MEDIA CONTACT: Stacia Smith
561-297-2971; ssmith@fau.edu

BOCA RATON, FL (Feb. 24, 2003) – Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel will present a lecture entitled, “Post-Holocaust Christian/Jewish Dialogue,” at Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, in Boca Raton on Monday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the University Center Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Wiesel, a native of Transylvania (Romania), was imprisoned in the Nazi internment camp Auschwitz when he was 15 years old. While his two older sisters and his father survived Auschwitz, his mother and younger sister perished. Wiesel and his father were later transported to another camp, Buchenwald, where his father died.

After the war, Wiesel studied in Paris and later became a journalist, yet he remained silent about what he had endured as an inmate in the death camps. During an interview with the French writer François Mauriac, Wiesel was persuaded to end that silence. He subsequently wrote La Nuit (Night).

Wiesel’s efforts have earned him several awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States Congressional Gold Medal, the Medal of Liberty Award, the rank of Grand Officer in the French Legion of Honor, and in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed him chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and, in 1980, he became Founding Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. He has also received more than 90 honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning.

Three months after Wiesel received the Nobel Peace Prize, he and his wife established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Its mission is to advance the cause of human rights and peace throughout the world by creating a new forum for the discussion of urgent ethical issues confronting humanity.

An American citizen since 1963, Elie Wiesel lives in New York with his wife and son.

This event is sponsored by Alan L. Berger, Ph.D., Raddock Eminent Scholar Chair of Holocaust Studies in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at FAU. For more information, call the Holocaust and Judaic Studies B.A. Program at 561-297-2979.