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Elie Wiesel Nobel Prize Speech

447 Words2 Pages

If you had a chance to save people, and didn’t take it, are you as guilty as the person who put them into that position? Some people argue that if it doesn’t affect them it isn’t their problem, but isn’t it? The rights of people are ours to protect. So if you choose not to speak, you are helping the oppressor and end up letting people stomp all over you. Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor, believed that speaking out was the only way to end the problems in our world. When giving his nobel prize speech he said, “we must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” (Wiesel). When people stay silent they are just prolonging people’s suffering and allowing their rights to be taking away. If you choose to stay silent you are unwittingly joining the side of the oppressor. He also talked about the importance of speaking even after the wrong was fixed. He said “I have tried to keep the memory alive - I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty. We are accomplices” …show more content…

Some do think that if they stay out of a problem no harm can come to them. They don’t stop and think that by allowing other people’s rights to be taken away, they are allowing their rights to be taken away. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the character Atticus said to his daughter, “if I didn’t [become Tom’s Lawyer] I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this country in the legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something.... Because I could never ask you to mind me again” (Lee 75-76). If Atticus didn’t follow his morals and allowed Tom Robinson to be convicted it would go against everything he believed in. He couldn’t tell his children right from wrong because he’d but be a hypocrite if he did so. You are guilty the moment you don’t act against something you feel is

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