The Perils Of Indifference By Elie Wiesel

Holocaust survivor and American Jewish author, Elie Wiesel in his serious and pensive speech, “The Perils of Indifference,” asserts that “to be indifferent” of the world’s problems “is what makes the human being inhuman” and is the reason that genocides along with millions of deaths have occured (The Perils of). He supports his claim by revealing to his audience his personal experience in the concentration camps of the Holocaust to appeal to their emotions so that they can understand what he had to go through; moreover, Wiesel uses strong, emotionally loaded language to further create a stronger impact when describing our world and society as being involved with “so much violence” and “so much indifference.” Additionally, he uses imagery to illustrate indifference as “not only a sin,” but “a punishment.” Wiesel’s purpose is to make “the human being become less indifferent and more human” in order to bring about change in

In July of 1995, 8000 Bosnians were killed during the war in Bosnia, which is the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust. An estimated total of 100,000 people were killed and over 2 million people were displaced (Past Genocides). Although the United States and the whole world knew what was going on, they decided to be indifferent to the cause and the US refused to send in troops. Wiesel says, “Indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor” (Wiesel). By being indifferent, the US was helping the Serbs with the benefit of allowing them to continue killing the Bosnians and continued to avoid helping by referring to the conflict as an “ethnic cleansing” rather than “genocide,” which it was. Eventually Wiesel’s words impacted some people at the time and help was sent to help end the war, but by then, thousands had already died even though people had begun to choose to not remain