“The most tragic of all prisoners were the “Muselmanner,” as they were called. Wrapped in their torn blankets, they would sit or lie on the ground, staring vacantly into space, unaware of who or where they were, strangers to their surroundings. ” This quote from Elie Wiesel’s speech “The Perils of Indifference,” shows that indifference kills people by making them lose purpose in living. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, lived a life full of indifferent people. He suffered behind the gates of concentration camps while German citizens he had once know stood back and watched him and thousands of others suffer.
Elie’s speech “The Perils of Indifference,” he gives at the White House in front of the president and many other important government officials, shows that indifference is a dangerous trait for the world to have because it is killing people before they are actually dead. To begin, people who practice indifference become just as bad as the enemy. By standing by and watching, or turning their backs on suffering people, they become an accomplice to the person who was originally causing people to suffer.
In Night, Elie tells us about his horrid experiences of being marched through German town streets. He writes, “From ehind their windows, from behind their shutters, our fellow citizens watched as we passed. “(pg. 19) This example shows that the citizens who were not only the Jews neighbors but also the Jews friends, now hid whenever they saw them coming down their streets. It is odious that in the time of the Jews greatest suffering when they needed help the most, their fellow citizens turned their backs on them.
It is as if the German citizens had been swept under by a wave of indifference, and even if they wanted to, they could not find a way to pull themselves out from under the waves vigorous current. This all shows that hen a person is put under pressure, it is easier for them to become indifferent. They might even feel indifference is necessary at times not only to keep their sanity but also to avoid becoming the talk of the century. Thus, the more the enemy threatens, the less power a person feels they have and the greater the enemy’s strength becomes.
This is why indifference is dangerous to the world because while the enemy continues to grow stronger, the victims are torn apart and begin to give up on their lives. All in all, the ones who are indifferent, are doing the enemy a favor, which then turns them into the enemy too. In ddition, indifference is worse than anger or hate. Anger and hate are emotions, so they have reactions. When we are angry we yell or scream, that is a reaction. Indifference is the absence of compassion, so there is nothing there, not even a slight reaction. In Night, Elie continuously struggled with remaining faithful to God.
In his speech he gives at the White House he says, “Better an unjust God than an indifferent one. For us to be ignored by God was a harsher punishment than to be a victim of His anger. Man can live far from God — not outside God. ” This quote is saying that it would be better to have god be angry at s, than to be completely abandoned by him. Elie was worried God wasn’t with him anymore and that scared him even more than having god mad at him. This shows that we can live with a person angry at us our whole life, but we can not live without them in our life at all.
This is because when someone is angry with someone else they are still thinking about them, but indifference is a lack of compassion, so they do not care what happens to anyone else as long as nothing is happening to themselves. This behavior sends a message to the suffering people saying they are neither worth our time, nor are they worth our energy. This is perilous because suffering people will start thinking that if they are not even worth someone’s hate, then what is the point in them living at all.
And as a nation, we should never allow anyone to feel that way about themselves, no matter what hardships they are facing. To sum up, a lack of compassion is worse than anger or hate because beneath them there is still love, but beneath indifference there is nothing. Finally, it is the duty of the citizens to stand up and fight indifference. It takes a lot of courage to stand up to one person, but it takes true bravery to stand up against a whole country of people. The White Rose” is a story about three teenagers who realized what Hitler was doing to the Jewish people and decided it was time for someone to take a stand.
Hans and Sophie Scholl, along with their friend Christoph Probst, decided to make a leaflet to expose Hitler’s malevolent ways. They believed, “It was the duty of the citizen, even in times of war, to stand up against an evil regime, especially when it is sending hundreds of thousands of its citizens to their deaths. “(pg. 82) They knew it was essential for citizens to stand up because they were the only ones who could make the situation better. The suffering eople can not stand up to their enemy without help from others, and as one nation it is our duty to help take down evil.
The teens were eventually caught and arrested, then sentenced to death for treason. Even though they perished while doing it, these three teens are just one example of citizens who stood up to indifference, and won the battle. They knew how dangerous it would be to stand up to Hitler, but that did not stop them from being an exponent for the Jews. They exposed Hitler to numerous German citizens and got the ones who agreed with them to come out of their shell and stand up too. The story of The White Rose” shows that if citizens do not do their job and stand up to evil then our world will suffer greatly.
People who are suffering can not take down an enemy all by themselves and if people do not step in to help them, then they will be just as easy of a target as the Jews were. All in all, it is our duty as citizens to fight indifference and show others that it is evil and dangerous. To conclude, Indifference is treacherous and could be fatal if the world is not completely rid of it soon. Too often we look back on events in history and wonder how people could have been so indifferent to the needs of others. But it makes us onder if the world is really different today, or if the future generations will look at us and ask the same question.
This is why the topic of indifference is so important because we need to be the generation that destroys it, not propels it forward. To do this, we must come together as one and start protecting each other instead of tearing each other down. As a nation, we can not let anyone else die inside because of indifference. We must band together and strike indifference head on and relentlessly fight it until it is completely gone, because if we do not it will continue along its menacing path destroying everything in its way.