"I Swore Never to Be Silent"
Elie Wiesel, 1986 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Holocaust survivor, has passed away at age 87. Read and watch his powerful Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech: "I remember: it happened yesterday or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the kingdom of night."
Elie Wiesel's acceptance speech
Elie Wiesel - Facts
Eye-Witness and Messenger
The Jewish author, philosopher and humanist Elie Wiesel has made it his life's work to bear witness to the genocide committed by the Nazis during World War II. Today he is the world's leading spokesman on the Holocaust.
After Hitler's forces had moved into Hungary in 1944, the Wiesel family was deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland. Elie Wiesel's mother and younger sister perished in the gas chamber there. In 1945 Elie and his father were sent on to Buchenwald, where his father died of starvation and dysentery. Seventeen-year-old Elie was still alive when American soldiers opened the camp.
For the world to remember and learn from the Holocaust is not Elie Wiesel's only goal. It is equally important to fight indifference and the attitude that "it's no concern of mine". Elie Wiesel sees the struggle against indifference as a struggle for peace. In his words, "The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference".
Copyright © The Norwegian Nobel Institute