Mindy Phillips Lawrence
A Word on Elie Wiesel
“Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all
those who need us desperately.”
Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize
acceptance speech, December 10, 1986
It is fitting to begin this blog on the date that writer and humanitarian Elie Wiesel died at 87. He spent most of his life bearing witness to the hell of the Holocaust.
Night, the first book written by Wiesel, is a mere 120 pages, a slim volume filled with pain, terror and inhumanity. Its length is part of its impact. It bears witness to unthinkable actions occurring in the Nazi concentration camps in 1944 against Jews and others deemed unworthy of life by Hitler’s forces. It gives us a serving of what the unthinkable was like in hopes that it will never happen again.
Although NIGHT was written about events taking place in 1944, it eerily reflects modern day questions about torture and intolerance. Here we are at a time when far-rightism is again rising. We see Neo-Nazi groups marching in Europe and the United States and echoes of hatred and indifference in politics around the world.
Although we've lost Wiesel, it was his purpose to direct all of us to use our lives to make sure another Holocaust never occurs. Are we up to the task? Oh, humanity, are we up to the task?
