Boston University honors Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel

Students and scholars gather to celebrate writings and teachings of celebrated Holocaust survivor, who died last year, aged 87

BOSTON — Boston University paid tribute to the late Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel on Sunday.

Students and scholars gathered to celebrate writings and teaching by Wiesel, who was a professor at the school for decades. He died last year at age 87.

The campus event included panel discussions on Wiesel’s writings and humanitarian work, along with guest speeches and tributes.

Among those speaking were Wiesel’s son, Elisha, and Cornell William Brooks, a former president of the NAACP, who studied with Wiesel at Boston University.

Nobel Peace prize winner and writer Elie Wiesel standing in front of a photo of himself (bottom 3rd from R) and other inmates, taken at the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945, during his visit to the Holocaust Memorial Center Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, December 18, 1986. (AFP/ SVEN NACKSTRAND/File)

Wiesel was born in Romania in 1928 and survived imprisonment at the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. He devoted his life to keeping memories of the Nazi genocide of World War II from fading away.

He moved to New York in 1956, and gained fame with the publication of his landmark Holocaust book “Night,” which drew on his experiences and became a testament to Nazi crimes.

He became an American citizen, published dozens of books and later hobnobbed with presidents, who welcomed him to the White House and tasked him with planning an American Holocaust memorial museum. He received the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He taught at Boston University from 1976 to 2013.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.