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"Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair." What do you think Elie Wiesel meant by this statement from...

The quote comes from Elie Wiesel's Nobel Peace Prize lecture in 1986, almost thirty years after the publication of his memoir Night, which recounts the year he spent in Nazi concentration camps and his miraculous liberation. In his speech he urges mankind not to forget the atrocities of the Nazis, as well as other examples where senseless brutality has proliferated. His memoir is part of that "remembering." The Spanish philosopher George Santayana once said,...

The quote comes from Elie Wiesel's Nobel Peace Prize lecture in 1986, almost thirty years after the publication of his memoir Night, which recounts the year he spent in Nazi concentration camps and his miraculous liberation. In his speech he urges mankind not to forget the atrocities of the Nazis, as well as other examples where senseless brutality has proliferated. His memoir is part of that "remembering." The Spanish philosopher George Santayana once said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This seems to sum up what Wiesel had in mind. In order not to forget, one must recall the despair that one felt in the face of hardship and move on from there.


Wiesel uses the Biblical example of Job, who had everything taken away from him, but remained hopeful and eventually rebuilt his life. Wiesel did the same thing, yet he has dedicated his life to remembering the despair he experienced in the camps and spreading the word about those horrors. In Night, he produces a litany of ways in which men could perform inhumane acts toward their fellow men, yet throughout the book there are also examples of acts of hope and generosity. Ultimately, Wiesel believes mankind must "reject" despair for the hope which drove Job to rebuild. In 2016, with wars raging on four of the seven continents and terrorism an imminent threat, Wiesel's words are even more important for the world, even if it seems that, in the ensuing years, his speech has fallen on deaf ears. Moreover, his book Night remains an important reminder and a document of protest against the sort of inhumanity which mankind seems unable to overcome.

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