Mayor Eric Garcetti praised Nobel Peace Price winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel , hours after news broke of Wiesel’s death at the age of 87.
“With the death of Elie Wiesel, we have lost one of the great witnesses to history,” Garcetti said. “Few wrote as eloquently or as forcefully about the horrors of the Nazi holocaust, and, more than anyone, he embodied the moral imperative never to repeat similar horrors in the future. He will be mourned here in Los Angeles as he will be everywhere — and his message will never be forgotten.”
Wiesel’s death was reported Saturday by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum. The New York Times reported that he died Saturday at his Manhattan home. No cause of death was given.
A decade after surviving the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was imprisoned with his family, Wiesel wrote the acclaimed Holocaust memoir “Night,” which has since been translated into 30 languages. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Price in 1986.
—Staff and wire reports