Frases de Elie Wiesel

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“La indiferencia, para mí, es la personificación del mal.”

“Desde tiempos inmemoriales la gente ha hablado de paz, pero no la ha conseguido. ¿Será sencillamente que carecemos de suficiente experiencia? Aunque hablamos de paz, hacemos la guerra. A veces hasta guerreamos en el nombre de la paz. […] Puede que la guerra sea una parte tan intrínseca de la historia que no pueda eliminarse… jamás.”

“Cada judío debería guardar, en algún lugar de su corazón, una zona para el odio, ese odio sano, varonil contra todo aquello que representa el alemán y que forma parte de la esencia de lo alemán. Todo lo demás sería traición a los muertos.”

“¿Cómo puede explicarse que la Iglesia jamás excomulgara ni a Hitler ni a Himmler, que Pío XII nunca viera necesario —por no decir indispensable— condenar Auschwitz y Treblinka, que una gran proporción de los miembros de las S. S. fuesen creyentes y permaneciesen fieles a sus lazos cristianos hasta el fin, que hubiese asesinos que practicasen [el sacramento de] la confesión entre una masacre y otra y que todos ellos procediesen de familias cristianas y hubiesen recibido una educación cristiana?”

“El deber del superviviente es dar testimonio de lo que ocurrió, […] hay que advertir a la gente de que estas cosas pueden suceder, que el mal puede desencadenarse. El odio racial, la violencia y las idolatrías todavía proliferan.”

“Frecuentemente pienso que hemos fracasado. Si en 1945 alguien nos hubiera dicho que todavía veríamos guerras por motivos religiosos en casi todo continente […] no lo habríamos creído.”

“Sostener que los hebreos debemos estarle agradecidos a Pío XII me parece, cuando menos, una herejía.”

“Elie Wiesel describe cómo le afectó el presenciar la ejecución de un joven en la horca. Los de la SS juntaron a los prisioneros enfrente de la horca. Mientras el muchacho moría lentamente, un prisionero gritó: “¿Dónde está Dios ahora?” Dice Wiesel: “Y oí una voz dentro de mí contestarle: ‘¿Dónde está? Aquí está… colgado de esta horca…’””

“Hubiera querido agregar: ¿por qué agradecerle? Hacía mucho que no comprendía qué había hecho el buen Dios para merecer al hombre.”

“Only the guilty are guilty. Their children are not.”

“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”

“I shall always remember that smile. From what world did it come from?”

“Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must at that moment become the center of the universe.”

“We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.”

“They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions.”

“There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.”

“I don't want my past to become anyone else's future.”

“I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it…”

“Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.”

“Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.”

“Indifference is the sign of sickness, a sickness of the soul more contagious than any other.”

“… I believe it important to emphasize how strongly I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.”

“Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.”

“No human being is illegal.”

“Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?”

“Love makes everything complicated.”

“In the beginning there was faith - which is childish; trust - which is vain; and illusion - which is dangerous.”

“Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.”

“I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.”

“Music does not replace words, it gives tone to the words”

“I write to understand as much as to be understood.”

“Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.”

“I am not so naïve as to believe that this slim volume will change the course of history or shake the conscience of the world. Books no longer have the power they once did. Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.”

“[Moishe] explained to me, with great emphasis, that every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer….
And why do you pray, Moishe?' I asked him.
I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions.”

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.”

“Bread, soup - these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.”

“I've been fighting my entire adult life for men and women everywhere to be equal and to be different. But there is one right I would not grant anyone. And that is the right to be indifferent.”