This past weekend leading up to the 4th of July seemed like it was going to be like any other holiday weekend filled with family, friends and good food. On Saturday I was at the lake with my boyfriend’s family that had all come in to celebrate the holiday. We had spent hours having fun and laughing on the lake. As I came into the house I grabbed my phone (an instinct I’m sure most millennials have) to scroll through social media after leaving my phone up there so I wouldn’t be distracted by it.
As I was scrolling through Facebook I noticed a story posted by the Auschwitz Concentration Camp Memorial and Museum: Elie Wiesel, one of the most influential minds of modern times, had died earlier that day. A lot of people say that they remember exactly where they were when Michael Jackson died in 2009 or when Prince died earlier this year, but I for one will never forget where I was when I heard the world had lost one of my heroes.
I never got the chance to meet Elie Wiesel in person, yet his death shook me deeply.
I have been on a personal campaign for remembrance of the Holocaust for four years now. I’ve visited museums dedicated to it all over the U.S., spoken about the importance of remembering at a conference, met with a Holocaust survivor who shared her testimony with me, as well as put in countless hours into this work. At this point I actually consider myself an amateur Holocaust scholar, and I always take interest when something from this period of history is reported in modern news because most of the world has chosen to ignore or forget these horrors that happened not that long ago.
Elie Wiesel was one of a kind. He survived Auschwitz as a young man and lost most of his family in the process and even after the war he refused to forget what he and his people went through even as the rest of the world refused to listen to him or just didn’t care what he had to say. He refused to let himself be silent as the world forgot. In schools, most students today are exposed to his memoir Night as required reading at some point and just like those who refused to listen to Wiesel right after the war, most students pass it off as just another thing they are forced to read.
We lost Elie Wiesel in such a desperate time for this world; a time when the hate-filled message of the Nazis seems to be resurfacing but now mutated for the times of today. Elie Wiesel’s message that this kind of hatred, towards anyone and any group, should not be permitted is now ours to take up in a world still plagued by hatred and xenophobia that political leaders seem to encourage when they should be the main voices calling for an end to it.
And for the sake of this country that I love dearly with all of my heart and soul, I hope that’s what my generation does. We cannot let America fall victim to the hatred we are supposedly united against as a land of freedom for everyone no matter their skin color, religion, gender or any other difference they have.
I will carry on Elie Wiesel’s work and legacy until my time is over.
I hope that young people today will stand up against hatred and do the same.
