Elie Wiesel False Hope

The message that is sent across in this speech is also something that makes it so effective. Wiesel’s goal is not only to inform the people of the horrible events of the Holocaust, but also a call to action. This call to action is to end indifference throughout the world. Wiesel tries throughout the speech to inspire his audience within the White House, as well as the people of the world to act in times of human suffering, injustice, and violence. Within this call to action, Wiesel argues that indifference is an action worse than any other. Even anger, according to Wiesel, is a more positive action than indifference. “Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response.” When Wiesel states this simple, yet powerful statement, it forces any listener to consider how negative of an emotion hatred is, then puts indifference well below it. Wiesel also addresses how easy it is for any person to be indifferent. He states, “Of course, indifference can be tempting—more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims.” This quote

Wiesel is effective with his speech by connecting exaggeration within his revelation. He questions the guilt and responsibility for past massacres, pointing specifically at the Nazi’s while using historical facts, such as bloodbaths in Cambodia, Algeria, India, and Pakistan to include incidents on a larger level such as Auschwitz to provide people with a better idea (Engelhardt, 2002). He is effective in putting together the law and society’s need for future actions against indifference by stating, “In the place I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killer, the victims, and the bystanders” 7.(Wiesel 223).

Wiesel responds to this when he says, “The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jews; it was ruled by delusion” (30). Basically what Wiesel was trying to explain is the ghetto, although

The Jewish people’s biggest strength. Hope. In our history, we have committed too many crimes against each other, but one of the worst crimes against humanity was the Holocaust caused by the Nazis during WW2. The Holocaust was the murder and imprisonment of what the leader of the Nazis, Adolf Hitler, called “undesirables.” These people were mainly Jewish people, but this also included Polls, Russians, and Communists.

First, the reader views Wiesel’s personality changes as a result of life in Auschwitz. Perhaps the most obvious change is his steadily increasing disinterest of religion. Before his internment, Wiesel demonstrates a growing interest in the religion of his parents. During the day, he studied Talmud, a legal commentary on the Torah, or the Jewish Ten Commandments. At night, he would worship at the synagogue, “to weep over the

The emotional connection Wiesel has to the injustice and inhumane acts from other people being a survivor from the Holocaust

In the beginning of the speech Wiesel explains his childhood. He uses imagery to paint a picture in the audience’s mind of what it was like to live in a war-torn country. He states, “Fifty-four years to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from Goethe’s beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald.” (Wiesel 1) This makes the audience think about what he just said and where Wiesel came from. It also makes the reader feel

28. The aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid aforesaid Humanity can learn essential lessons from the Holocaust and other tragedies that can prevent them from happening again. Later in the text, Wiesel will say that humanity has failed to take memory seriously enough. To him, there is a contradiction between memory and the undeniable fact that “it is surely human to

The author uses these dramatic pictures to warn people of the dangers of indifference. In paragraph 5, the author give a clear picture of what life for the victims looked like, “ During the darkest of times, inside the ghettos and death camps…” It's hard to imagine that just doing nothing can cause such harm, but by not standing up to the aggressors, it's not preventing them from continuing the harm. Elie Wiesel describes the night of Kristallnacht in paragraph eight, “the first state sponsored pogrom, with hundreds of Jewish shops destroyed, synagogues burned, thousands of people put in concentration camps…” Even though this was only the first state sponsored program, the effects were still devastating and that is what Wiesel is describing here through the imagery. It conveys the tone of being cautionary because the large effects were still present and could've been prevented if people who chose to turn their backs had not. Finally, paragraph six does an excellent job of demonstrating the cautionary ton through the use of imagery. Wiesel explains how Auschwitz prisoners thought that it was such a closely guarded secret and portrays that here, “If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene.” The author cautions other world leaders here without even directly saying so by talking about the US government as if they were completely naive.

“He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again”. This quote stated by Elie Wiesel from his speech, “The Perils of Indifference”, refers to the day Elie Wiesel got liberated from the Holocaust when he was young. The Holocaust was just one of the many horrific tragedies that occurred during that century. In hopes of changing the future for the better, Wiesel decides to deliver a speech about helping the victims of injustice. He gives this speech intended for the President, Mrs. Clinton, members of Congress, Ambassador Holbrooke, Excellencies, and friends hoping that they will make positive changes for the future. By using rhetorical strategies such as anaphora, rhetorical questions, and ethos, Wiesel tries to help the victims of injustice and prevent future tragedies from happening.

Wiesel wants to show people how awful these camps were and how basically the whole world new about it, but they did not do anything to stop it because it was not them who it was happening to, so they did not think that it was a problem.

In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel the main message is that many people are losing faith in each other and everything. Once someone lose their faith, they lose their faith in God and they start to just give up on what their main focus was. People can start losing their faith once they see things that should be seen. It starts to scare them and their faith is lost. Elie started to slowly lose his faith once he was separated with his mother because he was brought to a place where inhumane things were happening. Once people start to lose their faith, they start doing things that leads to the loss of humanity.

Wiesel’s inclusion of this quote shows readers that he was appalled by the inhuman prisoners and concentration camp leaders. One of the reasons for Wiesel becoming so traumatized by the evils of humanity is his prior belief that people would help each other in times of need. Halperin writes, “Before coming to Auschwitz, Eliezer had believed that twentieth-century man was civilized. He had supposed that people would try to help one another in difficult times; certainly his father and teachers had taught him that every Jew is responsible for all other Jews” (Halperin 33). Convinced that people were kind and that Jews would help one another, Wiesel was greatly disappointed after coming to a tragic realization in the concentration camps. Wiesel was robbed, pushed, beaten, and betrayed by his fellow Jews at the camps. Contrary to his prior belief that Jews should be working together, the other Jews invested in themselves. They cared, solely, about their own well being. In including the evils of the other prisoners, Wiesel is able to show readers that due to the lack of innocence within the concentration camps, it was inevitable for him to lose his

“Hope is the only thing stronger than fear.” -President Snow in The Hunger Games. The book Night by Elie Wiesel is a true story about the holocaust. In the story the main character, Elie, experiences terrible things. He is so hopeful that things are going to get better (after all how could they get any worse) and he is so fearful that his last bit of hope will be taken away and he will give up on life. Elie experiences the worst things that we can imagine. How could anyone have hope in such darkness? What could anyone fear when they have lost everything?

Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” The repetition of the phrase “Never shall I forget” really emphasises on and illustrated that what Wiesel is describing will be engraved in his memory forever, that it is impossible to forget. I also think that he wants to spread the word about what happened in the holocaust, raise awareness and make sure that nothing even remotely like it ever happens again.