Impossible To Speak Forbidden By Elie Wiesel

“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” - Elie Wiesel, Night

Elie Wiesel, a Noble Peace Prize winner and Boston University Professor, presented a speech as part of the Millennium Lecture Series at the White House on April 12, 1999. President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton hosted the formal lecture series. Numerous dignitaries from a wide array of public, private and foreign office attended the event. Although Elie Wiesel designed his speech to persuade, it actually fell somewhat outside the deliberative genre category, as being more non-typical within this genre category.

Wiesel vowed to say nothing of the Holocaust for 10 years, but as the horrors of the Holocaust became revealed, he began his life’s work. Wiesel traveled throughout the world in places like Europe, Asia and South Africa, giving lectures and writing about his life experience. The camps had shown Wiesel pain, a kind of pain that he did not wish upon others. It was because of this that his humanitarian efforts against violence, racism, and other forms of injustice and discrimination took place.

The Holocaust was not only a way for the Nazis to purge the Jews, it was also a movement for a new way of thinking, that as long as the person in front of you holds a military-grade firearm there is nothing you can do to change your fate. In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel recounts his journey through life in nazi concentration camps. Elie struggles with his faith and morality as he and his father witness the horrors of the Holocaust. Night reveals that it’s in human nature to hope for survival through religion and faith, however it can also fail in the most trying of circumstances when you have to relent to authoritarianism.

The resistance of the Holocaust has claimed worldwide fame at a certain point in history, but the evidence that the evil-doers themselves left crush everything that verifies the fantasy of the Holocaust. For an example, in Poland, the total Jewish population of over thirty-three hundred thousand suddenly plummeted to three hundred thousand. Ten percent of the population survived the Holocaust in Poland. Almost every country that the Nazis have conquered has the same percent of survival as Poland. In Elie Wiesel Wiesel’s memoir Night, the activities in the concentration camps, the suffering of Jews, and the disbelief of the inhumane actions of the Nazis result in making people resist the truth.

Writer, Elie Wiesel in his metaphorical speech “The perils of Indifference” argues that the future will never know the agony of the Holocaust and they will never understand the tragedy of the horrific terror in Germany. Wiesel wants people to not let this happen but at the time many modern genocides that are occurring and people shouldn’t be focused on just the Holocaust, they should focus on making this world a better place; moreover, Wiesel expresses his thoughts about all the genocides that has happen throughout the years. He develops his message through in an horrifying event that took place 54 years ago the day “ The perils of Indifference” was published. Wiesel illustrates the indifferences of good vs evil. He develops this message

Elie Wiesel was freed at the end of the Holocaust in 1945 (106) which was only 71 years ago. (page 106) The majority of the victims have passed on, but there still remains some who can give a recount of what they experienced. This opportunity will become unattainable soon, but there is still a chance to sit down with a victim and hear their story. We owe it to the victims of the Holocaust to retell their accounts and make sure that their stories aren’t left behind in history. Also because this happened so recently it brings into perspective how possible it is for it to happen again. There are people out there capable of committing mass genocide, and even wiping out an entire group of people for whatever reason. It is essential that posterity know this and prevent it from occurring. If the book Night is taught in school, it shows students that atrocities like this should not be left on the wayside, and there is no reason for this to ever happen

With this book, Wiesel has helped to ensure that the holocaust is never forgotten. The events that he and the other Jews endured and put in this book are memorable to any reader. Jews whose job were to help in the crematories, sometimes even help with putting others to death is pretty memorable. One man had to put his own father into the furnace (35). This is very memorable because they had to watch others just like them being burned to death, and one day others might have to do the same to them. They had to work in a place full of the dead, until they themselves were put to death. Another memorable event was when the dead bodies were thrown off the wagon (94) as if they were useless weight. That was memorable because those people had a previous life, with families that loved them, and their dead body meant absolutely nothing to the SS. It is moments like these must be remembered, in honor of the diseased. As Wiesel said, “For the survivors who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and the living...to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time” (XV). Using good imagery and drilling the suffering of those who lived in these camps into the reader's mind, he has helped assure that

