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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
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
