Perils Of Indifference Elie Wiesel Analysis

On September 30 of 1928, Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Transylvania. He led a quiet life in a small mountain town. At the age of 15, Wiesel, his mother and father, and three sisters were taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. It was there that, the Germans murdered his mother and youngest sister. After surviving a year of horrible atrocities, Wiesel and his father were separated from his other sisters and were relocated to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Wiesel’s father died as a prisoner of the camp. On April 11, 1945, US troops invaded Germany and freed the prisoners of Buchenwald. Once Wiesel was liberated, he went on to write several novels, articles, and poems about his experiences in the concentration camps. Later on in …show more content…
When he was a child, Wiesel was extremely religious, studying “Torah, Talmud, and Kabbalah” (Henry 1) everyday. Wiesel invited God into his speech by claiming “we”, being all of the Jews, felt as if they were being abandoned by God. However, they kept their faith, believing it was better to suffer with Christ than against Christ. Wiesel claimed it was “better an unjust God than an indifferent one” (Wiesel 2). This represents Wiesel’s philosophy towards the Holocaust, and about the fact that multiple countries were indeed aware of the cruel behaviors that the Jews were facing. By ignoring the gruesome events occurring in Germany, this made the ignorant countries worse than Germany because they were aware and chose to do nothing. Evidence that the countries, such as the United States, ignored the cries of the Jews resurfaced in the tale of St. Louis. The St. Louis tale is rather a melancholy one. 1,000 newly liberated Jews fresh out of concentration camps arrived in the American Harbors, and they were sent back to Nazi Germany. Wiesel questions the United States priority, since he believed that corporations were more concerned about trade relations than human