Analysis Of The Perils Of Indifference By Elie Wiesel

In Elie Wiesel’s speech titled “The Perils of indifference” he discusses the idea that individuals are slowly becoming desensitized to the ongoing crisis’ that fill the world around them, slowly causing indifference to overtake all other emotions toward these events. The act of indifference is one that causes society to regress and can be most detrimental because of the lack of emotion that it brings upon those who turn to it, creating inaction and no emotion where it is warranted. Through the point of view of someone who was directly affected by both social and governmental indifference as being a Holocaust survivor, the speech gains more weight and therefore is more convincing to the reader.

Indifference has become incredibly prevalent in our society through individual inaction, in which they turn to indifference to excuse themselves from the guilt of perceiving these issues, and therefore are able to avoid feeling responsibility to help those in need. As a society, it is easy to believe that if one is indifferent then there are no consequences for inaction, both as an individual and society as a
Throughout the speech the author often relates back to what it felt like to be a young boy in such harsh and terrifying living conditions during the time he was held at the concentration camps. He speaks about how many of the prisoners along with himself believed that the horrible things that were happening to them were being kept secret, “that the leaders of the free world did not know what was going on”, and “if they knew… surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene”. The thousands of people who were being held against their will were made to believe that the horrors that were taking place were closely guarded secrets. Yet of course the government knew, they just did not act upon it