The Perils Of Indifference By Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel gave his speech “Perils of Indifference” at the White House on April 12, 1999, as part of the Millennium Lecture series, presented by President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton. In the summer of 1944, Nazis deported Wiesel and his family to Auschwitz, a concentration camp located in Poland. In January 1945, Wiesel was moved to Buchenwald in Germany, where he was later liberated by American troops in April. After he regained his freedom, Wiesel learned that leaders of the free world had been aware of the horrors being committed and yet they did not take immediate action. In his speech, Wiesel addresses the leaders of America and bystanders who do not take action in times of trouble.

Indifference is the lack of concern or acknowledgment of an event or a person. During the Holocaust, indifference was expressed by the world toward the injustice treatment of the Jewish community. Many people, including the Germans, failed to help the Jews. Much of the Jewish population was exterminated as a result of this indifference. The Jews were also responsible for their downfall because they didn’t choose to act as a community.

The Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, in the text, “The Perils of Indifference,” uses numerous of effective rhetorical strategies in order to build his credibility and engage his audience. Wiesel’s purpose is to persuade his audience to denounce indifference and act to stop the suffering and intolerance that occurs around the globe. Throughout the text, Wiesel describes historical events during the Holocaust and how indifference allowed for suffering and injustices to continue. Nevertheless, Wiesel acknowledges with gratitude the efforts of America and the actions of the brave. Wiesel, with a hopeful tone, encourages change and undertaking to save sufferers from inhuman and woeful experiences. In “The Perils of

Writer and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel in his influential speech “The Perils of Indifference” claims that indifference is a problem and not feeling is what we should avoid. He develops his message through details of his experience living during the holocaust. Specifically, paragraph 9 talks about how people there had lost who they were during their time there.Finally, he talks about other people during some events. Wiesel’s purpose is to inform people in order to keep them from being indifferent. He creates an uprising tone for readers by using stylistic devices and rhetorical devices such as similes, metaphors, and imagery in order to develop his message that indifference is a terrible belief. Ultimately, Wiesel’s message about the inhumanity of indifference and the importance of resistance is still relevant today.

Born September 30, 1928 in Sighetu Marmatiei, Transylvania, Romania, life for young, Jewish, Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel started out normal. However, past history reveals

Distinguished writer and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, in his speech, “The Perils of Indifference”, discusses the effects indifference has on one’s humanity in both societal and individual terms. Wiesel’s purpose is to illustrate the plight of those who suffer because of indifference and to appeal to the audience's consciences. He adopts a sympathetic, haunting, and accusatory tone in order to convey to audiences that society had not learned from the past and many victims will continue to suffer injustices in this new millennium. Ultimately, through the means of syntax devices such as juxtaposition, anaphora, powerful diction, and rhetorical questioning, Weisel bolsters the supporting logic of his claim that indifference is a grave malady of humanity and to amend such an ailment one must look no further than the self. Wiesel’s comprehensive speech, “The Perils of Indifference” can be divided into three definitive sections: the contextualization of the suffering that occurs both past and present, an explication of “indifference”, and lastly Wiesel's earnest undertaking and rhetorical questioning of why we practice indifference.

Elie Wiesel’s speech falls into the deliberative genre category, and was designed to influence his listeners into action by warning them about the dangers indifference can have on society as it pertains to human atrocities and suffering. 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.

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.

Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel in his speech, “The Perils of Indifference,” argues that indifference is evil and shouldn’t be allowed to continue if we rise to have a brighter future of connectivity and compassion. He develops his claim by illustrating and defining different aspects of indifference and its affect upon people as a whole, then he goes into a real event that shows the destructive power of such a lack of compassion or emotion for other human beings which is the death of millions, then he questions the audience about different subjects to make them think harder upon the subject presented to them, and finally offers a sad emotional appeal to completely drive home the emotional appeal behind the kids, those who pay for the fights

Indifference is defined as a lack of interest, concern or sympathy. Indifference is portrayed throughout Night with religion and about with the people. In “The Perils of Indifference” Elie Wiesel talks about how people who are indifferent are causing as much harm as the people doing the actual damage. He also says when evil is happening people need to stand up as one and fight against it together. Throughout Night he does not just straight out say those exact words but it is easy to tell that in the book the jews do get indifferent by the end about religion and their own well being.

Elie Wiesel once said “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”(Wiesel). Wiesel was a holocaust survivor and someone who wanted equality for all people. He spoke the famous “ The Perils of Indifference” speech in April 1999, at the White House. Wiesel has a strong opinion that having a lack of interest or sympathy is the worst state of mind to have. With many people becoming detached in today's society Wiesel fights to express how indifference can ruin humanity by using rhetorical questioning, an analogy, and ethos to persuade his readers and/or listeners.

In his speech, “The Perils of Indifference,” Elie Wiesel explains that “Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger or hatred,” (Paragraph 11). I agree with this sentiment because while anger can make people do things like change something for the sake of humanity, nothing good can come out of indifference. When a person is indifferent, they don’t feel the need to change anything for the better. Wiesel defines indifference as “a strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and darn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassions, good and evil,” (Paragraph 6). Indifference is a state of being in which a person is unconcerned about the things and people around them.

Award winning novelist, Holocaust survivor, human rights activist, Elie Wiesel in his influential speech, ‘ The Perils of Indifference,” emphasizes that indifference is a tempting yet inhumane quality that affects the success our new centuries to come. He develops this message by looking back upon the horrific memories of his Holocaust experience as well as looking back upon the countless assassinations, and wars that have created this “ dark shadow over humanity.” The memories of being “liberated” by “American Soldiers” cause him to see the pain and suffrage of many but allow him to have “gratitude” towards the “American People.” Wiesel mentions how indifference is  “seductive” and “tempting” because it is the easier to not be involved in another person’s “pain and despair.” Wiesel’s purpose is to warn readers about the corruption of indifference in order to influence change in the new centuries to come. He creates a critical tone for readers by using stylistic devices and rhetorical devices such as imagery, repetition, and pathos in order to truly develop his message that inhumanity and indifference are very similar things that affect us in the same way.

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.

In the world during the time of the Holocaust, there was indifference towards the suffering of millions of Jews. When individuals reflect about the Holocaust, the majority of the time the responsibility of the terrible events is placed upon the perpetrators. However, bystanders and witnesses indirectly affected the victims of the Holocaust as well. The silence of these people played one of the largest roles in the Holocaust, they influenced it by avoiding any type of involvement and by becoming blinded towards the suffering of others. In his Academy Award acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel says, “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”. This exert from his speech reveals the importance of the role that bystanders played in the