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d55ddfb
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How can one explain the attraction terror holds for some minds -- and why for intellectuals? . . .In a totalitarian and terrorist regime, man is no longer a unique being with infinite possibilities and limitless choices but a number, a puppet, with just this difference -- numbers and puppets are not susceptible to fear.
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Elie Wiesel |
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e89c457
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In my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past Lingers in the present, all my writings after night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear it's stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works. Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of the madness..
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Elie Wiesel |
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69ddb81
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I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly and language became an obstacle. It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language... I would pause at every sentence, and start over and over again. I would conjure up other verbs, other images, other silent cries. It still was not right. But what exactly was "it"? "It" was something elusive, darkly shro..
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words
trauma
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Elie Wiesel |
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991791b
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The silence of two people is deeper than the silence of one.
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Elie Wiesel |
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750b13f
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Had the situation not been so tragic, we might have laughed.
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Elie Wiesel |
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6232bc1
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It's over. God is no longer with us." And as though he regretted having uttered such words so coldly, so dryly, he added in his broken voice, "I know. No one has the right to say things like that. I know that very well. Man is too insignificant, too limited, to even try to comprehend God's mysterious ways. But what can someone like myself do? I'm neither a sage nor a just man. I am not a saint. I'm a simple creature of flesh and bone. I suf..
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Elie Wiesel |
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24a777d
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Luz Castro "And then i explain that the world did know and remained silent. and that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. NEUTRALITY HELPS THE OPPRESSOR, NEVER THE VICTIM. SILENCE ENCOURAGES THE TORMENTOR, NEVER THE TORMENTED. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities..
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Elie Wiesel |
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ad2b5fe
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Since God is, He is to be found in the questions as well as the answers.
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Elie Wiesel |
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6cc65f2
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Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free. How can one not be sensitive to their plight? Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.
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Elie Wiesel |
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c47afac
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But the forces of evil have not abdicated. The malevolent ghosts of hatred are resurgent with a fury and a boldness that are as astounding as they are nauseating: ethnic conflicts, religious riots, anti-Semitic incidents here, there, and everywhere. What is wrong with these morally degenerate people that they abuse their freedom, so recently won?
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Elie Wiesel |
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9e58e75
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I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lies are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men and women are prosecuted because of their race, religion, or political vi..
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oppression
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Elie Wiesel |
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df6a474
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I learned that man lives differently, depending on whether he is in a horizontal or vertical position. The shadows on the walls, on the faces, are not the same.
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Elie Wiesel |
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e380692
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We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must--at that moment--become the center of the universe.
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Elie Wiesel |
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ced9fa9
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Man prefers to blame himself for all possible sins and crimes rather than come to the conclusion that God is capable of the most flagrant injustice. I still blush every time I think of the way God makes fun of human beings, his favorite toys.
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Elie Wiesel |
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c1b59a4
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Man's strength resides in his capacity and desire to elevate himself, so as to attain the good. To travel step by step toward the heights. And that is all he can do. To reach heaven and remain there is beyond his powers: Even Moses had to return to earth. Is it the same for evil?
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Elie Wiesel |
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e9cc0fc
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How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in furnaces? Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?
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Elie Wiesel |
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cd28094
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Then the train resumed its journey, leaving in its wake, in a snowy field in Poland, hundreds of naked orphans without a tomb.
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Elie Wiesel |
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f9c844d
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There are those who tell me that I survived in order to write this text. I am not convinced. I don't know how I survived; I was weak, rather shy; I did nothing to save myself. A miracle? Certainly not. If heaven could or would perform a miracle for me, why not for others more deserving than myself? It was nothing more than chance. However, having survived, I needed to give some meaning to my survival.
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Elie Wiesel |
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e2547d6
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Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
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Elie Wiesel |
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645e7ae
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The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion.
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Elie Wiesel |
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af291bf
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What is man? Dust turned to hope.
