The greatest tribute to Elie Wiesel is that his call for justice remain strong and vibrant. Out of his survival in German death camps, Wiesel turned what could have been a bitter life into a clarion call for justice. Wiesel not only survived the horror of Auschwitz, but developed the inner strength to become a champion of morality.
Wiesel often stated that his fight for remembrance of the Holocaust was against deflective indifference. A collective shrug of the shoulders was a refusal to confront the barbarism that led to the Holocaust. It was Wiesel's quiet voice that roared against this indifference. His constant message was that you must remember, your conscience must be stirred, evil and hatred must be confronted.
Every morning Elie Wiesel and millions of Jews in German death camps woke and asked themselves whether they would live through the day. Many didn't. It was Wiesel who spoke for them and the millions more who died in Darfur, Rwanda, Cambodia and, now, in the Middle East. The death of Weisel and his generation of survivors points out that soon there will no longer be anyone who saw the smoke from the gas chambers or felt a blow from a camp guard or lived with the constant fear of dying to serve as witnesses. With their passing, we have all the more reason to heed Wiesel's fervent call to remember.