Holocaust Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Elie Wiesel Dies at 87

Elie Wiesel, whose experiences surviving the Holocaust motivated a life dedicated to inspiring peace, died Saturday at his home in Connecticut. He was 87.

President Obama remembered the Nobel Peace Prize winner as "one of the great moral voices of our times and, in many ways, the conscience of the world.

"He raised his voice, not just against anti-Semitism, but against hatred, bigotry and intolerance in all its forms. He implored each of us, as nations and as human beings, to do the same, to see ourselves in each other and to make real that pledge of 'never again."'

Wiesel was born in 1928 in Romania.

In 1944, his town was captured by the Germans and Wiesel, along with his father, was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

From there, they were transferred to the Buna camp and then Buchenwald.

In 1945, Wiesel's father was beaten by guards and then other prisoners who wanted his food. He died from his injuries just before the camp was liberated.

Of his relatives, only two sisters survived the concentration camp.

After the war, he became a reporter; teaching himself French, he worked mostly in Paris where he became friends with writer Francois Mauriac who urged Wiesel to write about his experiences.

But it was not until he met Menachem Schneerson, who would later become the head of Lubavitcher movement, that Wiesel started to write.

That work - which was first a more than 900-page novel in Yiddish - eventually became a slim novel published in French, "La Nuit."

It was translated into English, titled, "Night."

"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," he wrote. "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.

"Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever."

Along with "The Diary of Anne Frank," it became not only one of the landmark testaments to the Holocaust but also one of the monuments of 20th century literature.

"He gave expression through his exceptional personality, and fascinating books about the victory of the human spirit over cruelty and evil," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"In the darkness of the Holocaust in which our brothers and sisters - six million - were murdered, Elie Wiesel was a ray of light and greatness of humanity who believed in the good in man," Netanyahu said.

Wiesel dedicated his life to activism and promoting the concept of peace.

"Peace is always attainable," he once told a reporter. "We have an obligation to give meaning to our lives by doing what we can for others."

He advocated for victims the world over - whether it was the Jews in what was then the Soviet Union or the refugees in Sudan.

Wiesel spoke what he believed.

At a visit to the White House in 1985, he urged President Reagan not to go ahead with a planned visit to a German military cemetery where Nazi war dead had been buried.

"That place, Mr. President, is not your place," Wiesel said. "Your place is with the victims."

In 1986, his work was recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize.

"His message is one of peace, atonement, and human dignity," the Nobel committee said.

"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," Wiesel said in his acceptance speech.

Later that year, he created the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, which fought intolerance and promoted understanding through conversation.

He was honored the world over - receiving, among other awards - the French Legion of Honor and the Star of Romania.

He became a United States citizen, taught at Boston University and the City University of New York.

In 2009, he visited Buchenwald with Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"There must come a moment, a moment of bringing people together," Wiesel said afterward.

It was a visit that left an impression on Obama.

"At the end of our visit to Buchenwald, Elie said that after all that he and the other survivors had endured, 'we had the right to give up on humanity,'" Obama said Saturday.

"But he said, 'we rejected that possibility...we said, no, we must continue believing in a future.' Tonight, we give thanks that Elie never gave up on humanity and on the progress that is possible when we treat one another with dignity and respect."

Photo: By World Economic Forum from Cologny, Switzerland (World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2003) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons