In March of 1944, fifteen-year-old Elie Wiesel and his family were sent to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, where he was tattooed with the number A-7713. His mother and sister were killed shortly thereafter; he and his father were later sent to Buchenwald, where his father would die just weeks before the camp was liberated. In the span of barely a year, the young man had had his whole life ripped away. He would later write in his memoir, Night :
"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."
Wiesel went on to an acclaimed literary and humanitarian career, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He was instrumental in the building of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Having visited, I can say that it is a harrowing and humbling experience. In everything, he spoke on behalf of those killed, although he knew that he was unable to truly represent them.
A defender of human dignity, and an outspoken critic of racism, bigotry, violence, and oppression, Wiesel penned one of my favorite quotes of all time: "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." He warned mankind against the depravity of apathy towards our fellow man; he knew that it was every good man's duty to stand up to evil, that, as Edmund Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech he said, "Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant."
This reminded me of another quote I read recently, this one by John Stuart Mill: "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
As Kipling and Orwell knew, civilians are able to live in peace and tranquility only because the soldier guards them while they sleep, ready to do violence on their behalf. If not for the martial cunning and efficiently deadly violence of General George S. Patton and the men of his Third Army, who liberated Buchenwald, we may have never known the literary genius or full-throated humanitarianism of Elie Wiesel. If only unencumbered by political concerns, perhaps they could have liberated it more quickly; perhaps fewer innocents would have had to die...
It's important to remember that we are all culpable for the things that happen to our fellow human beings. We have a voice. We have agency. We can make a difference. To portray the villains of history as inhuman devils and the heroes of history as angelic saints is to relieve ourselves of the responsibility of taking action to stop evil and injustice wherever we find it. As Rorshach said in Watchmen, "It is not God who kills the Children. Not Fate that butchers them or Destiny that feeds them to the dogs... It's us. Only us."
There is evil in the world, and there is suffering; but there is also good; there is also hope. As long as we are willing to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves, there is hope.
In one of his most famous works, the play The Trial of God, which was based on actual events at he experienced at Auschwitz, Wiesel had three Jewish rabbis put God on trial for allowing the death and suffering of His children during a pogrom in seventeenth-century Poland. After lengthy arguments during which God can find only Satan himself to defend Him, the rabbis find God guilty of breaking his covenant with His people. Then, after what is described as an "infinity of silence"...
They prayed.
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