Elie Wiesel: A Retrospective, Week #8
Elie Wiesel received Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. His acceptance speech and related lecture, “Hope, Despair and Memory,” which was delivered in Oslo the day after his acceptance speech, are amongst his most well-known public addresses. This week we revisit his famous words by looking at particularly evocative passages so that we can reflect upon Wiesel’s call to action against indifference in the face of hatred.
If you would like to explore this historic moment, here are some helpful links:
- Watch the acceptance speech at the Nobel Prize website.
- Read the acceptance speech.
- Read “Hope, Despair and Memory.”
Passage #1:
From The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech:
I remember he asked his father: “Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?”
And now the boy is turning to me. “Tell me,” he asks, “what have you done with my future? What have you done with your life?” And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those that would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.
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 whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Passage #2:
From The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech:
As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our lives will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.
Passage #3:
From “Hope, Despair, and Memory”:
We thought it would be enough to tell of the tidal wave of hatred which broke over the Jewish people for men everywhere to decide once and for all to put an end to hatred of anyone who is “different”―whether black or white, Jew or Arab, Christian or Moslem―anyone whose orientation differs politically, philosophically, sexually. A naive undertaking? Of course. But not without a certain logic.
We tried. It was not easy. At first, because of the language: language failed us. We would have to invent a new vocabulary, for our own words were inadequate, anemic.
And then too, the people around use refused to listen; and even those who listened refused to believe; and even those who believed could not comprehend. Can you understand, can anyone understand how a nation of such culture, of such power, could all of a sudden invent death camps, death factories, and mobilize its entire industry, its science, its philosophy, its passion, to kill Jewish people?
Passage #4:
From “Hope, Despair, and Memory”:
Let us remember Job who, having lost everything―his children, his friends, his possessions, and even his argument with God―still found the strength to begin again, to rebuild his life. Job was determined not to repudiate the creation, however imperfect, that God had entrusted to him.
Job, our ancestor. Job, our contemporary. Everything in our tradition tells us that Job was not a Jew, but his suffering concerns us. It concerns us so much that we have taken his language into our liturgy. His ordeal concerns all humanity. Did he ever lose faith? If so, he rediscovered it within his rebellion. He demonstrated that faith is essentially a rebellion, and that hope is possible beyond despair but not without it. The source of his hope was memory, as it must be ours. Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.
Passage #5:
From “Hope, Despair, and Memory”:
The lesson, the only lesson that I have learned from my experiences, is twofold: first, that there are no plausible answers to what we have endured. There are no theological answers, there are no psychological answers, there are no literary answers, there are no philosophical answers, there are no religious answers. The only conceivable answer is a moral answer. This means there must be a moral element in whatever we do. Second, that just as despair can be given to me only by another human being, hope too can be given to me only by another human being. Mankind must remember also, and above all, that like hope and whatever hope signifies, peace is not God’s gift to his creatures. Peace is a very special gift―it is our gift to each other.
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