Frasi di Elie Wiesel

pagina 5

“L'opposto dell'amore non è odio, è indifferenza. L'opposto dell'arte non è il brutto, è l'indifferenza. L'opposto della fede non è eresia, è indifferenza. E l'opposto della vita non è la morte, è l'indifferenza.”

“Mai dimenticherò quella notte, la prima notte nel campo, che ha fatto della mia vita una lunga notte e per sette volte sprangata.
Mai dimenticherò quel fumo.
Mai dimenticherò i piccoli volti dei bambini di cui avevo visto i corpi trasformarsi in volute di fumo sotto un cielo muto.
Mai dimenticherò quelle fiamme che bruciarono per sempre la mia Fede.
Mai dimenticherò quel silenzio notturno che mi ha tolto per l'eternità il desiderio di vivere.
Mai dimenticherò quegli istanti che assassinarono il mio Dio e la mia anima, e i miei sogni, che presero il volto del deserto.
Mai dimenticherò tutto ciò, anche se fossi condannato a vivere quanto Dio stesso. Mai.”

“Volevano ad ogni costo uccidere l'ultimo ebreo sul pianeta. Oggi ci si potrebbe chiedere: perché la memoria, perché ricordare, perché infliggere un dolore tale? In fondo per i morti è tardi ma per i vivi no. Se non si può annullare il tormento, si può invece sperare, riflettere, prendere coscienza.”

“Chi ascolta un superstite dell'Olocausto diventa a sua volta un testimone.”

“Se con l'Olocausto Dio ha scelto di interrogare l'uomo, spetta a questi rispondere con una ricerca che ha Dio per oggetto.”

“Omicidio a sangue freddo e cultura non si escludono a vicenda. Se l'Olocausto ci ha dimostrato qualcosa, è che una persona può amare la poesia e comunque uccidere i bambini.”

“Ci dovrebbe essere un comandamento biblico "Non devi odiare".”

“Questo minuto aveva più di sessanta secondi.”

“They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname.”

“A destruction only man can provoke, only man can prevent. Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures, it is our gift to each other.”

“We tried. It was not easy. At first, because of the language; language failed us. We would have to invent a new vocabulary, for our own words were inadequate, anemic. And then too, the people around us refused to listen; and even those who listened refused to believe; and even those who believed could not comprehend. Of course they could not. Nobody could. The experience of the camps defies comprehension.”

“If you ask me what I want to achieve, it's to create an awareness, which is already the beginning of teaching.”

“"Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings!" the Hungarian police were screaming.
That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death.”

“The bell. It was already time to part, to go to bed. The bell regulated everything. It gave me orders and I executed them blindly. I hated that bell. Whenever I happened to dream of a better world, I imagined a universe without a bell.”

“Time does not heal all wounds; there are those that remain painfully open.”

“For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.”

“Most people thought we would remain in the ghetto until the end of the war, until the arrival of the Red Army. Afterward everything would be as before. The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion.”

“Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.”

“The duty of the survivor is to bear testimony to what happened. . . You have to warn people that these things can happen, that evil can be unleashed. Race hatred, violence, idolatries—they still flourish.”

“The night had passed completely. The morning star shone in the sky. I too had become a different person. The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded - and devoured - by a black flame.”

“His last word had been my name. He had called out to me and I had not answered.
I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!”

“I rarely speak about God. To God yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But open discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.”

“Close your eyes and listen. Listen to the silent screams of terrified mothers, the prayers of anguished old men and women. Listen to the tears of children. Jewish children, a beautiful little girl among them, with golden hair, whose vulnerable tenderness has never left me. Look and listen as they walk towards dark flames so gigantic that the planet itself seemed in danger.”

“I had anger but never hate. Before the war, I was too busy studying to hate. After the war, I thought, What's the use? To hate would be to reduce myself.”

“A recollection. The time: After the war. The place: Paris. A young man struggles to readjust to life. His mother, his father, his small sister are gone. He is alone. On the verge of despair. And yet he does not give up. On the contrary, he strives to find a place among the living. He acquires a new language. He makes a few friends who, like himself, believe that the memory of evil will serve as a shield against evil; that the memory of death will serve as a shield against death.”

“Thousands of lips repeated the benediction, bent over like trees in a storm.
Blessed be God's name?
Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because He kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces?”

“People thought this was a good thing. We would no longer have to look at all those hostile faces, endure those hate-filled stares. No more fear. No more anguish. We would live entirely among Jews, among brothers…”

“What is abnormal is that I am normal. That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life — that is what is abnormal.”

“After the war we reassured ourselves that it would be enough to relate a single night in Treblinka, to tell of the cruelty, the senselessness of murder, and the outrage born of indifference: it would be enough to find the right word and the propitious moment to say it, to shake humanity out of its indifference and keep the torturer from torturing ever again.”

“"Yisgadal, veyiskadash, shmey raba… May His name be celebrated and sanctified…" whispered my father.
For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?”

“None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose it in all its hideousness. War leaves no victors, only victims.”

“No one was praying for the night to pass quickly. The stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us. Were this conflagration to be extinguished one day, nothing would be left in the sky but extinct stars and unseeing eyes.”

“Of course some wars may have been necessary or inevitable, but none was ever regarded as holy. For us, a holy war is a contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those who wage it. The Talmud says, "Talmidei hukhamim marbin shalom baolam" (It is the wise men who will bring about peace). Perhaps, because wise men remember best.”

“We were outside. The icy wind whipped my face. I was constantly biting my lips so that they wouldn't freeze. All around me, what appeared to be a dance of death. My head was reeling. I was walking through a cemetery. Among the stiffened corpses, there were logs of wood. Not a sound of distress, not a plaintive cry, nothing but mass agony and silence. Nobody asked anyone for help. One died because one had to. No point in making trouble.”

“Waking among the dead, one wondered if one was still alive. And yet real despair only seized us later. Afterwards. As we emerged from the nightmare and began to search for meaning.”

“When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time; it is a homecoming.”

“One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto.
From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me.
The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.”