Elie Wiesel - "The Perils of Indifference"

Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor, is a writer famous for his witness to the sufferings endured by Jews in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.
This is an excerpt of his speech addressing President Clinton and members of the US Congress in April 1999.

"Over there, behind the black gates of Auschwitz, the most tragic of all prisoners were the Muselmaenner, 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. They no longer felt pain, hunger, thirst. They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it."

"Rooted in our tradition, some of us felt that to be abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate. We felt that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him. 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 from God - not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering."

"In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. ....

"Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor - never the victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten."