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Never Again?
Elie Wiesel maintained ten years of silence on the topic of his experiences. He did not speak about the concentration camps for a decade, until he finally documented his experiences in his memoir, Night. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Wiesel verbalizes the common frustration the victims of the Holocaust felt. Why did no one act? Why did other countries choose to ignore the pleas for help in Europe? The negligence shown by other nations that could have acted to halt the genocide is, arguably, more painful than the Holocaust itself. This is the very reason that Wiesel initially wanted to name his memoir, “And the World has Remained Silent”. He wanted to tell his readers, look, all these horrors happened at that time, mass murders, yet the world had done nothing to stop it. They chose to ignore it. There is a reason why the number one thing children learn in the bullying talks at school is not to stand by and watch it happen. Not doing something means you are taking the side of the bully, or as Wiesel puts it, “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented”. I cannot agree more with this statement, along with his claim that persecution should be the number one thing that the world works to end. After the Holocaust, the world promised, “Never again”. However, the same thing has repeated itself, admittedly on a smaller scale, but still considered genocide. In Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur, there have been ethnic cleansings, and no major world power has truly attempted to end it. The lack of action was a problem at that time, and is a problem today.
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