Rebecca Rickord
Mrs. Graver
English 1112
12 April 2023
The Perils of Indifference Elie Wiesel gave his influential speech “The Perils of Indifference” eat the White House in 1999. Wiesel was a survivor of the Holocaust; and due to this experience, he spent his life advocating for human rights and sharing what he endured as a prisoner in concentration camps. Wiesel was an author and journalist, writing fifty-seven books, including a memoir on his experiences during the Holocaust and other stories on the subject. Wiesel held many accomplishments throughout his life, such as serving on the President’s Commission on the Holocaust as a Chairman, founding the United States Holocaust Memorial Center, and later receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Elie Wiesel and his wife, Marion,
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Wiesel states that when the American soldiers freed the boy, there was no joy in his heart and he believed there never would be again. He was able to see the rage on the soldier's faces and he was grateful for this anger and empathy. In the closing statements of the speech, Wiesel brings up the young boy once again, saying “He has accompanied the old man I have become throughout these years of quest and struggle. And together we walk towards the new millennium, carried by profound fear and extraordinary hope” (Wiesel 6). This is a very powerful example of parallelism as Wiesel reveals that the young Jewish boy he spoke of was himself at the age of fifteen. Using this device in his speech shows his growth as a person, from scared and discouraged to extraordinarily hopeful for what the future may bring. Though it is also mentioned that this younger version of Elie Wiesel, with large feelings of despair and misery, has walked alongside him through his entire life; he cannot let these feelings go, but he is able to learn from them and grow from