Have You Learned the Most Important

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HAVE YOU LEARNED THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON OF ALL?

By Elie Wiesel

May I share with you one of the principles that governs my life? It is the realization that what I receive I must pass on to others. The knowledge that I have acquired must not remain imprisoned in my brain. I owe it to many men and women to do something with it. I feel the need to pay back what was given to me. Call it gratitude.

Isn't this what education is all about? There is divine beauty in learning, just as there is human beauty in tolerance. To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.

You and I believe that knowledge belongs to everybody, irrespective of race, color or creed. Plato does not address himself to one ethnic group alone, nor does Shakespeare appeal to one religion only. The teachings of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. do not apply just to Indians or African-Americans. Like cognitive science, theoretical physics or algebra, the creations and philosophical ideas of the ages are part of our collective heritage and human memory. We all learn from the same masters.

In other words, education must, almost by definition, bring people together, bring generations together.

Education has another consequence. My young friends, I feel it is my moral duty to warn you against an evil that could jeopardize this generation's extraordinary possibilities. That evil is fanaticism.

True education negates fanaticism. Literature and fanaticism do not go together. Culture and fanaticism are forever irreconcilable. The fanatic is always against culture, because culture means freedom of spirit and imagination, and the fanatic fears someone else's imagination. In fact, the fanatic who wishes to inspire fear is ultimately doomed to live in fear, always. Fear of the stranger, fear of each other, fear of the other inside him or her.

Fanaticism has many faces: racism, religious bigotry, ethnic hatred. What those faces have in common is an urge to replace words with violence, facts with propaganda, reason with blind impulses, hope with terror.

For a while we might have believed that fanaticism was on its decline. It is not. Quite the contrary, it is on the rise in our cities, in our country and in our world.

In Western Europe-in Germany and France, Belgium and Austria-we are seeing a resurgence of yesterday's demons of fascism and intolerance. In Eastern Europe, ethnic factions are rekindling old conflicts. In the Middle East, deeply held hatreds seem ever on AVID 3 McMurtry 2 the verge of sparking more raging conflagrations. "It's us against them" has been taken as an essential truth. Strangers are being greeted with animosity almost everywhere.

Let us look at our own country. As this last decade of a century, which is also the last decade of a millennium, runs to its dazzling denouement, we seem ever more divided. Can't all our citizens- white Americans and African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians, Jews and Christians, Jews and Moslems, young and old live together, work together and face together their common challenges? Must they-must we-constantly subject ourselves to useless social tensions and dangerous ideological conflicts that could turn joy into dust and creation into ashes?

We face many difficulties and must find answers to thorny questions if our nation is to flourish: What has happened to our economy? What went wrong with elementary and secondary education? Why are so many youngsters seduced by crime? By drugs? By hate? Why is there so much bloodshed in so many quarters?

The answers to these questions do not lie with the clichés, senseless stereotypes and absurd accusations that are being used to justify religious or ethnic hatred....

I insist: All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them. And racism is stupid, just as it is ugly. Its aim is to destroy, to pervert, to distort innocence in human beings and their quest for human equality.

Racism is misleading. There are good people and bad people in every community. No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. We all come from somewhere, and we all wonder where we are going.

I know: You have been tested during your years in school, more than once. But the real tests are still ahead of you. How will you deal with your own or other people's hunger, homelessness, sexual or gender discrimination, and community antagonisms?

The world outside is not waiting to welcome you with open arms. The economic climate is bad; the psychological one is worse. You wonder, will you find jobs? Allies? Friends? I pray to our Father in heaven to answer "yes" to all these questions.

But should you encounter temporary disappointments, I also pray: Do not make someone else pay the price for your pain. Do not see in someone else a scapegoat for your difficulties. Only a fanatic does that not you, for you have learned to reject fanaticism. You know that fanaticism leads to hatred, and hatred is both destructive and self-destructive.

I speak to you as a teacher and a student-one is both, always. I also speak to you as a witness.

I speak to you, for I do not want my past to become your future.

