The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference; for at a minimum, to love or hate someone is to have intense emotions toward them.–Elie Wiesel
He would know. Elie Wiesel was a Holocaust victim who survived imprisonment in Auschwitz and Buchenwald before the latter camp was liberated by the the US Army in April, 1945. By that time, every member of his immediate family was dead at the hands of the Nazis, and Wiesel himself was ill and weak. Following the war, Wiesel lived in England and France, and eventually moved to the United States, where he worked as the foreign correspondent for an Israeli newspaper, and started writing novels and Holocaust literature.
Wiesel knew about indifference. And he spoke often about the indifference of the Nazis to the humanity of their Holocaust victims. To the Nazis, their victims were “only” Jews. They weren’t human. They were “only” Jews. They didn’t matter. Their fate didn’t affect those who tormented them and propelled them to their deaths. In most cases, the Nazi attitude towards the Jews wasn’t hate. It was just indifference.
They simply couldn’t have cared less what happened to them.
An extended version of this quote of the day in which Wiesel extends the conceit to other disciplines and areas of life.
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.–Elie Wiesel
Can’t help thinking he’s right about all of it.
And that perhaps “indifference” is something similar to what Coleridge (in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) calls “The Nightmare Life-in-Death . . . Who thicks man’s blood with cold.” I think Wiesel is saying that “indifference,” when practices as a “lifestyle choice,” is really just another form of death. And that humanity is better represented, shown, and served, not by “cold,” but by heat–whether it is by “love” heat or by “hate” heat.
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never–Elie Wiesel, from Night
Elie Wiesel, survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, human-rights spokesman, and conscience of the world, died only eight years ago today, on July 2, 2016.
Never forget.
Never become “indifferent.”
The alternatives–either one–hurt, but are far more human.
What a beautiful post. Indifference is a kind of death.
I think so.
Indifference- It reminds me of one that is neither hot nor cold. A condition that was soundly rebuked by the Lord Himself.