The great humanitarian, author, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel passed away over the weekend at the age of 87. Wiesel was best known for his memoir, “Night,” which recounted the harrowing tale of how he survived the holocaust.
Wiesel was only 15 when he was taken to Auschwitz in 1944, and was not liberated until April 11, 1945. His mother, sister, and father were all killed in the death camp. Throughout his life Wiesel was an outspoken humanitarian, focusing on publicizing the atrocities and genocides of oppressed regions like Armenia, Cambodia, and the Sudan. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
“He stood for an unassailable sense of what is right, and that voice is now silenced. I felt this deep sadness,” said Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn on Boston Public Radio Tuesday.
Koehn read Wiesel’s “Night” after hearing about his death this weekend. “His life was his message. It is not that he didn’t say a lot and do a lot, but part of the moral authority that he had… was by virtue of what he had endured, and then what he had made of what he had seen, and what he had suffered,” Koehn said.
Wiesel's ability to bring awareness to important issues and lead resistance against injustice came from his use of "soft power" rather than "hard power," said Koehn. "His humanity is his most important attribute as a leader. This was a quiet courage," she said.
Nancy Koehn is a historian at the Harvard Business School. You can listen to her interview with Boston Public Radio above.
