Elie Wiesel's "Perils of Indifference" Speech with Scaffolded Annotations Challenge your struggling readers and English Language Learners to successfully tackle difficult text! After each passage, there are several multiple-choice questions. I was here and I will never forget it. Has the human being become less indifferent and more human? Indifference elicits no response. The man's only answer was to raise with his thumb the hammer of his revolver. What will the legacy of this vanishing century be? Roosevelt was a good man, with a heart. stream Even hatred at times may elicit a response. %��������� What will the legacy of this vanishing century be? Do we hear their pleas? What about the children? What is indifference? Learner: I absolutely refuse to answer. Students examine the speech, "The Perils of Indifference," as well as a primary source document, "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights," before constructing a response to this issue. He doesn't have the time—what he has to say is serious business, and he needs to be crystal clear about one thing: There are some serious perils On April 12, 1999, First Lady Hillary Clinton invited Wiesel to speak at the White House to reflect on the past century. ���:��0p_�lv�=хbќܡ@���-ʣ�Y Man can live far from God -- not outside God. Have we really learned from our experiences? So much violence, so much indifference. And even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion. He thought there never would be again. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. Night by Elie Wiesel: Interactive Layered Flip Book Each "flap" is ¾ inch and is ready for you to easily line up by using the directions on how to assemble the organizer. ". Even in suffering? No doubt, he was a great leader. Part 1 Directions (1–24): Closely read each of the three passages below. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. We see their faces, their eyes. He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. Why didn't he allow these refugees to disembark? Liberated a day earlier by American soldiers, he remembers their rage at what they saw. And I am grateful to you, Hillary -- or Mrs. Clinton -- for what you said, and for what you are doing for children in the world, for the homeless, for the victims of injustice, the victims of destiny and society. This time, we do respond. Why did some of America's largest corporations continue to do business with Hitler's Germany until 1942? You disarm it. Is there a philosophy of indifference conceivable? What is The Perils of Indifference About and Why Should I Care? In the place that I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders. They felt nothing. The streak lasted until Cal Ripken, Jr. surpassed it in 1995. Of course, indifference can be tempting -- more than that, seductive. your own Pins on Pinterest ��Y\?�+�[� ]���X��� (� In The Perils of Indifference, Wiesel asks a total of 26 questions, not to receive an answer form his audience, but to emphasize a point or focus the audience’s attention on his argument. And I thank all of you for being here. Over there, behind the black gates of Auschwitz, the most tragic of all prisoners were the "Muselmanner," as they were called. Do we feel their pain, their agony? We felt that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him. And together we walk towards the new millennium, carried by profound fear and extraordinary hope. Repetition Throughout the speech, Elie repeats specific words such as gratitude, humanity, indifference, and God. Gratitude is a word that I cherish. In the letter, King appeals for the unity against the racism in society and fight for Human Rights, using ethos. Better an unjust God than an indifferent one. Elie Wiesel began a number of his speeches with a story, and “The Perils of Indifference” is no different. Anger can at times be creative. Apr 8, 2018 - This Pin was discovered by Helen Davis. All of us did. Similarly, King uses pathos to trigger the emotional aspect of the readers and pursues his audience to take actions. Though he did not understand their language, their eyes told him what he needed to know -- that they, too, would remember, and bear witness. Indifference is not a response. And now we knew, we learned, we discovered that the Pentagon knew, the State Department knew. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. "The Perils of Indifference" Wiesel is not messing around with poetic or cutesy titles. Why were they so few? But then, there were human beings who were sensitive to our tragedy. Gratitude is what defines the humanity of the human being. inhuman. 2, 4, 5, 6, 10 W 9-10.10 SL 9-10.3, 6 L 9-10. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Elie Wiesel's "Perils of Indifference" Speech with Scaffolded Annotations Challenge your struggling readers and English Language Learners to successfully tackle difficult text! God is wherever we are. How will it be remembered in the new millennium? Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Nobel Laureate, and author (most famously known for Night), gave this impassioned speech as part of the Millennium Lecture series, hosted by President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. It is so much easier to look away from victims. And that happened after the Kristallnacht, after the first state sponsored pogrom, with hundreds of Jewish shops destroyed, synagogues burned, thousands of people put in concentration camps. CommonLit has identified one or more texts from our collection to pair with Introduction to the Holocaust, based on similar themes, literary devices, topic, or writing style. Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel (1928-2016) was a Romanian-born, Jewish American writer, Nobel Laureate, political activist, and Holocaust survivor. Discover (and save!) Lou Gehrig was the New York Yankees' first baseman from 1923 to 1939, playing in a then-record 2,130 consecutive games. Mr. President, Mrs. Clinton, members of Congress, Ambassador Holbrooke, Excellencies, friends: Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from Goethe's beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald. is traditionally a recognised thinking skills tool (Rockett and Percival 2002) praised for eliciting construct generation and for facilitating talk around a specific topic. The speaker hopes to accomplish Does it mean that we have learned from the past? He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. This 13-page document includes Constructing Meaning-style text of Elie Wiesel's "Perils of Indifference" speech. He mobilized the American people and the world, going into battle, bringing hundreds and thousands of valiant and brave soldiers in America to fight fascism, to fight dictatorship, to fight Hitler. Rooted in our tradition, some of us felt that to be abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate. And that ship, which was already on the shores of the United States, was sent back. Oh, we see them on television, we read about them in the papers, and we do so with a broken heart. n� Vt��@�ԻJ�z���=_g'4�_ϗ���W�blZ�����n,p��v��u��j. [o�^��%�|P]��|�]|�t��Q�Ae����3���wtI�!�K�?V-_fm��r5���ֳ���2F8�'���B�.y�����5�Ym;?߯@6�[-����9H��$*RG����,Y� The Laodiceans . Every minute one of them dies of disease, violence, famine. Etymologically, the word means "no difference. The Perils of Indifference (Elie Wiesel) This speech is a good one to teach because it both makes students question their own lives, but also how the world works. At 375 volts, the subject stands up.) They no longer felt pain, hunger, thirst. i�Y)! See more ideas about ap literature, ap language, ap language and composition. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, have done something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at And, nevertheless, his image in Jewish history -- I must say it -- his image in Jewish history is flawed. The Perils of Indifference Lyrics Mr. President, Mrs. Clinton, members of Congress, Ambassador Holbrooke, Excellencies, friends: Fifty-four … Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction. You get a shock if you don't answer. Another Answer: In Revelation –21, the Lord is describing the “lukewarm” heart attitude of those in the Laodicean church, an attitude manifested by their deeds. And so, once again, I think of the young Jewish boy from the Carpathian Mountains. Are we less insensitive to the plight of victims of ethnic cleansing and other forms of injustices in places near and far? Does it mean that society has changed? Key Figure: Antimetabole Top 1 0 0 Speeches Full t ext, audio, and video database of the 100 most significant American political speeches of the 20th century, according to 137 leading scholars of American public address, as compiled by Stephen E. Lucas (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Martin J. Medhurst (Baylor University). Is it a philosophy? We are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium. �k��wݗO�6Z׻�|�_�[ O�%���0�l��͗k! This time, we intervene. Why was there a greater effort to save SS murderers after the war than to save their victims during the war? Anger can at times be creative. He has accompanied the old man I have become throughout these years of quest and struggle. Apr 7, 2020 - Explore The Rhetor's Toolbox's board "AP Literature and Composition", followed by 2350 people on Pinterest. Norway had beaten back the Nazis through small groups of eight to ten people, somewhat like the teams of Haighmoor. And let us remember the meeting, filled with drama and emotion, between Rabin and Arafat that you, Mr. President, convened in this very place. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. Supplement your lesson with one or more of these options and challenge students to … Even in suffering. It has been suggested, and it was documented, that the Wehrmacht could not have conducted its invasion of France without oil obtained from American sources. A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil. The Rhetor's Toolbox - 2.97k Followers, 2.72k Following, 17913 pins | I'm a high school English teacher with a passion for AP Language and Composition. (Experiment continues with learner refusing to answer, and, finally failing even to grunt or groan. 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. And now, I stand before you, Mr. President -- Commander-in-Chief of the army that freed me, and tens of thousands of others -- and I am filled with a profound and abiding gratitude to the American people. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one's sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals? What are its courses and inescapable consequences? Is today's justified intervention in Kosovo, led by you, Mr. President, a lasting warning that never again will the deportation, the terrorization of children and their parents be allowed anywhere in the world? The “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” written by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963, describes a protest against his arrest for non-violent resistance to racism. The Laodiceans . The repetition of these words stresses the significance of these topics in relation to his opinion on the And the illustrious occupant of the White House then, who was a great leader -- and I say it with some anguish and pain, because, today is exactly 54 years marking his death -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April the 12th, 1945, so he is very much present to me and to us. Includes: Vocabulary (with answer key) Guided Reading They would have bombed the railways leading to Birkenau, just the railways, just once. Weigh in on the topic, either for or against allowing refugees to come to the US, citing evidence from one or more sources to support your opinion. Indifference reduces the Other to an abstraction. