NEW YORK — Activist and writer Elie Wiesel, the World War II death camp survivor who won a Nobel Peace Prize for becoming the voice of millions of Holocaust victims, died Saturday at his home in New York City. He was 87.
Wiesel was mourned on Sunday by admirers around the world who honored his lifelong fight for the victims of the Holocaust.
“My husband was a fighter,” Marion Wiesel said in a statement. “He fought for the memory of the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, and he fought for Israel. He waged countless battles for innocent victims regardless of ethnicity or creed.”
A private funeral will be followed at a later date by a public memorial, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity said.
Condolences from leaders around the world filled social media with memories of Wiesel demonstrating the triumph of goodness over inconceivable horrors.
His advocacy on behalf of Holocaust victims earned him the Nobel Peace prize in 1986. He told their story in his landmark book “Night,” maintaining that “to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
Even as he received the Congressional Gold Medal at the White House in 1985, he rebuked President Ronald Reagan for planning to lay a wreath at a German cemetery where some of Hitler’s notorious Waffen SS troops were buried.
“Don’t go to Bitburg,” Wiesel said. “That place is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.”
His tenacity on behalf of Holocaust sufferers was matched by his warmth and encouragement of loved ones, said his son Elisha Wiesel.
“My father raised his voice to presidents and prime ministers when he felt issues on the world stage demanded action. But those who knew him in private life had the pleasure of experiencing a gentle and devout man who was always interested in others, and whose quiet voice moved them to better themselves,” he said in a statement.
“I will hear that voice for the rest of my life, and hope and pray that I will continue to earn the unconditional love and trust he always showed me,” he said.
While the Romanian-born Wiesel was best known for his campaign never to let the world forget the Holocaust, one of his greatest rewards was working with students, including those at Boston University, where he was a religion and philosophy professor.
“What was most meaningful to him was teaching the innumerable students who attended his university classes,” Marion Wiesel said.
Boston University said in a statement the school was heartbroken to have lost such an “iconic” teacher.
Wiesel, a philosopher, speaker and playwright who also campaigned for the tyrannized and forgotten around the world, was a hollow-eyed 16-year-old when he emerged from the newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945. He had been orphaned by the Nazis and their identification number, A-7713, was tattooed on his arm as a physical manifestation of his broken faith and the nightmares that would haunt him throughout his life.
Wiesel and his family had first been taken by the Nazis from the village of Sighetu Marmatiei in the Transylvania region of Romania to Auschwitz, where his mother and one of his sisters died. Wiesel and his father, Shlomo, ended up in Buchenwald, where Shlomo died. In “Night” Wiesel wrote of his shame at lying silently in his bunk while his father was beaten nearby.
After the war Wiesel made his way to France, studied at the Sorbonne and by 19 had become a journalist. He pondered suicide and never wrote of or discussed his Holocaust experience until 10 years after the war as a part of a vow to himself. He was 27 years old in 1955 when “Night” was published in Yiddish, and Wiesel would later rewrite it for a world audience.
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed …,” Wiesel wrote. “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.”
By 2008, the New York Times said “Night” had sold an estimated 10 million copies, including 3 million after talk-show hostess Oprah Winfrey made it a spotlight selection for her book club in 2006.
In 1985 Wiesel helped break ground in Washington for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the following year was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In typical fashion, he dedicated the prize to all those who survived the Nazi horror, calling them “an example to humankind how not to succumb to despair.”
In awarding the Peace Prize in 1986, the Nobel Committee praised Wiesel as a “messenger to mankind” and “one of the most important spiritual leaders and guides in an age when violence, repression and racism continue to characterize the world.”
Wiesel became close to President Barack Obama but the friendship did not deter him from criticizing U.S. policy on Israel. He spoke out in favor of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and pushed the United States and other world powers to take a harder stance against Iran over its nuclear program. Wiesel attended the joint session of the U.S. Congress in 2015 when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on the dangers of Iran’s program.
Wiesel, who became a U.S. citizen in 1963, was slight in stature but a compelling figure when he spoke. With a chiseled profile, burning eyes and a shock of gray hair, he could silence a crowd by merely standing up.
A few years after winning the peace prize, he established the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, which, in addition to Israeli and Jewish causes, campaigned for Miskito Indians in Nicaragua, Cambodian refugees, victims of South African apartheid and of famine and genocide in Africa.
Wiesel wrote more than 50 books — novels, nonfiction, memoirs and many with a Holocaust theme — and held a long-running professorship at Boston University. In one of his later books, “Open Heart,” he used his 2011 quintuple-bypass surgery as impetus for reflection on his life.
“I have already been the beneficiary of so many miracles, which I know I owe to my ancestors,” he wrote. “All I have achieved has been and continues to be dedicated to their murdered dreams — and hopes.”
He collected scores of awards and honors, including an honorary knighthood in Britain. Obama presented him the National Humanities Medal in 2009.
Wiesel was attacked in a San Francisco hotel in 2007 by a 22-year-old Holocaust denier, but not injured.
Wiesel and wife married in 1969 and their son was born in 1972.