On 2 July 2016, Holocaust Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel passed away in New York at the age of 87.
Born in 1928 in Sighet, a town with 15,000 Jews in present-day Romania, Wiesel and his family were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was selected for forced labor and would later be sent to Buchenwald.
After enduring the horrors of the Holocaust, Wiesel and two of his sisters reunited after seeing a photo of Elie in the newspaper.
Dedicating himself to the study of genocide and advancing Holocaust education, Wiesel was a longtime human rights activist and award winning novelist who dedicated himself to Holocaust remembrance and combating all forms of hatred and bigotry.
A prolific writer, Weisel recounted his experience in his memoir, Night. In Night, Weisel grapples with survivors' guilt and shares his most haunting memories at Buchenwald. In one of the most notable and profound chapters, he writes, “never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.”
Since its publication in 1968, Night has been translated into thirty languages with millions of copies sold and is credited as one of the most important recounts of the Holocaust.
In 1986, Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In it’s statement announcing the award, the Nobel Committee described Wiesel as, “a messenger to mankind; his message is one of peace, atonement and human dignity.” In his acceptance speech, Wiesel emphasized the importance of preserving the memory of the Holocaust “because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.”
Following Wiesel’s death, WJC President Ronald S. Lauder mourned the loss noting, “Elie Wiesel was more than a revered writer. He was also a teacher for many of us. He taught us about the horrors of Auschwitz. He taught us about Judaism, about Israel, and about not being silent in the face of injustice.
