Elie Wiesel, a Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor who chronicled his family’s plight in Nazi concentration camps, died Saturday in his Manhattan home, Israel’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem announced. He was 87.
The Romanian-born Wiesel wrote dozens of books, including the 1955 best-seller “Night” chronicling his experience as a teenage boy at Nazi concentration camps in Auschwitz and Buchenwald during World War II.
In both his written words and in charismatic speeches he delivered worldwide, Wiesel has acted as a moral conscience for decades about the scope and horror of the German efforts to eradicate Jews like himself, and became an outspoken voice on human rights.
Wiesel also gained acclaim for helping to identify Nazi war criminals after World War II.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
In his acceptance speech, he asked, “Do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? … I do not. That would be presumptuous. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.”
As a writer, he became best known for “Night” which was originally written in Yiddish and has been translated into more than 30 languages.
The autobiographical account was the first part of a trilogy — continuing with “Dawn” and “Day” — that recounting the murder of most of his family at the hands of the Nazis.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Wiesel “gave expression to the victory of the human spirit over cruelty and evil, through his extraordinary personality and his fascinating books.”