Essay on School System

Submitted By anahihurtado
Words: 432
Pages: 2

Elie Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor. Wiesel wrote many books about the tragic horror of the holocaust, and received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. When accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Wiesel made a speech titled “Hope, Despair and Memory.” Wiesel talks about how memory is the key to hope and the “shield against death.” If memory is the key to hope, then Wiesel is also saying that someone could get himself or herself through something and make themselves feel better just by remembering. Wiesel’s reasoning is true that man has the ability to transcend his condition through dreams and hope.
Denial comes hand in hand with forgetting. If someone forgot what happened, how could they possibly be there to say it happened? Survivors of the Holocaust, even though they might have had no material items when they left, had one huge gift to give the world, their memories. Their hopes, their dreams, these are the things that can save the world from something else like the Holocaust. If someone has the ability to tell people of what they experienced, they can educate more people on tragedy and despair, and make someone a believer, which can give the teller hope, thus connecting memory and hope. As Wiesel put it in his speech, “Because I remember, I despair…I remember the victims, even as a struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope.”
Being able to retell memories is perhaps one of the most humanizing abilities. The ability to freely tell that something happened, and have it be the full truth and have no one contradict you. Then you have the Holocaust, which could be considered the most dehumanizing event in history. “…Nameless and