Skip to main content Skip to footer site map
S40E1: Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire | Clip

Elie Wiesel on Palestine, trauma and suffering

SHARE

Elie Wiesel vowed to always speak up whenever people were enduring suffering and humiliation, including in both Palestine and the former Yugoslavia. “He saw the trauma as something that has to lead to moral action.”

TRANSCRIPT

- What I think was special about him was that he saw the trauma as something that has to lead to moral action.

- I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.

Human suffering anywhere, concerns men and women everywhere.

And in spite of what some extreme critics have said about me, that principle applies in my life also to the Palestinians, to whose plight I am sensitive, but whose methods I deplore when they lead to violence.

Violence is not the answer.

Both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people have lost too many sons and shed too much blood.

This must stop.

- He didn't want to criticize Israel under any circumstance.

He didn't want to criticize the occupation.

He didn't want to criticize his settlers.

He may not have agreed with them, but he didn't want to criticize them ever.

- And we have learned that when people suffer, we cannot remain indifferent.

And Mr.

President, I cannot not tell you something.

I have been in the former Yugoslavia last fall.

I cannot sleep since we must do something to stop the bloodshed in that country.

(crowd claps loudly) - The number one lesson that I learned from him was, your suffering is not what defines you, but it informs you.

It can shape you and then it's your job to make it the best tool that you can.