Hope, Despair and Memory: Memory and the Past Quotes

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Quote #4

Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. (12, 2-3)

After all, what is history even about but the formal remembering of the past? Learning from past mistakes is the heart of the whole heart of the study

Quote #5

And he is not alone. Governments of the Right and of the Left go much further, subjecting those who dissent, writers, scientists, intellectuals, to torture and persecution. How to explain this defeat of memory? (24, 4-6)

This is the central paradox, the central moral failing that Elie Wiesel is using this speech to speak against. Memories of the '30s and '40s were needed in order to avoid the atrocities that occurred during those decades from repeating…but instead, those memories were avoided.