1. Celebrated author and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Elie Wiesel, implores today’s students not to remain voiceless when confronted with suffering and evil. How does AVID 3 McMurtry 3

simply voicing outrage act as a deterrent to evil? How have knowledge and words become a powerful legacy of the Holocaust? How can the study of the Holocaust equip students to respond to the world in which they live with a vision that embraces the value and dignity inherent in every human being? 2. Is fanaticism on the decline? How much of the violence that threatens our modern world is rooted in bigotry and hatred? Do prejudice and racism still play a dominate role in American life today? What steps can students take to confront such hatred and prevent the escalation of violence? 3. Night and darkness settled over Nazi Germany because man was not able to see the natural value and dignity inherent in every human being. Neighbor did not reach out to neighbor, and brother refused to recognize brother. The Jewish faith, as does every major world religion, teaches that we humans are indeed “our brother’s keeper.” Tragically, the Holocaust and much of history describe the way neighbors have turned against neighbors. What can history teach students about the value of our “neighbors”? How are people everywhere linked to one another? What has your study of the Holocaust taught you about the value of human life? Why is it important to extend the definition of neighbor beyond local boundaries and borders, irrespective of group affiliations, and unfettered to a definition based on race, religion, or nationality?

Choose one of the questions above and respond to it on a separate sheet of paper. Use examples from the article to support your ideas.

Never Again By Dafna Avraham San Diego, CA AVID 3 McMurtry 4

Inhumanity. Brutality. Pure, incomprehensible, illogical hatred. These words are hardly strong enough to describe the pains, tortures, and deaths of Jews, homosexuals, blacks, mentally-challenged and many other groups during the Holocaust (Berlin, Carolyn). Such atrocities are inconceivable to imagine – 11 million innocent, helpless human lives, of which 6 million were Jews, tortured and murdered because an army of Aryans deemed them vermin and unworthy of human life (Weinberg 218).

And while this army, the Nazis, led by Adolph Hitler, reigned destruction on so many beautiful lives, the inhabitants of the ever-expanding Aryan empire, including almost all of the countries of Europe, turned a blind eye (Berenbaum 66-155). They did nothing to stop the countless trains of cattle cars that went through their countries, packed beyond limit with screaming and pleading victims, to death camps, only to return to their starting points, void of humanity and morality. Ella Adler, a magnificent, brave voice of conscience and survivor of Auschwitz, described her entrance to the camp: “Crisp, well-tailored officers pulled us out of the train cars, jabbed, prodded, and shoved us into lines while others of them gazed at us with steely, cold hatred, indifferent to our humanness. The Nazi propaganda had worked. These young officers were trained to see us as inhuman, infested vermin. We were almost living proof of a well-instrumented, self-fulfilling prophecy. Kapos in striped, filthy, prisoner uniforms herded us like undefined animals into a large room where we were separated, men from women, and told to undress. Shivering and cold with no respite from our sufferings, we were ripped away from all that we possessed including our last remnants of dignity.” In the concentration camps, prisoners met their deaths in masses. Those who weren’t immediately gassed were put to work digging the mass graves in which their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and children were to be deposited (Berlin, Carolyn). Anyone who managed to stay alive for some time often ended up tortured and beaten to death. This was the Holocaust – death of the innocent because of the blind hatred and brute power of others.

The true realization of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust was a shock to the majority of the world. With this new information of the deaths, tortures and rampant illnesses, people began to ask themselves how such a horrendous event was ever allowed to occur in so-called civilized society (Berlin, Carolyn). This is the critical question. Only by humanity’s magnified soul –searching and recognition of the reality and participation in this event, can humanity ever prevent the Holocaust from happening again.

