Summary Of The Perils Of Indifference

Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel delivered an impassioned speech in which he spoke of the perils of indifference in front of United States and World leaders. During his speech, which as known as the “Perils of Indifference.” Wiesel uses a three pronged approach of pathos, logos, and ethos to demonstrate the dangers standing by and doing nothing. Speaking as a witness, survivor, and teacher, Wiesel successfully argues for the case of action in Kosovo by first making witnesses of the audience, then by questioning the audience’s ethics, and finally showing that the world has learned from the atrocities of the past. First Wiesel uses pathos by telling his story of liberation in a third person narrative, drawing his audience in. He recounts "Though he did not understand their language, their eyes told him what he needed to know -- that

It is important to know that the word Genocide did not exist in language and was coined in 1944 by a Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing) and was finally recognized by the UN General Assembly as a crime under international law in 1946 (Power). Wiesel presents the historical acts of indifference by the U.S. during World War II, when the president turn a ship full of Jewish refugees away from New York harbor, showing the world leaders that this was a choice between right and wrong, and indifference was the choice that was made. Wiesel does not condemn the U.S. but appeals to the logic in this presentation and then presents the lesson learned in Kosovo, when he says “this time, the world was not silent. This time, we do respond. This time, we intervene” (“Perils of Indifference”). Wiesel appeals to the logic of the world stance in Kosovo, as it had learned from the consequences of the World Leader’s indifference in the