Elie Wiesel's The Perils Of Indifference

Nobel Peace Prize Award winning, Elie Wiesel’s main purpose both as a speaker and writer, was to inform the world about the truth behind the tragic mass genocide of European Jews during the Holocaust. However, Wiesel’s secondary purpose was to educate the world on indifference and to persuade them into acknowledging the ugliness that occurs when one becomes indifferent. As a survivor of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel bore the burden of keeping the tragic memories of what had happened and still went on to create something beautiful out of it. He ensured that he would be taking a step in making sure something like the Holocaust would not happen again by educating the world on the event and informing them that indifference truly kills. In Section

In this speech, Elie Wiesel’s intent was to inform people on the devastating effects of indifference in society. “Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred.” Just goes to show how detrimental indifference can be. Indifference is genuinely a blinding feeling. By being indifferent, you choose to look the other way, you choose to stay silent, rather than fighting to make a change. Wiesel intended on persuading the people into doing otherwise, he had called out the American Government on their indifference during the tale of the St. Louis. A ship containing about a thousand Jews was turned back to Nazi Germany after their arrival on the shores of America, inevitably headed back to a tragic demise. Wiesel could not understand how President Roosevelt could do this. He believed that he was a good leader, but his indifference negatively impacted the lives of the Jews that had travelled to America seeking refuge. Elie Wiesel previously states in his speech, “Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest.” Roosevelt’s indifference minimized the importance of the thousand Jewish lives that

Wiesel wanted people to remember those who did not make it, “Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.” By forgetting about the tragic events and the lives lost in the Holocaust, we fall under the impression that the lives lost in the Holocaust were not important to remember, but they were. Millions of lives, innocent lives, had been lost simply because people were of Jewish faith and that was enough for Adolf Hitler to say that they were less than. Wiesel had hoped that he could persuade the people into continuing to remember what had happened. He had hoped that people would learn from the tragic events of the Holocaust, and they would fight against indifference and prevent something like the Holocaust from happening again. By stating, “Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.” Wiesel hopes that he can inspire the change that the world was and still is in need