Analysis Of Elie Wiesel's Speech: The Perils Of Indifference

James Boyce

Ms.Whitt

Stem Sophomore Honors English

24 May 2023

Choosing Not to be Indifferent

With great injustice comes greater indifference. The speech given by Elie Wiesel called “The Perils of Indifference” touches on the Indifference of certain governments during the holocaust. He himself suffered greatly from this indifference of international powers as he was one of the people found in a concentration camp at the end of the war. Indifference suffered him to this injustice, so it must be bad. Injustice always needs indifferent inaction to sustain itself, and to break this cycle, you must have violence. This violence is directed at injustice, in the hope that the indifferent group will join the ranks of the people who care. According to

The indifferent are oppressors. To not care is the most wrong anyone can be. Elie Wiesel, a well-known holocaust survivor and recipient of the Nobel Peace prize, speaks of his time in the holocaust very solemnly. He speaks of his faith crisis and that he thought his God and the world had abandoned the Jews, and that,” Better an unjust God than an indifferent one.” Or” … our only miserable consolation was that we believed that Auschwitz and Treblinka were closely guarded secrets…we learned, we discovered that the Pentagon knew, the State Department knew.” This inaction by The United States government is indifference directly supporting injustice. The United States eventually became one of the allied powers and helped put an end to WW2, but for a time, they did not do anything. They helped continue the suffering of those Jewish Homo Sapiens. The action eventually provoked by this injustice was the result of information. The news of what was happening to the Jews eventually spread to enough people who were not indifferent to the suffering resulting from oppression, those who valued human life more than the fragile economy that results from war. This cycle is repeated throughout

He had control for approximately Three minutes; his goal was to take the armory and arm slaves against their slaveowners with those weapons. On March 20th, 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published. This book was published to show what conditions slaves lived in and why the Northerners needed to decide against slavery in this new nation. These were both acts of violence, but one had a more profound effect. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was more effective in enraging people about the crisis of slavery. When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe during the Civil war, he said to her,” So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!” So, were her actions violent? Well, without her actions, would those troops have been mobilized as quickly? Would the American Northerners have realized the severity of this issue, and more importantly, responded the way they did? Informing the general public is very important; regular everyday people can make a difference, even with something