Elie Wiesel Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech Summary

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Elie Wiesel delivered his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech on December 10th, 1986. His speech consisted of his experience in the Holocaust. As a survivor of a terrible event forever stained in history, he expresses the need to interfere in situations where someone is being persecuted. When Wiesel was a child, he asked his father, “Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?” Now, as he accepts the Nobel Prize, he stresses the importance of helping when human beings become victims of torment. When he was a child, Elie Wiesel was thrown into a world of chaos. Witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust, Wiesel can recall his memories and feelings. “I remember his bewilderment…his anguish. It…happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.” Wiesel experienced the Holocaust first-hand and proceeds to describe some of his memories from when he was a child. During the Holocaust, Hitler blamed the Jewish people as the reason Germany was unstable. The Jewish people were used as a scapegoat, and were persecuted. Many …show more content…

Wiesel answers back, “…I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget…the world did know and remain[ed] silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.” He explains that when a situation arises where human lives are endangered, people must interfere and right the wrongs. When people are “…persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.” Ignoring or being neutral about the issue only helps the persecutor, interference is necessary when human lives are at stake. People must help the persecuted regardless of “…national borders and

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