olocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, champion of human rights and advocate for awareness of past and potential acts of genocide, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996. On the
atrocities in Sudan, Wiesel asked in July 2004 "How can a citizen of a free country not pay attention? How can anyone, anywhere not feel outraged? How can a person, whether religious or secular, not be moved by compassion? And above all, how can anyone who remembers remain silent?" He continues to speak out. In April 2006, Wiesel urged a rally of tens of thousands on the National Mall to call for an end to genocide in Darfur: "Silence helps the killer, never his victims."
Wiesel also served as chair of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and was a guiding force in the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In his best-known work,
Night, Elie Wiesel describes his experiences and emotions at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust: the roundup of his family and neighbors in the Romanian town of Sighet; deportation by cattle car to the concentration camp
Auschwitz-Birkenau; the division of his family forever during the selection process; the mental and physical anguish he and his fellow prisoners experienced as they were stripped of their humanity; and the death march from Auschwitz-Birkenau to the concentration camp at Buchenwald.
