Summary Of The Perils Of Indifference

On April 12th 1999, Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate, delivered a speech that would change the minds of citizens in America for generations to come. As part of the Millennium Lecture Series, Wiesel discussed his horrific experiences in the concentration camp of Auschwitz and turned them into numerous knowledgeable life lessons. The message of the speech, titled Perils of Indifference, portrays citizens around the world should discourage indifference being tolerated, and it is achieved by creating credibility (ethos in beginning ), by using strict logic and reason (logos used in middle), and by discussing the morality on being indifferent to victims of injustice and cruelty (pathos used in end).

Wiesel subtly influences his audience to feel the agony that he felt during the events of the Holocaust, and the pain that he still feels today over losing so many important people in his life. This is due to his use of pathos throughout the speech, and he addresses that, “No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.” Wiesel understands that his speech can only honor the individuals who lost their lives in the torturous concentration camps, but he can’t speak on their behalf. He goes on to say that he still feels the presence of the people he lost, “The presence of my parents, that of my little sister. The presence of my teachers, my friends, my companions.” Wiesel wanted the

In his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel strives to inform his audience of the unbelievable atrocities of the Holocaust in order to prevent them from ever again responding to inhumanity and injustice with silence and neutrality. The structure or organization of Wiesel’s speech, his skillful use of the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos, combined with powerful rhetorical devices leads his audience to understand that they must never choose silence when they witness injustice. To do so supports the oppressors.

Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor and winner of a Nobel peace prize, stood up on April 12, 1999 at the White House to give his speech, “The Perils of Indifference”. In Wiesel’s speech he was addressing to the nation, the audience only consisted of President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, congress, and other officials. The speech he gave was an eye-opener to the world in his perspective. Wiesel uses a variety of rhetorical strategies and devices to bring lots of emotion and to educate the indifference people have towards the holocaust.

The entire world was so ignorant to such a massacre of horrific events that were right under their noses, so Elie Wiesel persuades and expresses his viewpoint of neutrality to an audience. Wiesel uses the ignorance of the countries during World War II to express the effects of their involvement on the civilians, “And then I explain to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent when and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation” (Weisel). To persuade the audience, Elie uses facts to make the people become sentimental toward the victims of the Holocaust. Also, when Weisel shares his opinion with the audience, he gains people onto his side because of his authority and good reputation. To prove his statement, Wiesel restates a personal encounter with a young Jewish boy after the Holocaust, “‘Who would allow such crimes to be

Wiesel’s speech shows how he worked to keep the memory of those people alive because he knows that people will continue to be guilty, to be accomplices if they forget. Furthermore, Wiesel knows that keeping the memory of those poor, innocent will avoid the repetition of the atrocity done in the future. The stories and experiences of Wiesel allowed for people to see the true horrors of what occurs when people who keep silence become “accomplices” of those who inflict pain towards humans. To conclude, Wiesel chose to use parallelism in his speech to emphasize the fault people had for keeping silence and allowing the torture of innocent

Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust and a Nobel Prize winner. Elie Wiesel delivered once again one of his famous speeches the “The Perils of Indifference”, which was hosted by the White House and accompanied by the President of the United States Barrack Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton and other fellow government officials. When Elie Wiesel was giving out his speech, Elie Wiesel was warning the American people or the millenniums of the dangers of indifference, using his own personal experience to influence the millenniums and American people.

When the First World War broke out the Committee of Union and Progress made a decision to eradicate the entire Armenian population, and have the war to cover it up. This program officially started on April 24th 1915 when armed roundups of the Armenian population began when nearly 300 Armenian political leaders, educators and dignitaries were forced out of their homes and briefly jailed then hanged or shot in the street. (United Human Rights) Any Armenians that were in the army were disarmed and worked till death digging trenches and latrines working as pack horses in what was called labour battalions (Michigan-Dearborn, 1996 ). Another initiative of CUP was to send Armenians to camps out in the Syrian Desert which the population was under the impression that they were de-militarized zones or refugee camps, unfortunately these were actually concentration camps, where the Amish were forced to walk through the desert carrying heavy equipment and were denied water and food, sometimes the caravan guards would force the prisoners to remove all of their clothes and walk through the burning desert till they dropped dead (United Human Rights). If they fell behind they were kicked and beaten and if they did not get back up and re-join the group they were killed outright. The government released violent prisoners and encouraged those to raid and loot the death marches these groups were called “butcher Battalions”. If any Turkish people were found to be

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

Holocaust. Death. Suffering. These are but a few of the words that may begin to describe this tragic period in the history of man. The Perils of Indifference and Night are both publications by the Elie Wiesel, one of the many victims to the Holocaust, but one of the very few victims who lived to tell his story. Once liberated from these concentration camps, Elie has done much to make people around the world more aware of the indescribable events that occurred during his time in these camps, and make sure that people will speak out against these events instead of staying silent, so that these events may be prevented in the future. He wrote many pieces and delivered many speeches in attempt to lift the world out of indifference. I believe that Elie’s novel Night communicates his message more effectively than his speech, Perils of Indifference. Not only does it convey his message of that we all must speak out against

Is it possible for human rights to be actualized for everyone? Can there be true equality? Is it feasible to believe everyone can have all 30 human rights? No, it’s impossible for Human Rights to be actualized for all people.

Utilization of the repetition of questions allows Wiesel to make the audience ultimately feel as if they are in control of deciding what they think is morally correct. Within almost every paragraph, Wiesel asks his listeners rhetorical questions which truly have one compassionate answer. By using the questions, Wiesel manages to assist the listener in choosing his side without simply telling them what the right answer is. For example, when Wiesel asks if “the human being [has] become less indifferent and more human,” he implies that indifference in unconditionally inhumane. The question of “what will the legacy of this vanishing century be?” fills the audience with the duty of making the end of the century and the upcoming century the most

Nobel Peace Prize-Winning Author, Elie Wiesel, in his sympathetic speech, “The Perils of Indifference,” warns people about the dangers of indifference. He supports his claim by describing a scenario with a young Jewish boy and him being saved by American soldiers from a concentration camp. Wiesel also supports his claim by telling a story about how indifference is worse than anger and hatred through descriptive words. He finally uses imagery to give us a descriptive image of what indifference could do for the future. Wiesel’s purpose is to warn people of the danger of indifference in order to inform people of all the harm indifference can because. He establishes a serious tone for the readers by using literary devices such as Repetition, Structure, and Imagery in order to achieve his message that indifference

Holocaust survivor and author of the novel, Night, Elie Wiesel in his speech, “The Perils of Indifference,” claims that indifference is not only a sin, but is an act of dehumanization. He begins to develop his claim by defining the word “indifference”, then enlightens the audience about his personal experiences living through the war. Finally he asks the audience how they will change as they enter a new millennium. Wiesel’s purpose throughout his speech is to convince his audience not to be indifferent to those who were, and are, being treated cruelly and unjust. He creates tones of tranquility, disappointment, abandonment, and happiness in order for his audience to see his perspective during the horrific times of the Holocaust.

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything,” - Albert Einstein. Indifference, is the action of seeing all sorts of wrongs, yet, refusing to take action against it. We, as a people, as a society, have grown comfortable, too comfortable to the point that when we see the horrors, the atrocities that happen from across the world, we immediately change the channel, we turn the page, looking for something irrelevant like what Kim Kardashian is wearing or some other celebrity gossip. Therefore, we as individuals have the moral responsibility to correct the errors of our ways, in order to prevent further atrocities.