This is what I say to the young Jewish boy wondering what I have done with his years. What all these victims need above all 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. As long as one child is hungry, our lives will be filled with anguish and shame. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. One person – a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death. There is much to be done, there is much that can be done. Isn’t this the meaning of Alfred Nobel’s legacy? Wasn’t his fear of war a shield against war? And action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious danger of all. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed from her horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land. I trust Israel, for I have faith in the Jewish people. Something must be done about their suffering, and soon. Violence and terrorism are not the answer. And then, too, there are the Palestinians to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore. Human rights are being violated on every continent. There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention: victims of hunger, of racism, and political persecution, writers and poets, prisoners in so many lands governed by the Left and by the Right. And Nelson Mandela‘s interminable imprisonment. As is the denial of Solidarity and its leader Lech Walesa‘s right to dissent. To me, Andrei Sakharov‘s isolation is as much of a disgrace as Josef Biegun’s imprisonment. Apartheid is, in my view, as abhorrent as anti-Semitism. It would be unnatural for me not to make Jewish priorities my own: Israel, Soviet Jewry, Jews in Arab lands … But there are others as important to me. For I belong to a traumatized generation, one that experienced the abandonment and solitude of our people. Of course, since I am a Jew profoundly rooted in my peoples’ memory and tradition, my first response is to Jewish fears, Jewish needs, Jewish crises. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.Īnd then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remain silent. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. “What have you done with my future? What have you done with your life?”Īnd I tell him that I have tried. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?Īnd now the boy is turning to me: “Tell me,” he asks. I remember: he asked his father: “Can this be true?” This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. A young Jewish boy discovered the kingdom of night. I remember: it happened yesterday or eternities ago. It pleases me because I may say that this honor belongs to all the survivors and their children, and through us, to the Jewish people with whose destiny I have always identified. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions. It frightens me because I wonder: do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? … I do not. It is with a profound sense of humility that I accept the honor you have chosen to bestow upon me. (The speech differs somewhat from the written speech.) Elie Wiesel’s Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, December 10, 1986 Elie Wiesel held his Acceptance Speech on 10 December 1986, in the Oslo City Hall, Norway.
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