Messengers...Our Duty as Parents of the Disabled

Elie Wiesel

Remarks at the Dedication of Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum

Delivered 15 March 2005, Jerusalem, Israel

There is a frightening character in all of Kafka's stories. It's always the messenger who tried to deliver the message, and is unable to do so. We feel sorry for a poor messenger. But there is something more tragic than that: when the messenger has delivered the message and nothing has changed.

        We are the messengers and it is imperative that we continually and repeatedly keep delivering our message about the plight of the disabled.  Over and over again!  Until that point in the evolution of human consciousness that society provides our sons and daughters all the necessary supports to live lives which are worthy of life itself.  The invisibility, the stigmatization of the disabled must become a thing of the past, not by law or legislation, but by a change in the belief of the dignity of every person.

        I salute and honor every messenger, every blogger, every advocate who calls for a new world where institutions are closed and families have all the resources and supports to care for their own...if we can subsidize oil companies in the U.S. and bailout the biggest lenders, we can provide for the most vulnerable of our society and their committed care takers.  The resources are unquestionably available, the priorities are skewed.  It is in this quest that we become human, to turn away from this responsibility is inhuman.

ADDENDUM:

       I just found this passage from Weisel which explains why there is a need for parents tp continue being messengers, even if no one hears:

The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity

The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity

He told the crowd the story of the sage who visits a town dripping with corruption, from government on down to the people who live there.

“He would go to the marketplaces and from one street to another, saying to people, ‘Wake up! Wake up! Wake up to the needs of your fellow man!’

“In the beginning, children would gather around him because nobody had ever spoken like that. And he went on day after day for years and years,” Wiesel said.

Much like the old sage of his story, here Wiesel got quieter and softer as he continued.

“And years later, the children stopped him in the street and said, ‘Poor stranger, you speak and you shout, but don’t you see that nobody listens? And yet you keep going, speaking and shouting. Don’t you see it’s for nothing?’

“The sage said, ‘My dear child, I know it’s for nothing. They don’t listen and will never change. But I go on shouting louder and louder in this village and that village, on this corner and that corner, because ultimately, I don’t want them to change me.’ ”