Remembering Elie Wiesel
By bearing witness, he revealed evil many had avoided facing. By never giving up, he made this world better.
With the passing of Elie Wiesel, the world has lost a great and wise man; those who fight injustice have lost a daily inspiration; and the members of Elie’s beautiful family have lost a loving husband, a proud father, and an incredibly tender grandfather.
It is no exaggeration to say that Elie’s willingness to tell the story of his childhood — and to search to the very end of his life to understand the roots of the evil that took so many of those he loved — changed the world. Every person who read Night was fundamentally altered by the experience. But Elie didn’t stop after Night. He dedicated his life to trying to make his fellow citizens gentler to one another. When he found himself hailed as the national treasure he was, he used his standing. Elie was never a bystander, instead throwing his colossal moral authority behind life-and-death causes, such as urging world leaders to rescue the victims of genocide in Bosnia and Darfur. In essence, he never stopped doing for others as he might have wished had been done unto him.
I got to know Elie Wiesel first from afar as a schoolgirl reader of Night. But when I got older, I sought him out and found he had a remarkably open door. When I was researching a book on genocide, he helped me understand the roots and consequences of modern atrocities. During my time in the Obama administration, he was generous beyond words with his time and his counsel, and I cannot easily convey my gratitude — or my heartbreak — tonight.
When I took up my post as U.S. ambassador to the UN, Elie was the first person in New York I sought out for advice. Over the last three years, when we would meet, he would often ask about issues we were debating at the UN Security Council, and occasionally, as I offered details, he would stop me and ask, “But where is morality in all of this?”
There was only one Elie Wiesel. There will never be another. And the millions of people touched by him — up close or from afar — will miss him immeasurably. But the light Elie shone — illuminating our common humanity — will burn bright for centuries to come.
