Quotes from Night

Yesterday was not the first time Pastor Allen has mentioned Elie Weisel's Night. If you have ever had a Sunday School Class in Room 4 (David Towne's room), there is a long passage on the wall from this book, in which Weisel points out that the Germans who perpetrated the Holocaust were educated, but not humane. It serves as a sober warning to those of us in the field of education that we must have higher priorities than merely pumping our students full of head knowledge (as opposed to the education of the heart).

Weisel wrote this book as a response to the myth that the Holocaust never took place. It is largely autobiographical, recounting his family's experience of being transported from their home in Hungary to Auschwitz, where Weisel's mother, father, and youngest sister died. Elie and two brothers survived until the allies invaded.

Here are some memorable quotes from Weisel, from Night, as well as other works:

"We cannot indefinitely avoid depressing subject matter, particularly it it is true, and in the subsequent quarter century the world has had to hear a story it would have preferred not to hear - the story of how a cultured people turned to genocide, and how the rest of the world, also composed of cultured people, remained silent in the face of genocide."

"Never be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."