Elie Wiesel Dead At 87

At Buchenwald in 1945 — In this photograph, taken five days after the liberation of the concentration camp at Buchenwald, Elie Wiesel’s face is visible just to the right of center. He’s on the second bunk up, just to the left of the third upright support, to the right of the bearded man with the white cap, and just below and to the right of the dark man with a beard. (Wikimedia CC)

I was saddened to hear the news this afternoon of the death of Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor, social activist, writer, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Here’s an unusually good profile of him, including video, from CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/02/world/elie-wiesel-dies/

And here is the profile of him that was published today by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.575072

Eli Wiesel’s Night is an eloquent, agonizing book.

Growing up, as I did, the son of a man who participated in the liberation of one of the Nazi death camps (for whom it was a pivotal, life-changing experience), I’ve always felt a profound personal connection to the Holocaust. I’m not Jewish, of course, and I have no relatives who were among the inmates of the camps, but, from my earliest years, I heard about what my father saw and felt there at Mauthausen. He wanted it never to be forgotten, and I haven’t forgotten it. In fact, that place in Austria has been an object almost of pilgrimage to me since my first visit, in 1974. I’ve not yet made it to Auschwitz, where Eli Wiesel and his family were first imprisoned. But I’ve visited Buchenwald, where he and his father were sent in the end. (His father didn’t survive.)

Posted from Park City, Utah

Elie Wiesel dead at 87