Read this passage: The depressing tale of the St. Louis is a case in point. Sixty
years ago, its human cargo - nearly 1,000 Jews - was
turned back to Nazi Germany. And that happened after the
Kristallnacht, after the first state sponsored pogrom, with
hundreds of Jewish shops destroyed, synagogues burned,
thousands of people put in concentration camps. And that
ship, which was already in the shores of the United States,
was sent back. I don't understand. Roosevelt was a good
man, with a heart. He understood those who needed help.
Why didn't he allow these refugees to disembark? A
thousand people - in America, the great country, the
greatest democracy, the most generous of all new nations
in modern history. What happened? I don't understand.
Why the indifference, on the highest level, to the suffering
of the victims?
--Elie Wiesel, "The Perils of Indifference" 1999
What is Wiesel trying to do in this passage?
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