Hello and welcome to this special edition of ‘World in Focus.’ Tonight we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Shoah (also known as the Holocaust). I’m Audra Kahill and I thank you for joining me tonight. In our program we have Eliezer Wiesel, a holocaust survivor, sharing his experiences. We will also focus on the Catholic Church’s struggles throughout the Shoah and discuss reasons for changed emphasis between Pope Pius XII’s Christmas address to the 1965 Papal Document on Non-Christian Religions. We will also explore how the teachings of Jesus and the Catholic Social Teachings are modelled through André Trocmé, a rescuer of the Jews.
We will begin our program by listening to the experiences of Eliezer Wiesel, a Jew who survived the
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I have the same reasons to give up on man. And yet … I don’t.’ ‘I have faith. It’s a wounded faith.’
Q: Do you believe God created the Shoah?
A: No, ‘God did not send down Auschwitz... Human beings did it.’
Q: Do you believe God was present during the Shoah?
A: When prisoners were hanged before us at Auschwitz I heard someone say, “Where is God?” I told myself, “God is there.” ‘Even in the camps I never divorced with God.’
Q: What was your reaction when you found out no one spoke out against the Holocaust while it was happening?
A: ‘During the darkest of times, we felt abandoned.’ ‘That is why I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering... Sometimes we must interfere.’ ‘What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander.’
Q: I agree with your idea of interfering when human lives are at risk. We must have the courage to speak out against injustices in the hope of making the world a better place. Thank you for sharing with us tonight. We appreciate your words of inspiration.
The model, Church as Institution embodies the idea that there is a hierarchy within the
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“Throughout the Shoah, Trocmé preached to his people according to his conscience which told him to ‘resist whenever [their] adversaries demand of [them] obedience contrary to the orders of the gospel.’ When Jewish refugees entered the village ‘the refugees were welcomed without hesitation.’ Over the course of four years 5,000 Jewish lives were saved and ‘not a single Jew was turned over to the authorities.’ When Trocmé and two of his colleagues were arrested for refusing to sign commitment to all government orders, the town continued to shelter Jews for the five weeks that they were detained.” The actions of Trocmé closely align to the Catholic Social Teachings (CSTs) of Preferential Option for the Poor and Dignity of the Human Person (refer appendix A). Trocmé exhibits the CST of preferential option for the poor through his decisions to make the plight of Jewish people of higher importance than the rest of society. He also displays the social teaching of dignity of the human person when he says to the authorities “I do not know what a Jew is. I know only human beings.” This demonstrates his belief in equality for all people paralleling the definition of dignity of the human
Though it took 10 years for Wiesel to speak of his tragic memories of the Holocaust, he does an excellent job of fearlessly sharing his story for the others who cannot. His struggles with faith and search for meaning are inspiring. Night immediately grabs the reader’s attention and holds it until the last page; it leaves the reader yearning for more stories of Wiesel life. Works Cited "Elie Wiesel Interview -- Page 3 / 4 -- Academy of Achievement."
I thought angrily. How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies? … Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. … But look at these men whom You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? The pray before You! They praise Your name! … I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man.” (Wiesel
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” (Elie Wiesel)
Most historical events, whether beneficial or detrimental to society, bear witnesses. Regardless of how many total were affected by the event, each person owns a personal account of what they endured during the event. Elie Wiesel, author of Night, expresses the personal account of Elizer, a Jewish teenager, who fought to stay alive during the holocaust, and shows the importance of witness accounts, the will to survive, and the remembrance of past historical events. Night encompasses the idea of “Literature of Witness” by simultaneously showing how millions of people were affected by the holocaust and how each person, principally Elizer, has their own personal story to tell to understand and remember that horrendous time.
After he became a free man, it dawned on him that he had to speak for those who were silenced by this atrocity. He made it his life's mission to inform people of his story not for pity, but for prevention, “.that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides with this. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.” Elie made the best of a bad situation.
When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.” (Moore) While living in brutal conditions, Wiesel did everything he could for himself and others. He prayed almost four times a day for the ending of the holocaust. Fighting through starvation, Wiesel was never selfish and continuously worked to help other Jews escape. While helping others, Wiesel was still a young man with hope to escape himself and tell his stories to the world.
In April, 1945, Elie Wiesel was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp after struggling with hunger, beatings, losing his entire family, and narrowly escaping death himself. He at first remained silent about his experiences, because it was too hard to relive them. However, eventually he spoke up, knowing it was his duty not to let the world forget the tragedies resulting from their silence. He wrote Night, a memoir of his and his family’s experience, and began using his freedom to spread the word about what had happened and hopefully prevent it from happening again. In 1999, he was invited to speak at the Millennium Lectures, in front of the president, first lady, and other important governmental figures,. In his speech, “The Perils of Indifference”, he uses rhetoric devices to get emotional responses and to connect with the audience. He wants to create awareness of the dangers of indifference and show how there needs to be change. His speech eloquently calls out the government for their lack of response during the Holocaust, and warns against continued disregard for the struggles of others. He sees indifference as being the ally of the enemy, and without compassion there is no hope for the
“I am obsessed with silence because of the silence of the world. I do not understand why the world was silent when we needed its outcry. I always come back to that problem. Where were the humanists, the leaders, the liberals, the spokesmen for mankind? The victims needed them. If they had spoken up, the slaughtered would not have succeeded in his task.” - Elie Wiesel
As the second cold war came to an end, the real truth about the Jewish Holocaust...
Eliezer Wiesel loses his faith in god, family and humanity through the experiences he has from the Nazi concentration camp.
For a Jew arriving in America from Europe starting anew marked a defining point. After losing six million Jews in the Holocaust, the United States of America served as one of the most secure havens for reestablishing a strong Jewish presence ...
“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
In his address to Ronald Reagan, Elie Wiesel attempts to convince the president not to visit the Bitburg cemetery. Weisel is well aware of President Reagan’s situation, and thus, he crafts his speech around rhetorical techniques, namely concession refutation, repetition, and the appeals.
Bressman, Eric (2006). Fighting Indifference: Looking at World Responses to the Holocaust with Elie Wiesel. Columbia University.
Dwork, Deborah, and R. J. Van Pelt. Holocaust: a History. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.