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. And so many of the young people fell in battle. When adults wage war, children perish. During the darkest of times, inside the ghettoes and death camps -- and I'm glad that Mrs. Clinton mentioned that we are now commemorating that event, that period, that we are now in the Days of Remembrance -- but then, we felt abandoned, forgotten. What happened? And then, of course, the joint decision of the United States and NATO to intervene in Kosovo and save those victims, those refugees, those who were uprooted by a man whom I believe that because of his crimes, should be charged with crimes against humanity. And even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion. They were dead and did not know it. Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? They feared nothing. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. x��]��u���W4|�%����$-(m˱-B��")r��.M.%�?3�Cy�zOUW�t�#�z��N��s�Tu��߻?w��a���r�m�n��t�^v�v���_�_v��w����s��������.���U����������7OY,�����n�L����M��ӧˎ����.����uw�ew�{�q�'�V����u���:�ݤ��G�0ԝ�|_5=In���׏f�4����e�=�? For us to be ignored by God was a harsher punishment than to be a victim of His anger. He understood those who needed help. Their fate is always the most tragic, inevitably. I don't understand. I don't understand. Your answer sheet cannot be accepted if you fail to sign this declaration. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice These failures have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations -- Gandhi, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Rabin -- bloodbaths in Cambodia and Nigeria, India and Pakistan, Ireland and Rwanda, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Sarajevo and Kosovo; the inhumanity in the gulag and the tragedy of Hiroshima. Moreover, King uses variou… This 13-page document includes Constructing Meaning-style text of Elie Wiesel's "Perils of Indifference" speech. Some of them -- so many of them -- could be saved. Will it discourage other dictators in other lands to do the same? And, on a different level, of course, Auschwitz and Treblinka. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. He thought there never would be again. There And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide-ranging experiments in good and evil. The depressing tale of the St. Louis is a case in point. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. Priority Standards: RI 9-10. A key group of his colleagues were Norwegian, with roots in the resistance movement of World War II. They would have spoken out with great outrage and conviction. We are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium. 4 0 obj How is one to explain their indifference? %PDF-1.3 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. But this time, the world was not silent. the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Rabin, What is indifference? Sixty years ago, its human cargo -- maybe 1,000 Jews -- was turned back to Nazi Germany. Surely it will be judged, and judged severely, in both moral and metaphysical terms. Image: Children of all ages inside a concentration camp in Auschwitz Purpose The purpose of Wiesel's speech is to persuade the audience not to be indifferent to victims of injustice and cruelty. A thousand people -- in America, a great country, the greatest democracy, the most generous of all new nations in modern history. You denounce it. << /Length 5 0 R /Filter /FlateDecode >> Over there, behind the black gates of Auschwitz , the most tragic of all prisoners were the " Muselmanner ," as they were called. But indifference is never creative. The speech relies on pathos, and a little ethos too, to get the audience to feel the full effect of the tragedy of the Holocaust and what the speaker went through. Those non-Jews, those Christians, that we called the "Righteous Gentiles," whose selfless acts of heroism saved the honor of their faith. ]52�7-wo���G3��h��W|��7L�~�M����M*�To��&u-盫�M�Y��J|������M�s��� s�B�_�[;4�m�_w��ׄ�j�\u��B�٨?���j~�. And yet, my friends, good things have also happened in this traumatic century: the defeat of Nazism, the collapse of communism, the rebirth of Israel on its ancestral soil, the demise of apartheid, Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, the peace accord in Ireland. Prozi: You got to. You fight it. And our only miserable consolation was that we believed that Auschwitz and Treblinka were closely guarded secrets; that the leaders of the free world did not know what was going on behind those black gates and barbed wire; that they had no knowledge of the war against the Jews that Hitler's armies and their accomplices waged as part of the war against the Allies. Then Rainsford saw the man's free hand go to his forehead in a military salute, and he saw him click his heels together and stand at attention. And in denying their humanity we betray our own. Etymologically, the word means "no difference." If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene. If you've read a lot of our guides, you'll know we usually use this space to tell you the semi-secret message behind the text: you should care about Jane Eyre because it's actually a scathing commentary about the Man; you should care about Titanic because it ended the reign of the "event movie"; and you should care … Why the indifference, on the highest level, to the suffering of the victims? Section 1, he talks about his liberation from Buchenwald 54 years earlier and why he was—and still is—so grateful to the Americans. Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end.