Perils Of Indifference

“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 …show more content…
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 us, 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 …show more content…
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 people 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