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Elie Wiesel |
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11c7cb4
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Those who know don't talk and those who talk don't know. And even the survivors who have decided to bear witness confirm it in their way: They almost all say that their experience can't be related in words, and yet, as witnesses, they're morally compelled to resort to them. Their silence, except if it is ontologically integral to their disposition, would not help truth triumph. It would only open the road to oblivion and, as one survivor pu..
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Elie Wiesel |
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e6f1fa1
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His breathing was labored. His eyes were closed. But I was convinced that he was seeing everything. That he was seeing the truth in all things.
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Elie Wiesel |
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ec9e8d6
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There are so many who know more than I do, who understand the world better than I do. I would be truly learned, a great scholar, if only I could retain everything I've learned from those I have known. But then would I still be me? And isn't all that only words? Words grow old, too; they change their meaning and their usage. They get sick just as we do; they die of their wounds and then they are relegated to the dust of dictionaries. And wh..
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Elie Wiesel |
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56af673
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A man hates his enemy because he hates his own hate.
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Elie Wiesel |
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f5b3b25
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Torture is the act of making someone die a slow death, making the prisoner die several times.
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Elie Wiesel |
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9387658
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For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living.
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Elie Wiesel |
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70e96d9
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When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must--at that moment--become the center of the universe.
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Elie Wiesel |
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c154ab9
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Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.
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Elie Wiesel |
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a0d413c
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With the years and convulsions of history, the word-as reductionist as the dictionary itself-has undergone absurd metamorphoses. In some countries, they prefer the word "destabilization." Poor" countries no longer exist, just "disadvantaged" or "underprivileged" ones. We say "brainwashing" instead of "propaganda." And now we refer to revolutions in fashion, music and electronics, where ink flows but not blood. The point is profit, not truth..
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Elie Wiesel |
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b5bdb55
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Where is God to be found? In suffering or in rebellion? When is a man most truly a man? When he submits or when he refuses? Where does suffering lead him? To purification or to bestiality?
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Elie Wiesel |
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0816cff
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There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. -Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (b. 1928) You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do
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Elie Wiesel |
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62f33c0
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I was the accuser, God the accused.
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Elie Wiesel |
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b0e669b
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How was one to rehabilitate and transform words betrayed and perverted by the enemy?
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Elie Wiesel |
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4e48210
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In retrospect I must confess that I do not know, or no longer know, what I wanted to achieve with my words. I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer--or my life, period--would not have become what it is: that of a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.
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Elie Wiesel |
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54f8f0f
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I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.
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Elie Wiesel |
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f3a5ace
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How much longer would our lives be lived from one "last night" to the next?"
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Elie Wiesel |
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fe794b3
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Even torture that is only verbal reinforce the power of the torturer: The prisoner's imagination leads him to dread the next round of interrogations. And when it happens, the feeling of inferiority becomes more acute; it bores into the brain, and the cultural and psychological defenses that surround the brain disintegrate and vanish. The ego is dissolved.
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Elie Wiesel |
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c81c8d6
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Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say. Therein lies true dialogue. Man asks and God replies. But we don't understand His replies. We cannot understand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die. The real answers, Eliezer, you will find only within yourself.
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Elie Wiesel |
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305786e
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In the beginning there was faith--which is childish; trust--which is vain; and illusion--which is dangerous. We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark from the Shekhinah's flame; that every one of us carries in his eyes and in his soul a reflection of God's image. That was the source if not the cause of all our ordeals.
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Elie Wiesel |
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932e9e6
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It was neither German nor Jew who ruled the ghetto - it was illusion.
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ww2
holocaust
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Elie Wiesel |
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0ca3b1a
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All my life, until today, I have been content to ask questions. All the while knowing that the real questions, those that concern the creator and his creation, have no answers. I'll go even farther and say that there is a level at which only the questions are eternal, the answers never are. And so, the patient that I am, more charitable, repeats: 'Since God is, He is to be found in the questions as well as in the answers.
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questions
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Elie Wiesel |
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9f2375e
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All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek's soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future.
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Elie Wiesel |
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046d45d
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The tragedy of man is that he doesn't know how to distinguish between day and night.
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Elie Wiesel |