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‘Conscience
Of The World’
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Elie Wiesel, 1928-2016
E
liezer “Elie” Wiesel, 87, the vener-
ated Holocaust survivor, novelist,
journalist, human rights activist
and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, died
July 2, 2016, in New York after a prolonged
illness.
Called “the world’s leading spokesman
on the Holocaust” by the Nobel commit-
tee, Wiesel dedicated his life to perpetu-
ating the memory of the Holocaust and
promoting Holocaust education, as well as
combating “indifference, intolerance and
injustice through international dialogue
and youth-focused programs that promote
acceptance, understanding and equality,”
according to his foundation.
Wiesel said the fight against indifference
and the concomitant attitude that “it’s no
concern of mine” was a struggle for peace.
“The opposite of love is not hate, but indif-
ference,” he said. “To remain silent and
indifferent is the greatest sin of all.”
President Barack Obama called Wiesel,
“The conscience of the world.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
said Wiesel “gave expression to the victory
of the human spirit over cruelty and evil
through his extraordinary personality and
his fascinating books. In the darkness of
the Holocaust, in which our sisters and
brothers were killed — 6 million — Elie
Wiesel served as a ray of light and example
of humanity who believed in the goodness
in people.”
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said
Wiesel was a “hero of the Jewish people
and a giant of all humanity.”
Rivlin called him “one of the Jewish peo-
ple’s greatest sons, who touched the hearts
of so many and helped us to believe in
forgiveness, in life and in the eternal bond
of the Jewish people. May his memory be
20 July 7 • 2016
a blessing, everlastingly engraved in the
heart of the nation.”
Natan Sharansky, head of the Jewish
Agency for Israel, and his wife, Avital, said,
“Elie Wiesel was the collective moral com-
pass of the Jewish people. He was the first
to break the silence surrounding the plight
of Soviet Jewry, and he accompanied our
struggle until we achieved victory. We will
miss him deeply.”
AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST
Wiesel was the author of some four dozen
works dealing with Judaism, the Holocaust
and the moral responsibility of all people
to fight hatred, racism and genocide.
But it was his first, the memoir Night,
which gained Wiesel fame. It tells of his
experience with his father in Auschwitz
and Buchenwald in 1944-1945, to where
he was taken at age 15 from his Romanian
hometown of Sighet.
Wiesel was born there into a Chasidic
family on Sept. 30, 1928. After the war,
he was sent to an orphanage in Ecouis,
France, where he lived for several years.
He became a professional journalist, writ-
ing for both French and Israeli publica-
tions.
After visiting Israel in 1949 as a foreign
correspondent for the French newspaper
L’arche, he was subsequently hired by the
Israeli paper Yediot Aharonot as its Paris
correspondent.
The original version of his first mem-
oir was more than 800 pages, written in
Yiddish and titled Un di Velt Hot Geshvign
(And the World Remained Silent). He
wrote a shorter version in French, pub-
lished in 1958 as La Nuit, which was trans-
lated into English as Night two years later.
It sold fewer than 2,000 copies in the
United States in its first 18 months, but
did attract much attention among review-
ers and created a higher media profile for
Wiesel. It has gone on to sell more than
6 million copies. Night would form the
first part of Holocaust memoir trilogy that
would include Dawn and Day.
Roma and others. The Romanian govern-
ment recognized the commission’s findings,
published in 2004, including the assessment
that between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews and
more than 11,000 Roma died during World
War II as result of policies advanced by the
Romanian authorities.
MUCH HONORED
Wiesel received numerous awards and
honors over the years, including the
Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal
of Honor of Israel, the U.S. Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the rank of Grand-
Croix in France’s Legion of Honor, and he
was knighted as Commander of the Order
of the British Empire. He was also the
recipient of more than 100 honorary doc-
torates and received France’s distinguished
Prix Medicis for his 1968 book A Beggar in
Jerusalem, describing the Jewish response
to the reunification of Jerusalem following
the Six-Day War.
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appoint-
ed him as chairman of the Presidential
Commission on the Holocaust (later renamed
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council), a role
in which he served until 1986. In that capac-
ity, Wiesel became a driving force behind the
establishment of the Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington. His words, “For the
dead and the living, we must bear witness,”
are engraved in stone at the entrance to the
museum.
In 2003, Romanian President Ion Iliescu
appointed Wiesel to lead the International
Commission for the Study of the Holocaust
in Romania. This group, later referred to as
the Wiesel Commission, was tasked with
setting the record straight regarding the
involvement of Romania’s fascist Iron Guard
regime in Holocaust atrocities against Jews,
RENOWNED SCHOLAR
In addition to his writing, Wiesel enjoyed a
second career as an academic. From 1972-
1976 he was professor of Judaic Studies at
the City University of New York. Thereafter,
he was Andrew W. Mellon Professor in
the Humanities at Boston University and a
member of both its philosophy and religion
departments.
Wiesel was Henry Luce Visiting Scholar
in Humanities and Social Thought at Yale
University (1982-83), and visiting profes-
sor of Judaic studies at Barnard College of
Columbia University from 1997 to 1999.
In the later years of his life, Wiesel was in
the headlines for an entirely unrelated rea-
son, as one of the more prominent victims
of Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff ’s
Ponzi scheme.
The Elie Wiesel Foundation for
Humanity lost $15.2 million it had invested
with Madoff, and the Wiesels lost their
own life’s savings, reported to be around $1
million. The foundation later managed to
raise about one-third of the money it lost
to Madoff from sympathetic donors and to
continue to function.
Elie Wiesel is survived by his wife,
Marion Rose; son, Elisha; stepdaughter,
Lynn; and two grandchildren.
*
The Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel contributed
to this report.
For an additional story on Elie Wiesel, see page 50.