Technion mourns the passing of Dr. Elie Wiesel, Nobel Laureate and long-term friend of Technion and the State of Israel.
Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in the town of Sighet, now part of Romania. During World War II, he was deported to the German concentration and extermination camps, where his parents and little sister perished. Elie and his two older sisters survived. Liberated from Buchenwald in 1945, he was taken to Paris where he studied at the Sorbonne and worked as a journalist. In 1956, he published his first book in Yiddish, Un di Velt Hot Geshvign (And the World Was Silent), which in 1958 became La Nuit (Night), a memoir of his experiences in the concentration camps. He has since authored many more books. Prof. Wiesel was the first Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in the Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University, and a Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the City College of New York.
Elie Wiesel was awarded the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize because “with his message and through his practical work in the cause of peace, [he] is a convincing spokesman for the view of mankind and for the unlimited humanitarianism which are at all times necessary for a lasting and just peace.” He was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in Humanities at Boston University, a faculty member in the Department of Philosophy as well as the Department of Religion. In 2005, Prof. Wiesel was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Technion.
“Surely in this place you have shown that there is more to human spirit to celebrate than despair.” Elie Wiesel at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
Elie Wiesel at Technion
“Celebrate life.” The message resounded loud and clear from one of humankind’s guardians of ethics on all levels, Elie Wiesel, as he stood to receive an honorary doctorate from the Technion in 2005.
Attracted to the Technion and its pioneering work in life science and technology, Wiesel was a close friend of fellow Nobel Laureate Technion Distinguished Professor Aaron Ciechanover.
Wiesel delivered several lectures to Technion students calling for an awakening of human sensitivity towards the challenges ahead. “There is no escape from learning. Study, study and study!” he said. Speaking of himself as a writer, he said: “The weight of a book is the weight of its silence, not the weight of its words. What separates one word from the other is to me a mystery as great as what separates one molecule from the other in science, or what separates one planet from the other”.
Asked what makes the Technion different from other academic institutes, his response was clear: “At the Technion it is different. Technion has a moral dimension, which you don’t find everywhere.”
On June 8, 2005 Prof. Elie Wiesel delivered the lecture “Why I Write” at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology at the closing of the annual Board of Governors meeting. Wiesel was introduced by Prof. Aaron Ciechanover, Technion Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. You can watch it below.