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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 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. 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, 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. 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. world » YouTube 20 July 7 • 2016 'Conscience Of The World' Elie Wiesel, 1928-2016