Never Shall I Forget

The phrase that Wiesel repeats—“Never shall I forget”—establishes the poem's central theme, trauma and indelible memories. Surviving the Holocaust qualifies as an extreme trauma. That is, the Holocaust was a shocking, distressing ordeal, and people don’t tend to forget extremely agonizing experiences. As the contemporary author, speaker, and trauma survivor Samra Zafar states in “The Various Faces of Trauma,” “We don’t move on from trauma. We move on with it” (Harvard Medical School Primary Care Review, 1 July 2022). Wiesel can’t move on from the Holocaust. He can’t let go of the macabre images that sealed themselves in his brain forever.

In the poem, Wiesel expresses a wish to die and abandon hope, but his life and work indicate that he learned how to move on with his trauma. By sharing his traumatic memories with the world, he bears witness in the hopes that people in the future won’t have to experience similar traumas. They won’t have to see people murder “the small faces of children” (Line 4) or contend with “a silent sky” (Line 5) or an apathetic world. As Wiesel says in his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize speech, “Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe” (“

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