Elie Wiesel died on July 2, 2016, at 87 years old. A Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize winner, novelist, scholar, historian, and human rights activist, Wiesel was 15 years old when he was taken to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland from his home in what is now Romania. He lost his mother, father, and a younger sister to the Nazis, but was later reunited with two sisters.
He married and had one son. Wiesel had a very complex belief system when it came to faith, memory, and despair, but he held an unrelenting willingness to teach and to learn, and was a tireless activist for those seeking freedom of conscience, liberation from despotism, and relief from war.
Wiesel wrote 60 books and gave countless speeches. His quotes span decades, but much of it rings true on this day as when he first uttered his thoughts.
Here are some of his most memorable quotes.
On bigotry:
If someone had told us in 1945 that in our lifetime religious wars would rage on virtually every continent, that thousands of children would once again be dying of starvation, we would not have believed it. Or that racism and fanaticism would flourish once again, we would not have believed it.
Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, Dec. 11, 1986
On hatred:
Hatred is at the root of evil everywhere. Racial hatred, ethnic hatred, political hatred, religious hatred. In its name, all seems permitted. For those who glorify hatred, as terrorists do, the end justifies all means, including the most despicable ones.
On indifference:
Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor — never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees — not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.
White House Millennium Lecture, April 12, 1999
On God:
I rarely speak about God. To God yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But open discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.
On peace:
Mankind must remember that peace is not God’s gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.
Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, Dec. 11, 1986
On gratitude:
When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.
Read this moving tribute to Elie Wiesel from his friend, Menachem Z. Rosensaft.
Watch Elie Wiesel give his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
