BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) – Calling memory “the soul of history,” Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel on Wednesday urged students at the University of Vermont to combat genocide and other evils, imploring them to never stand by silently.
“Why remember? Why remember events that cannot but hurt us? Why remember wounds that remain open by opening them again? Why tell tales that bring nothing but tears, sorrow, agony? Why?” he asked, rhetorically. “Memory, of course, is the soul of history.”
Wiesel, 78, who was honored with a degree in humane letters, drew on his experiences as a Holocaust survivor, human rights activist and author in a 40-minute speech before an overflow crowd in Patrick Gymnasium. The crowd, which packed the 2,400-seat arena and nearly all of a 1,400-seat overflow room, gave him two standing ovations before he uttered a word.
The first came when University President Daniel Mark Fogel presented him with the degree, the second when senior Meredith Rose Burak introduced him, hailing him as a scholar and advocate whose voice has helped save lives by speaking up about lives lost.
Wiesel, who lost his mother and sister at Auschwitz and his father at Buchenwald, called the academic setting of his appearance comforting, recalling a childhood in which books were the center of his existence.
He said he naively believed then that the defeat of the Nazis would be the end of anti-Semitism, war and genocide. Instead, all three continue live on, he said.
“We are now in the 21st century. The past century is behind us, with its flames and its shadows. And the world hasn’t changed,” he said. “The truth is that had the world heard our tales, had the world drawn the proper conclusions, there would have been no Darfur,” he said, referring to the African nation of Sudan, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.2 million forced to flee in a four-year conflict.
He said his work highlighting human rights abuses around the world stemmed in part from his own experience during World War II, when the world failed to act on what it knew about the atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany until it was too late for victims.
“I needed somebody to come to us. Nobody came,” he said.
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