July 3, 2016
AGAINST INDIFFERENCE:
Elie Wiesel gave the Holocaust a face and the world a conscience (SARAH WILDMAN, July 3, 2016, JTA)
Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate who became a leading icon of Holocaust remembrance and a global symbol of conscience, died on Saturday at 87. His death was the result of natural causes, the World Jewish Congress said in a statement.A philosopher, professor and author of such seminal works of Holocaust literature as "Night" and "Dawn," Wiesel, perhaps more than any other figure, came to embody the legacy of the Holocaust and the worldwide community of survivors."I have tried to keep memory alive," Wiesel said at the Nobel peace prize ceremony in 1986. "I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices."Often, he would say the "opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference."The quest to challenge indifference was a driving force in Wiesel's writing, advocacy and public presence. Though he considered himself primarily a writer, by the end of the 1970s he had settled into the role of moral compass, a touchstone for presidents and a voice that challenged easy complacency about history.Wiesel spent the majority of his public life speaking of the atrocities he had witnessed and asking the public to consider other acts of cruelty around the world, though he drew the line at direct comparisons with the Holocaust. "I am always advocating the utmost care and prudence when one uses that word." he told JTA in 1980.
It is perhaps wrong to say that the Holocaust would not hold such a central place in our memories but for Mr. Wiesel. Contrary to myth, it had not been largely ignored until the 60s and there were other survivors who wrote as well, or better, about the camps and their meaning. But he did become a living symbol. Indeed, it was hard to separate the man from what he had come to symbolize.
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 3, 2016 8:53 AM