THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 20, 1995 TAG: 9511200075
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ADAM BERNSTEIN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Expressing great modesty about his own humanitarian accomplishments, author, teacher and 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel addressed a University of Virginia audience of about 900 Sunday in an impassioned speech against indifference to world tragedies.
In his speech, sponsored by the U.Va. Hillel Jewish Center, the U.Va. President's Office and the Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, the 67-year-old Boston University philosophy and religion professor said pictures of children caught in war or famine zones trigger a need in him to combat indifference to suffering.
``When I espouse a cause, it is because of a child,'' said Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor. ``My people lost one and a half million children. Scenes of violence numb us into inactivity, into resignation. . . . It's a scandal because it's something we can repair.
``We now live in concentric circles. Whatever happens in one place affects people in other places. Today's indifference is dangerous. It worries me whenever there are human-made catastrophes. There are too many people who just don't care.''
Wiesel, a trim, soft-spoken man with salt-and-pepper hair, downplays the significance of the more than 35 books he has written about international social causes, including Cambodian refugees, South African apartheid victims and, most recently, captives in the former Yugoslavia.
``I am active but not very successful,'' he said. ``I probably helped none, but that does not free me from the duty to do it again. . . . A great French writer, Andre Malraux, said the beauty of life is that you must live. . . . All I know is that ultimately death is always the victor, but as long as I live, I am the victor. You become your own victim. You become the victim of your own indifference.''
He said he believes dehumanization often taints knowledge, and that dehumanization translates into a twisted sense of fighting indifference. Wiesel cited the Nov. 4 slaying of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir, a 25-year-old Jewish law student and religious extremist, as an example of that dehumanization.
``A man was killed, brutally, stupidly, by a fanatic who distorted the teaching of truth, human truth,'' Wiesel said. ``We must humanize those who study. . . . This man dared to quote the Torah and the Bible and dared to name God as an accomplice. But he decided to kill a man who strangely (went) from a great general to a messenger of peace.
``Those fanatics cannot live in a society of tolerance. Whatever they're taught, they are dehumanized. Tolerance must become the priority on all our agendas.''
Wiesel said his years in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps triggered his fear of indifference.
``I am always afraid of indifference because my generation suffered not only because of the killers and tormentors, but because of those who normally, logically, should have been our allies,'' he said, referring to members of the English clergy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Jewish leaders in America during World War II.
In an interview, Wiesel said his goal as a writer is to spur social change.
``Whether we manage that is a different story,'' he said. ``It depends on the covenant between the reader and the writer.''
And Wiesel repeated that sentiment in his speech, saying, ``I believe in the written word very much''. by CNB