Therefore as the remaining survivors pass away, we must tell their stories to every new generation so that all people know of the mind-boggling capacity of hate to threaten civilization and humanity. By making their memories a part of our own, we are honoring their existence and their willingness to live and better the world by educating us. Our selective memories define who we are, and so then we must imprint our memories onto the next generation and so on. I hold in my heart the stories of my dear friends, Ella and Harry Adler, both survivors of the Holocaust, and the memories that my grandparents, Todiris and Betty Avraham, shared with me about their struggle through the Holocaust. Last summer my entire family went with our grandparents back for the first time since 1949 to Romania. I saw the graves, the memorials, the homes, the schools, the shops, the synagogues, the city and rural streets, and my Safta and Saba’s tears from the 56 years of welled-up memories and stories of persecution, hiding and fear. Their experience has become part of my memory also, and I will not forget. It has changed me and changed the way I see injustice, or tolerate it. AVID 3 McMurtry 5

Hate does still exist and knows no borders. Having grown up in a Jewish home and with a strong Jewish identity, I am acutely aware and unfortunately have been the recipient of ignorant, anti-Semitic remarks. I have family in Israel, and I fear for them and my people when hearing about the result of unchecked hate and propaganda – homicide bombing attacks. Preventing this hatred and prejudice led me to participate in the Jacobs International Teen Leadership Institute, JITLI. JITLI is a program that brings together ten San Diego teens who journey with Israeli, Bedouin and Palestinian teens on a mission to change preconceptions and pursue an agenda of friendship in an attempt to do what our governments have not been able to– to achieve peace. The cultures in which we live, learn, and pray are vastly different, often resulting in opposing opinions. Although peace was not achieved, the bonds of friendship were established. The memories of the counselors separating our sobbing embraces as we departed, the excitement in learning, touching, and tasting new cultures, remains palpable, alive, and the mission ever-present. I now consider Palestinians, who I once felt hostility towards, my friends.

From knowledge springs compassion, and the hope to end hate. Educating people about the Holocaust is the key to preventing hate and prejudice today. Organizations such as the Anti- Defamation League promote tolerance through programs like the Manhigim Teen Leadership Institute in which I was a participant. I worked with other students in the development of a teaching project on media bias and diversity. Our final phase of this year-long program was to present our topic to other high school classes throughout San Diego County in an effort to open minds and hearts. I am dedicated to these ageless ideals and will continue in my quest to strive toward a world of acceptance and celebration of human diversity.

It is an embarrassment to our evolution as a species that in 2006, we still witness hate in our world. Daily at home or, on a larger scale, abroad in places like Darfur. The xenophobia that pollutes humankinds’ capacity for good and fulfillment of every person’s inalienable right to exist and live without fear, is unfortunately a force my generation has to also face and hopefully, to someday conquer. I believe if we set our minds and our course of action to it, it will be possible in my lifetime, and just maybe, within my parent’s lifetime. Ella Adler once wrote to me, “the resilience of human spirit to survive against all odds has no limits,” and so I have made it my duty as a human being to hold strong and true and do everything in my power to ensure that the Holocaust happens “never again”.

Works Cited

Adler, Ella. Personal interview. July 2004.

Avraham, Todiris and Betty. Personal interview. July 2005.

Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know. Canada: Little, Brown and Company, 1993.

Berlin, Carolyn. "Holocaust Studies: Holocaust and Human Behavior/March of the Living." High School of Jewish Studies. San Diego Jewish Academy, San Diego. Fall 2005.

Weinberg, Gerhard L. Germany, Hitler, and World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,

Topic: Students responding to this year’s writing contest should study the Holocaust and then, in an essay of no more than 1,200 words: (a) analyze why it is so vital that the remembrance, history and lessons of the Holocaust be passed to a new generation; AVID 3 McMurtry 6 and (b) suggest what they, as students, can do to combat and prevent prejudice, discrimination and violence in our world today.

Outline

I. Introduction a. Attention getter: b. Transition: c. Background for topic: II. Body paragraph- understanding of historical framework a. Topic sentence b. Evidence c. Evidence d. Evidence e. Concluding Sent. III. Thesis paragraph a. Historical response b. Argument c. Thesis IV. Body paragraph- Problems today V. Body Paragraph- solutions VI. Conclusion a. Restate thesis b. Demonstrate a sense of urgency c. Close