The Perils Of Indifference Summary

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This indifference was exposed in the aftermath of the war, but it also shed a light on other instances in which people have been indifferent, and when they themselves have been prejudiced. This matter is pointed out in Elie Wiesel’s speech “The Perils of Indifference,” which he gave on April 12, 1999. Wiesel listed many events in the 20th century, some that took place after the Holocaust, that could show how often the world was indifferent to the sufferings of others. He mentions that there have been, “two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations -- Gandhi, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Rabin -- bloodbaths in Cambodia and Nigeria, India and Pakistan, Ireland and Rwanda, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Sarajevo and Kosovo; the inhumanity in …show more content…

For example, the well known leader of India’s independence movement, Gandhi, was assassinated by, “a Hindu extremist who objected to Gandhi’s tolerance for the Muslims, “(History.com, 1948 Gandhi Assassinated). The main reason for his assassination was that someone was intolerant of his tolerance for the Muslims. This portrays another time in which intolerance led to death. Also, the assassination of Gandhi is similar to that of Martin Luther King Jr., the main civil rights leader in the United States during the sixties who often protested the unfair treatment of blacks in America. His assassination is obscured by conspiracy, as to whether or not his convicted assassin really acted alone or if he conspired with others. Nevertheless, it can be said that his murder was most likely related to his work as a civil rights leader, who persistently pushed for the intolerance to end and for the indifference towards the hardships of the African-American community to halt. Yet another senseless act of intolerance that ended with blood, as mentioned by Wiesel, was the Cambodian