Elie
Wiesel's Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace
Prize in Oslo, December 10, 1986
It is
with a profound sense of humility that I accept the honor you have chosen to
bestow upon me. I know: your choice transcends me. This both frightens and
pleases me.
It
frightens me because I wonder: do I have the right to represent the multitudes
who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their
behalf? ... I do not. That would be presumptuous. No one may speak for the
dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.
It
pleases me because I may say that this honor belongs to all the survivors and
their children, and through us, to the Jewish people with whose destiny I have
always identified.
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 explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remain
silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human
beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always 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 or women are persecuted because of their race,
religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the
center of the universe.
Of
course, since I am a Jew profoundly rooted in my peoples' memory and tradition,
my first response is to Jewish fears, Jewish needs, Jewish crises. For I belong
to a traumatized generation, one that experienced the abandonment and solitude
of our people. It would be unnatural for me not to make Jewish priorities my
own: Israel, Soviet Jewry, Jews in Arab lands ... But there are others as
important to me. Apartheid is, in my view, as abhorrent as anti-Semitism. To
me, Andrei Sakharov's isolation is as much of
a disgrace as Josef Biegun's imprisonment. As is the denial of Solidarity and
its leader Lech Walesa's right to dissent. And Nelson Mandela's interminable
imprisonment.
There
is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention: victims of
hunger, of racism, and political persecution, writers and poets, prisoners in
so many lands governed by the Left and by the Right. Human rights are being
violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free. And then,
too, there are the Palestinians to whose plight I am sensitive but whose
methods I deplore. Violence and terrorism are not the answer. Something must be
done about their suffering, and soon. I trust Israel, for I have faith in the
Jewish people. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed
from her horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land.
Yes,
I have faith. Faith in God and even in His creation. Without it no action would
be possible. And action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious
danger of all. Isn't this the meaning of Alfred Nobel's legacy? Wasn't his fear
of war a shield against war?
There
is much to be done, there is much that can be done. One person – a Raoul
Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, one person of
integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as
one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child
is hungry, our lives will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these
victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not
forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours,
that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on
theirs.
This
is what I say to the young Jewish boy wondering what I have done with his
years. It is in his name that I speak to you and that I express to you my
deepest gratitude. No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged
from the kingdom of night. We know that every moment is a moment of grace,
every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them. Our lives
no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.
Thank
you, Chairman Aarvik. Thank you, members of the Nobel Committee. Thank you,
people of Norway, for declaring on this singular occasion that our survival has
meaning for mankind.
From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel
Prizes 1986, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1987
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1986
