FALL 2007Niko Karolidis
Honorable Mention in the 2007 Helen Glass Essay for Peace ContestHow do you survive after seeing people murdered right in front of your eyes? What if some of those people were your family? Would you want revenge? Would you also want to die because you wouldn't think you could survive? Or would you dedicate yourself to keeping their memories alive by fighting against hatred and working for peace? Elie Wiesel chose to work for peace, fight hatred, and keep the memory of his murdered family alive. His work honors the memory of his family and all the victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Wiesel dedicated himself to preventing genocide and creating peace.
Elie Wiesel was 15 years old when he was taken by the Nazis to Auschwitz, a concentration camp. He says in Night that the first thing he saw when he got off that train was live children getting thrown in fires and their bodies being burned into ash and smoke. After seeing the terrible things happening, he started to wonder if there really was a god and, if there is one, where has he been. During the book, he was separated from his mother and younger sister, and that was the last time they were mentioned. He was, however, lucky enough to stay with his dad until almost the end of his journey. Suddenly, when the prisoners were being moved to a new camp, Buchenwald, Wiesel's father was beaten when they arrived. As a result of his injuries, Wiesel's father died shortly afterwards. It was the same camp where his mother and younger sister were killed. However, it was a short time later that the Jews were liberated by the Allies. After the war, he was sent to the hospital where he recovered. Eventually, he studied in Paris and became a journalist, but he didn't like thinking or talking about his experiences in the concentration camp. It wasn't until 1956, more than ten years after he was liberated from the camp, that he decided to tell his story. Wiesel was accidentally hit by a car, and during his recovery, he began working on Night. In 1958, Night was published, and Wiesel's commitment to remembering the Holocaust and creating peace was born.
In 1986 Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. At that time Wiesel was a teacher at Boston University, but he had also written 25 books about the Nazi Holocaust and genocide. The award came just after Wiesel and his wife created the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. It is an organization committed to ending violence, creating change, and making peace. His mission states that it is to "combat indifference, intolerance and injustice through international dialogues and youth focus programs that promote acceptance, understanding, and equality." Clearly the foundation is committed to Wiesel's ideas about peace and continues to this day.
In 1999, Wiesel made one of his greatest speeches. In it, he spoke about indifference. He said that indifference makes human beings less human. He said that indifference is more dangerous than hatred. Wiesel meant that working for peace is something that requires effort. The things he lived through happened because nobody cared.
In conclusion, Wiesel turned a terrible dehumanizing experience into a positive force for change. His books, especially Night, are helping to create the changes he wanted in the world by making people care and by getting rid of indifference. Martin Luther King Jr once said that true peace is not the absence of tension but the presence of justice. Elie Wiesel could have become bitter and full of hatred, but instead he became a champion of peace.
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Saturday, November 17, 2007 at 10:15 PM
