○  the perils of indifference  ○

elie wiesel: "the perils of indifference"

mr. president, mrs. clinton, members of congress, ambassador holbrooke, excellencies, friends:

fifty-four years ago to the day, a young jewish boy from a small town in the carpathian mountains woke up, not far from goethe's beloved weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called buchenwald. he was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. he thought there never would be again. liberated a day earlier by american soldiers, he remembers their rage at what they saw. and even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion. though he did not understand their language, their eyes told him what he needed to know -- that they, too, would remember, and bear witness.

and now, i stand before you, mr. president -- commander-in-chief of the army that freed me, and tens of thousands of others -- and i am filled with a profound and abiding gratitude to the american people. gratitude is a word that i cherish. gratitude is what defines the humanity of the human being. and i am grateful to you, hillary, or mrs. clinton, for what you said, and for what you are doing for children in the world, for the homeless, for the victims of injustice, the victims of destiny and society. and i thank all of you for being here.

we are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium. what will the legacy of this vanishing century be? how will it be remembered in the new millennium? surely it will be judged, and judged severely, in both moral and metaphysical terms. these failures have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two world wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations (gandhi, the kennedys, martin luther king, sadat, rabin), bloo

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