Question 15 of 25
60 % Complete
Read the passage, then answer the question that follows.
Elie Wiesel’s preface to the new translation of his memoir Night””a book about his experience in the Holocaust.
“[…] Night has been received in ways that I never expected. Today, students in high schools and colleges in the United States and elsewhere read it as part of their curriculum….The topic of Auschwitz has become part of mainstream culture. There are films, plays, novels, international conferences, exhibitions, annual ceremonies with the participation of the nation’s officialdom. The most striking example of that is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.; it has received more than twenty-two million visitors since its inauguration in 1993.
This may be because the public knows that the number of survivors is shrinking daily, and is fascinated by the idea of sharing memories that will soon be lost. For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.
For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.
15. Today, when one visits Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii, there are usually survivors of Pearl Harbor there to greet visitors. They have often signed copies of books they’ve written. Based on what Elie Wiesel wrote, why is this so important?
A. The survivors are bearing witness and vitally contributing to our country’s collective memory.
B. One day the survivors will be gone.
C. So that it never happens again.
D. To forget the dead would be like killing them a second time.
If you missed this question, you should study the concept of drawing conclusions. When you draw conclusions from a text, you take the information provided, then apply your own thoughts and ideas to form an overall concluding idea about the text.