The purpose of Elie Wiesel’s speech was to persuade the audience to not be indifferent to the victims of injustice and cruelty. He wishes for others to be compassionate towards those people that are suffering injustices around the world, but he also wants to recognize those that have spoken out against indifference. Elie Wiesel uses ethos from his own background to give his speech credibility. He is a survivor of the Holocaust and a Nobel Laureate, who has written numerous novels about what it was like during World War II and the Holocaust. This first hand life experience gives his speech and own personal experiences a

The Holocaust is widely known as one of the most horrendous and disturbing events in history that the world has seen; over six million lives were lost, in fact the total number of deceased during the Holocaust has never been determined. The footage of concentration camps and gas chambers left the world in utter shock, but photos and retellings of the events cannot compare to being a victim of the Holocaust and living through the horror that the rest of the world regarded in the safety of their homes. Elie Wiesel recognized the indifference that the

The speech helped the audience understand the need for every individual to exercise their moral conscience in the face of injustice. Wiesel attempts to convince his audience to support his views by using his childhood experience and relating them to the harsh realities while living in Nazi Death Camps as a boy during the Holocaust. He warns, “To be indifferent to suffering is to lose one’s humanity” (Wiesel, 1999). Wiesel persuades the audience to embrace a higher level of level moral awareness against indifference by stating, “the hungry children, the homeless refugees-not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope, is to exile them from human memory”. Wiesel’s uses historical narrative, woven with portions of an autobiography to move his persuasive speech from a strictly deliberative genre to a hybrid deliberative genre.

As the famous journalist Iris Chang once said, “As the Nobel Laureate warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.” After experiencing the tragedies that occurred during the Holocaust, Eliezer Wiesel narrated “Night”. Eliezer wrote “Night” in an attempt to prevent something similar to the Holocaust from happening again, by showing the audience what the consequences are that come from becoming a bystander. Elie illustrated numerous themes by narrating the state of turmoil he was in during the Holocaust. In Night, Eliezer provided insight into what he experienced in order to teach the unaware audience about three themes; identity, silence, and faith.

Although the world continues to face tragedy, little compares to that of the horrors millions of innocent Jews like Elie Wiesel faced, as they were deported from their homes, separated from their families and pushed around into different concentration camps where they were brutally tortured, killed, and discarded of by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany Army beginning in 1941. It wasn’t until April of 1945 that Elie along with the limited number of other survivors were finally liberated. This mid 20th century atrocity has come to be known as the Holocaust, a tragic part of history that will never be forgotten. It was because of that experience, that Elie Wiesel extensively depicted the events he faced through written and verbal accounts including the speech he gave entitled “The Perils of Indifference” on April 12, 1999. The speech was given at the 7th Millennium Evening at the White House, with an intent to create a kairotic moment with the public including the audiences it was broadcasted to, as an opportunity to explain a darker side of history, while also hopefully enlightening them for the future.

In Night by Elie Wiesel, silence is a reoccurring theme that represents many aspects of Wiesel’s struggle during the most coldblooded massacre in the history of the world. Although silence may seem unimportant, Wiesel’s remarks about this theme symbolizes far more. He believes it is silence that allows the Nazis to takeover and begin the slaughtering. Wiesel emphasizes that silence is the only appropriate response to the Holocaust because the events that took place at Auschwitz have caused language and words to seemingly have lost their meaning; the words people use to describe what happened cannot even compare to the reality of the event. Language no longer has any power to express the truth of what happened to the Jewish people during this inhumane mass execution. Wiesel uses silence to intensify dramatic effect, to suggest the indescribable, and to symbolize the loss of faith.

“I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer--or my life, period-- would not become what it is: that of a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory” (Wiesel, Night viii). As a result of the horrors that Elie Wiesel experienced during the Holocaust, he devoted his life to become meaningful. Wiesel’s decent disposition changes through atrociously inhumane conduct toward Jews during the Holocaust as he becomes a brute to solidify identity, levy fears, and boost morale.