Quote by Elie Wiesel, Nobel Acceptance Sp
I remember: it happened yesterday, or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the Kingdom of Night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.I remember he asked his father: Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?And now the boy is turning to me. Tell me, he asks, what have you done with my future, what have you done with your life? And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.And then I explain to him how na
Summary
This quote reflects on the profound impact of the Holocaust on the author's life and the responsibility they feel in preserving the memory of the atrocities committed. The author recalls a conversation with a young Jewish boy who expresses his disbelief that such horrific crimes could occur in the modern world. The author acknowledges their duty to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to fight against the forces that seek to erase or ignore it. They recognize that forgetting the past and remaining silent about it makes us complicit in allowing such atrocities to happen again.