The Perils of Indifference

By opening his speech with his own story, Wiesel presents at once the devastating effects of indifference and the impact achievable by those who reject indifference. Wiesel is speaking at the White House on the 54th anniversary of his liberation from the Nazis’ death camp Buchenwald. He states that, at the time of his liberation, despite his freedom, he felt no joy: “He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again” (Paragraph 2). This observation makes clear the severity of the effects of the Holocaust, which was enabled by indifference, on this child’s psyche. Yet in this same paragraph, Wiesel introduces the theme of The Interconnectedness of Humanity—though he felt no joy in that moment, he did feel gratitude. With this emotion, which he believes “is what defines the humanity of the human being” (Paragraph 3), Wiesel suggests some restoration of what was stolen from this boy.

In this opening, Wiesel incorporates as well The Relevance of the Past, using perspective to draw threads of connection between the past and present. The use of third person, rather than first person, to describe his experience as “a young Jewish boy” (Paragraph 2) creates a sense of distance: that boy is not the person who is giving the speech, yet simultaneously, he is. Similarly, the American soldiers who Wiesel references are not the same “American people” (Paragraph 2) to whom Wiesel is grateful, yet simultaneously, they are. The president, Wiesel even notes, is the “Commander-in-Chief of the army that freed me” (Paragraph 3), which is again both not quite true, yet true. The past is not the present. Yet it is present, demanding attention and reflection. Wiesel drives this point home as he summarizes “the legacy of this vanishing century” (Paragraph 4). His call for reflection, in which he sums the century up as “[s]o much violence; so much indifference” (Paragraph 4), prompts the further question of how the “new millennium” will compare.

In introducing indifference, Wiesel acknowledges the allure of it, observing that “indifference can be tempting—more than that, seductive” (Paragraph 6). Indifference “is so much easier” (Paragraph 6) than the alternatives. However, his language highlights the low cost of avoiding this behavior relative to the high cost of adopting it.

Regarding the cost of rejecting indifference, Wiesel portrays staying “involved in another person's pain and despair” (Paragraph 6) as a small request to make of those who are not suffering. At first, he asks if indifference is, at least sometimes, necessary “simply to keep one's sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine” (Paragraph 5). Staying sane may seem to have weight. However, in this question, the other items listed, as well as the adverb “simply,” indicate that Wiesel is being hyperbolic in suggesting one could literally lose their sanity if not for practicing indifference. In short, Wiesel’s implied answer to this question is a resounding “no.” The following paragraph further emphasizes his stance: to choose against indifference is merely “awkward, troublesome,” involving little more than “rude interruptions” (Paragraph 6). Rejecting indifference, in comparison to the suffering of others, costs us very little.

In contrast, choosing indifference has a high cost, one that arguably undermines our own humanity. Wiesel emphasizes The Inhumanity of Indifference, arguing that to choose indifference “reduces the Other to an abstraction” (Paragraph 6); for “the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbors are of no consequence […] Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest” (Paragraph 6). Wiesel juxtaposes his portrayal of the indifferent person with a paragraph describing the Muselmanner he observed in the camp: “They no longer felt pain, hunger, thirst. They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it” (Paragraph 7). The image of the Muselmanner is not only an appeal to pathos but also a powerful metaphor. Their absence of feeling parallels the aforementioned absence of interest in human connectivity. In other words, the indifferent person is, “in both moral and metaphysical terms” (Paragraph 4), a Muselmanner: feeling nothing, already dead. This assessment culminates in what Wiesel concludes is “one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century’s wide-ranging experiments in good and evil” (Paragraph 12). Namely, because humans are interconnected, indifference harms not only the ignored victims but also the practitioners: “in denying their humanity, we betray our own. Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment” (Paragraphs 10-11).

Using rhetorical questions in particular, Wiesel then turns the speech toward the relevance of the past in the context of the new millennium, urging his audience toward compassion and action. Though the past century “will be judged, and judged severely” (Paragraph 4), Wiesel notes that “good things have also happened in this traumatic century” (Paragraph 19). This duality echoes the duality of past and present noted earlier, and it hints at the duality of choice. Wiesel couches his call to action in the list of questions posed in Paragraphs 22 and 23, which strive to make the audience’s decision toward indifference immediate and undeniable. These questions emphasize the autonomy of the audience in this decision, framing indifference not as mere passiveness, but as a choice.

In his concluding lines, Wiesel hints at the cyclical nature of history, returning to the symbol of his child-self to represent the power of remembrance. Indifference is to forget, and it compounds victims’ suffering: their “pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten” (Paragraph 10). In contrast, Wiesel describes the young boy from the start of his speech, his child-self, as having “accompanied the old man I have become throughout these years of quest and struggle” (Paragraph 25). The boy is present, even now—never forgotten. Wiesel’s commitment to keeping those memories with him, even as he enters the new millennium, indicate his continued commitment to remembrance. The two combative forces that he shares with this boy, “extraordinary hope and profound fear” (Paragraph 25), also call back to the start of the speech, to Wiesel’s feelings on his first day of freedom as a child liberated from a Nazi death camp. All the connections drawn between past and present, and among humans in general, point to the capacity of remembrance to combat indifference.