Hope, Despair and Memory

Elie Wiesel delivered the speech, “Hope, Despair and Memory” in December of 1986 upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. In a press release, the Norwegian Nobel Committee recognized Wiesel for “his practical work in the cause of peace.” In addition to his writing reflecting the Jewish experience during and after the Holocaust, Wiesel’s work as a human rights activist led the Committee to recognize him with this award. In his Nobel Lecture, Wiesel demonstrates how his experience during the Holocaust led him to advocate for justice for all of humanity.

This study guide refers to the transcription of that lecture available on the Nobel Prize website; parenthetical citations refer to paragraphs.

Content Warning: Both Wiesel’s speech and this study guide include extensive references to the Holocaust, as well as other instances of racial, ethnic, or political violence and oppression.

Wiesel begins with an anecdote about Rabbi Baal-Shem-Tov, who aimed to hurry the coming of the prophesied Messiah to save not only the Jewish people but all of humanity from evil. This attempt to change the course of history resulted in the exile of Rabbi Baal-Shem-Tov—also called the Besht—to an island. His servant insisted that the rabbi use his powers to get them home; however, the rabbi had lost his powers. The servant implored him to pray, but the rabbi had forgotten everything, including prayer. Together they began reciting the alphabet until the rabbi’s memory and powers returned.

The anecdote illustrates what Wiesel calls the “mystical power of memory” (3). Wiesel argues that existence without memory would be lifeless and grim, like “a prison cell” or “a tomb” (3). Like the rabbi, Wiesel believes that memory “will save humanity” and views it as a precondition for hope (3). For this reason, there can be no future without the past and no past without the future.

Wiesel recalls his time in Paris after the Holocaust. His mother, father, and sister had all been killed. Rather than resign himself to despair, he learned French and made new friends who share his belief that memory would help prevent future atrocities. Wiesel says that his existence depended on his belief because the “universe” from which he had just emerged was otherwise incomprehensible. Alluding to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, Wiesel describes a “parallel society” that aspires to an “anti-heaven.” In this alternative creation, humans rewrote relationships between the powerful and the powerless, and the past disappeared.

This, Wiesel suggests, was the Holocaust. In their dehumanization and struggle to survive, those in concentration camps lost their past selves and connection to history. Wiesel implies that they also lost their connection to or trust in God, who came to seem like a “slaughterer” himself, and for whom all their suffering took place in “the blink of […] [an] eye” (7). Those in the camps witnessed death daily and knew little beyond fear. Even the “laws of nature” were distorted: Wiesel describes children who looked old and men who were childlike in their weeping. The prisoners’ collective silence contained the memory of the dead.

Nevertheless, Wiesel says that the real “despair” came after the Holocaust, when Wiesel and others tried to make sense of what had happened. He questions how those who allowed the Holocaust to occur could have so thoroughly lost their ties to the past: “Could anything explain their loss of ethical, cultural and religious memory?” (8). The experience shook many survivors’ faith in God, but abandoning faith was unsatisfactory as well, making their suffering seem meaningless. Wiesel concludes that Auschwitz epitomized “scientific abstraction, social and economic contention, nationalism, xenophobia, religious fanaticism, racism, mass hysteria” (8).

Given all of this, Wiesel suggests that it would have been natural for survivors to repress their memories of the Holocaust. However, this proved impossible. Wiesel points out that for the first time in Jewish history, they were not able to participate in funeral rites; thus, Wiesel and his people “bear their graves within [themselves]” (10).

This memory, however, is not just inevitable but “noble.” Wiesel notes that in Jewish tradition, memory is the most recurrent requirement of the covenant with God. It is also humanity’s hope of salvation, which depends on God recalling humanity’s “suffering” during the “universal judgment.” Wiesel, therefore, calls the absence of memory a “curse,” as it condemns people to relive the errors of the past—in particular, “past wars.”

War, according to Wiesel, is not part of Judaism; he notes that the Talmud depicts the fates of warriors unfavorably. Moreover, the very idea of a “holy war” is contradictory. The Talmud intertwines wisdom and peace-making, and Wiesel wonders if the wise bring about peace precisely because they have a greater capacity for memory.

Wiesel examines a paradox: Remembering is a “supreme duty,” but people must also forget. Without forgetting, people cannot learn anything new, nor would they accept risk. Wiesel holds that only God “can and must remember everything” (14). Holocaust survivors in particular have had to struggle to balance memory and forgetting. He describes the need these survivors felt to share their testimony, giving several examples of dialogues that occurred between dying family members during the Holocaust. Citing the example of historian Shimon Dubnov, who died in the Riga ghetto, Wiesel explains how the Jewish people came to document their trauma in a massive body of literature of witness: journals, correspondences, poetry, and other scattered narratives. Like Wiesel himself, many of these writers believed that their accounts of the Holocaust would be enough to prevent history from repeating itself, this time with another group of people as its victims.

This was a “naïve” hope, Wiesel claims. It was difficult to capture the experience of the Holocaust in words, and when he and other survivors did, they did not stop war, oppression, and hatred from resurfacing. Wiesel provides a series of examples contemporary to the speech that exemplify the oppression of “different” groups, including apartheid in South Africa, the Iran hostage crisis, a gun attack on a Sephardic Jewish synagogue in Turkey, and a series of terrorist bombings in Paris. After condemning all forms of terrorism, Wiesel implores Israel to “establish the foundation for a constructive relationship with all its Arab neighbors” (26). Humanity must remember all who are suffering, Wiesel says.

Wiesel recalls the Book of Job in the Tanakh. Job loses everything yet perseveres, never giving up on “creation” (28). According to Wiesel, even if Job had lost his faith, he would have rediscovered it in questioning God. This, he posits, demonstrates that “hope is possible beyond despair” (29), provided one remembers the past.

Wiesel recognizes that humans will inevitably fail in this global mission for justice: Injustice will always exist somewhere. However, even small progress can justify a commitment to human rights. Wiesel looks toward the future and reminds listeners that nuclear war promises unimaginable carnage. To avoid making the same mistakes and falling prey to “scientific abstraction” or hatred, people must remember the lessons of the past.