Elie Wiesel: Compassion And Human Rights

He was finally free, no joy filled his heart but abandonment was drowning it. How dangerous is indifference to humankind as it pertains to suffering and the need for conscience understanding when people are faced with unjust behaviors? Elie Wiesel is an award winning author and novelist who has endured and survived hardships. One of the darkest times in history, a massacre of over six million Jews, the Holocaust and Hitler himself. After the Holocaust he went on and wrote the internationally acclaimed memoir “Night,” in which he spoke out against persecution and injustice across the world. In the compassionate yet pleading speech, ¨Perils of Indifference,¨ Elie Wiesel analyzes the injustices that himself and others endured during the twentieth century, as well as the hellish acts of the Holocaust through effective rhetorical choices.

Are people born with a complete quandary when it comes to compassion or is it something that has always been there? Barbara Lazear Ascher, born in 1946, writes, “On Compassion.” Having lived in New York City, Ascher is able to take first hand examples from the city to show the affection people have towards each other. Ascher is able to illustrate that compassion is something that has to be taught because of the adversity at people’s heels by including tone, persuasive appeals, and the mode of comparing and contrast in her essay, “On Compassion.”

In the book “Night” many people’s human rights were compromised. “Night” is a fictional book authored by Elie Wiesel with a fictional character, Eliezer, based on him. THis young jewish boy and everyone in his city along with him are kidnapped from Sighet were they are forced through terrain, camps, and so much more to end up in one place. Death! The events of the Holocaust, definitely as we all know, broke our basic human rights. However, this brought up the question specifically, “What are our human rights? ” On December of 1948 the UDHR, or Universal Document of Human Rights was approved in the United Kingdom. This document answered many of our questions listing in quite detail, about 30 of our basic human rights. THree of these rights were: life, liberty, and personal security, freedom from slavery, and to have an

On April 12th 1999, in Washington D.C., Elie Wiesel gave a speech during the Millennium Lecture Series that took place in the East Room of the White House. The speech was given in front of Mr. Bill and Mrs. Hillary Clinton, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and other officials. Elie Wiesel is an author most noted for his novel Night, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and political activist. In the speech he spoke on his view of indifference and explained how it was negatively affecting humanity and the nation as a whole. The Perils of Indifference was a speech that successfully used ethos, pathos, and logos to inform, persuade and inspire its audience on its views.

Human rights were an achievement that we humans have been working for years. Therefore it came to effect for at least some of us around the world in the form of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is a declaration of 30 human rights that the United Nation adopted in December 10 of 1948. However, we face challenges along the way that oppose this belief of human rights. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, a novel called Night which is about a man’s experience of the Holocaust (written by Elie Wiesel who actually experienced the event) provide events that violated the human rights of two, three, and five.

“ I shall never forgive the acts of the hungarian police” in which Elie spoke after witnessing the burned Jewish children in the ditch.

In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie Wiesel is a young boy who struggles to survive after being forced to live in the brutal concentration camp of Auschwitz. In Auschwitz, death and suffering is rampant, but due to compassionate words and actions from others, Elie is able to withstand these severe living conditions and overcome the risk of death in the unforgiving Auschwitz. As shown through the actions and words of characters in Night, compassion, the sympathetic pity for the suffering or misfortune of others is critical to the human experience because it enables humans to empathize with each other, empathizing which allows us to feel the need to assist others which can often be vital for survival.

Compassion has little to no boundries. In almost every great story there is a specific character or a group of characters that help the protagonist because they feel bad for them. Compassion is the most important aspect of a functioning society; therefore, Elie Wiesel’s Night, 12 Angry Men by Reginald Rose, and the generosity of spirit shown by the average citizen after the recent shooting in Las Vegas are all perfect examples.

