration camps. Actually, he had not spoken about it for ten years (Elie Wiesel Biography). Maybe not talking made it easier to not think about the horror. People tend to not talk about what they want to forget. Then, for those who believe in fate, Elie Wiesel was scheduled to interview Francois Mauriac. According to the forward written by Francois Mauriac in Night, their conversation went from work to personal. Mr. Mauriac was expressing how horrible it must have been for the Jews crammed in the cattle cars, and Elie Wiesel decided to break his silence and said, “I was one of them.” As a result of this conversation, Mr. Mauriac convinced Mr. Wiesel that his story was important and needed to be told, “he could put a face to the suffering of the Holocaust”. (The Life and Work of Wiesel). During a lecture upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize he reminded everyone that while they were prisoners, they were stripped of everything human. As a result, they lived in a complete void. They were constantly told to forget everything, forget where they came from, and to forget who they were. Mr. Wiesel described how the memory protects its wounds by trying to forget painful events. More importantly, Elie Wiesel stated that, “For us, forgetting was never an option.” Those that survived felt that they needed to document what they had witnessed.
It was the end of the war and he no longer has a family after he was relocated and wiesel is basically a walking corpse. “And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed.” was written in page 91 which clearly states that he no longer believed in God. Now the last piece of evidence to prove that he doesn't care for others anymore would by when his father left the land of the living. On page 112 Wiesel writes how he felt about his passing ‘And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have something like: Free at
“He’s the man who’s lived through hell without every hating. Who’s been exposed to the most depraved aspects of human nature but still manages to find love, to believe in God, to experience joy.” This was a quote said by Oprah Winfrey during her interview with Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor. No person who has not experienced the Holocaust and all its horrors could ever relate to Elie Wiesel. He endured massive amounts of torture, physically, mentally, and emotionally just because he was a Jew. One simple aspect of Wiesel’s life he neither chose or could changed shaped his life. It is important to take a look at Wiesel’s life to see the pain that he went through and try to understand the experiences that happened in his life. Elie Wiesel is a well respected, influential figure with an astonishing life story. Although Elie Wiesel had undergone some of the harshest experiences possible, he was still a man able to enjoy life after the Holocaust.
In April, 1945, Elie Wiesel was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp after struggling with hunger, beatings, losing his entire family, and narrowly escaping death himself. He at first remained silent about his experiences, because it was too hard to relive them. However, eventually he spoke up, knowing it was his duty not to let the world forget the tragedies resulting from their silence. He wrote Night, a memoir of his and his family’s experience, and began using his freedom to spread the word about what had happened and hopefully prevent it from happening again. In 1999, he was invited to speak at the Millennium Lectures, in front of the president, first lady, and other important governmental figures,. In his speech, “The Perils of Indifference”, he uses rhetoric devices to get emotional responses and to connect with the audience. He wants to create awareness of the dangers of indifference and show how there needs to be change. His speech eloquently calls out the government for their lack of response during the Holocaust, and warns against continued disregard for the struggles of others. He sees indifference as being the ally of the enemy, and without compassion there is no hope for the
(Commire 175) says Wiesel in an interview. This shows that the Holocaust is so ingrained in his mind that he cannot talk about the subject without it hurting him. It may also represent how he respects his friends who died. Throughout Elbagirs article, “Child Soldiers Battle Traumas in Congo Rehab,” she mentions how the children, who were forced to join the army, now struggle with many problems, mentally. “They all have abandonment issues,” Rahima Choffy states.
Wiesel is a mentally strong person because for most Holocaust survivors, retelling is reliving. In Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, he seems to have come out of “night” and have faith in God.
From being a bystander of bullying to committing murder are many ways of being indifferent. It is everywhere in everyday life in prospering countries and in poor and destroyed countries. Elie Wiesel knows how indifference feels and how it affects people. He was also indifferent and regrets what he did to this day. He was a victim of the Holocaust and lived through indifference. During his imprison ship he saw indifference everywhere in the camps. How he treated his father is what he regrets. He just cared about himself because another prisoner told him to. He believes his father died because he did not help him all he could. His whole book could be based on indifference if you interpreted it that way. From how the guards treated the prisoners to how kids including Elie treated their own parents. Indifference is a very big topic and a part of Night. Indifference is what pushed him to write his descriptive, emotional, strong, and outstanding novel.
Elie Wiesel shows great respect for America. He complements the soldiers, the first lady and the president. He informs us about how young he was and felt anger and rage towards the Nazis. He also notices the soldiers that saved him had great rage which translates to true compassion for one another. He gives us a great history lesson and who was indifferent especially towards how towns were miles away from the camps and did nothing about it. He impounded the heart breaking on how doing business with them until 1942 and we knew what was going on. He questions the indifference we had.
”Lie down on it! On your belly! I obeyed. I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip. One! Two! He took time between the lashes. Ten eleven! Twenty-three. Twenty four, twenty five! It was over. I had not realized it, but I fainted” (Wiesel 58). It was hard to imagine that a human being just like Elie Wiesel would be treating others so cruelly. There are many acts that Elie has been through with his father and his fellow inmates. Experiencing inhumanity can affect others in a variety of ways. When faced with extreme inhumanity, The people responded by becoming incredulous, losing their faith, and becoming inhumane themselves.