Speech #1060021467

Elie Wiesel spoke at the White House at a Millennium Evening Forum including President and Mrs. Clinton and an audience of distinguished guests. His speech-"The Perils of Indifference: Lessons Learned From A Violent Century"-eloquently describes the most lasting moral peril of the Holocaust nightmare: the apathy of those who sat silently while millions were slaughtered by Nazi Germany As reports of Hitlers atrocities mounted during the late 1930s and early 1940s. corporations continued to conduct business with the Third Reich. refugees were denied admission to a host of nations. tragically including to the United States. and free peoples refused to act to stop Hitlers killing machine. Without such passive disregard for human life. many of the six million victims of the Holocaust might have lived. "In a way. to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman." explained Dr. Wiesel. "Indifference. after all. is more dangerous than anger and hatred." The reflections of Elie Wiesel are particulary significant given the ongoing war crimes of Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbian government against untold thousands of Kosovar Albanians.