Elie Wiesel: The Great Humanitarian Elie Wiesel was born on September, 30 1928 in Sighet, in the country of Transylvania. When Elie was only 4 years old, Adolf Hitler Came into power in the German government. Hitler then concocted the Nazi party, thus becoming the beginning of World War 2 (WWII). Wiesel had to overcome Hunger, Bad living conditions, and Pain/loss. These adversities made Elie Wiesel become the man he is today; he is truly a humanitarian.

Elie Wiesel’s speech “The Perils of Indifference” is a mind opening and emotional speech that prompts the audience to change the indifference that plagues America and many people in this time and age. He expresses to the audience that indifference is the reason appalling and horrifying events, such as the Holocaust, occur and why no one takes immediate actions to help the victims. To get his point across, Wiesel uses his own history and experiences so that the audience can visualize the Holocaust through the eyes of a survivor and to project the feelings of hopelessness and defeat that the victims felt when no one came to end the injustice. In this critique, Elie Wiesel’s rhetorical speech of indifference will show its effectiveness through testimony, emotion, and rhetorical questions; this speech accomplished its goal and without a doubt persuaded most of the audience to call out for change in indifference.

“They used humans as targets, throwing babies into the air, and shooting them!” These were the words of Moche the Beadle. In the memoir Night, a memoir that takes place during the Holocaust in a time when Jews were persecuted that is told by a boy names Eliezer Wiesel, Jews were imprisoned under the hands of the Nazi for their race, culture, and beliefs. Nazi Germany was a power that violated many Universal Human Rights such as, the freedom from slavery, adequate living conditions, and the right to own personal property.

People often wonder, are we guilty if we are standing by while someone else is having their rights taken from them. In 1986, Elie Wiesel made a speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize after writing stories about his time in a concentration camp. Then there's Malala Yousafzai who is an education activist fighting for women's right to a free education. In 2012, while riding home from school, her school bus was boarded and she was shot in the head but she survived. In Wiesel's speech and Malala’s story we see people’s rights being taken away and no one helped either of them which is wrong, both came close to death and no one bothered to help.

It is a challenge to reconcile human beliefs in compassion and morality with the actions, or inactions, of bystanders in the Holocaust. How is it possible that hundreds of thousands of people stood by while millions faced pain and suffering? Before exonerating or condemning all of them, it is necessary to consider the differences in bystanders. For the context of the Holocaust, a bystander is someone who was neither a target of the Nazis or a Nazi themselves. Putting all of these people in the same group is an oversimplification, because it ignores the power system in place during the Holocaust and the various positions of bystanders in that system. The wealthy business owner is not the same as the working-class mother of four. In this situation, one has considerable power and ability, and the other does not. Applying a blanket statement, and calling the latter unjust when they are ordinary people in a time of horrific war is contrary to reason. It is also necessary to consider the extent of bystander’s actions. Have their actions merely helped to ensure their own survival, or do they directly hurt Holocaust victims? The magnitude of each situation is varied. In conclusion, to gauge the morality of a bystander’s actions, they need to be judged on an individual basis, with two qualities in mind: that person’s ability to act and the effect of their actions.

Compassion is defined as sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.In this case the idea of compassion could have changed the history of the world.The Holocaust was the killing of millions of Jews and other people by the Nazi’s during World War 2.This was truly based upon hatred of a religous group, and wouldn’t be possible without Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany. Until a certain point no one was showing compassion for the people being terrorized by this tyrant. It is unknown to historians that during this time period the people didn’t know what was happening, or they didn’t want to believe what was happening. With that being said, could compassion have been a key factor in stopping the Holocaust earlier than it already was?

compassion capable of attempting to destroy an entire race of people? Events such as the Holocaust, and the Holocaust itself needs to be studied and understood, so we can learn from it and work to prevent anything like it from happening, and although genocides such as the one that occurred in Rwanda still occur, they are nothing as monstrous as that which occurred during the times of the Holocaust. Ignorant and oppressive acts will always be a part of society, it is human nature to place blame on others, such as what occurred after the depression in Germany, when Jewish peoples were scapegoated and blamed for the great depression. Due to what we have learned