So I just finished reading "Night" by Elie Wiesel. It was an amazing book that I recommend to everyone. I think the thing that I liked the most about it was how real it was. Most Holocaust accounts mix their emotional responses with the events that happened. There is nothing wrong with that, and that work speaks to me as well. But the fact that Wiesel just described what happened, a very factual autobiography of his experiences, struck me because of how unique of a response he turned out. He described the raw, human needs for hunger and survival that overcame him and the lack of emotion he felt. Wiesel conveyed a sense of what happened in a deep way, relating that he was only emotional after when he could actually process anything. But my favorite thing about the book was Elie Wiesel's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech that was printed in the back. I'm just going to list some of my favorite passages and quotes...
"And that is why 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. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant."
"Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed that free. How can one not be sensitive to their plight? Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere."
"There is so much to be done, there is so much that can be done....One person of integrity can make a difference, a difference between life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims above all need 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."
This pretty much has summed up my beliefs. And that is why I want to do something someday to make my life worthwhile and work to fix some of the horrendous things that we overlook. Everyone has the power to make a difference...but most choose to ignore it and just remain complacent in a simpler life. And we sit here worrying about our precious money and our precious super-power economy. We have the greatest gift of all...the Bill of Rights and all the freedoms our ancestors bled for. We trade in our cell phones every couple of years for new ones even though the chips used in them as well as computers are fueling a gruesome civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Do we think? No. Every time we spend money, we are voting; we are supporting where it came from and how it was produced. But few realize that. No one cares to take the time to break free from our consumer driven society and ridiculous worries. Yes the economy is a legitimate concern...but there are much more serious concerns out there. One billion people around the world are hungry, and about 24, 000 die each day from hunger/malnutrition. Now THAT is horrifying. The genocide in Darfur, Sudan is left unchecked. Now THAT seems worth some concern. Too many people around the world live in fear inside war zones of chaos. Now THAT is life-threatening. And so much more is going on all around us right now. Open your eyes and your minds. Burst the little bubble where the majority of Americans live in an ignorant bliss of self-concern and petty issues. There is SOOO much more to life. We learn history in school, but we don't internalize it and use it. People said after the Holocaust "Not on our watch...this will not happen again." But look around, people have forgotten how close history is to us in the present. Why is this STILL happening? It's shameful. We close our eyes to things that we don't like to know but that does not make them go away.
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