Elie Wiesel, one of the most famous survivors of the Holocaust, died on July 2 at the age of 87, reportedly passing away peacefully at the end of a long illness. Among his many accomplishments, he was an acclaimed author and political advocate for peace and human rights worldwide, and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He was placed in a confinement ghetto at the age of 15 and was soon forcibly relocated to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Wiesel lost both his mother and sister immediately after arriving at the camp, and despite his determination to stay alive for his father's sake, his father was killed only weeks before the camp was liberated by the Allied forces. Wiesel was the only member of his family who survived to be freed from the camp.

For a decade after the end of World War II, Wiesel refused to write or talk about his experiences in the camps, until he met a French author named Francois Mauriac, another Nobel Laureate who became a very close friend of Wiesel's. Mauriac had been a part of the French Resistance during the War, and he persuaded Wiesel to write about his experiences in the concentration camps. He wrote a 900 page memoir in Yiddish, a shorter version of which was later translated into French, and then English under the title Night. The book did not sell very well at first, but after increased media attention surrounding Wiesel and his work it grew much more popular, and was eventually translated into 30 different languages. Wiesel received offers to turn the book into a film, but he refused, reportedly believing that the story would lose its meaning if the silences between his words were taken out.

The same year that Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize, he and his wife used the money from the award to build the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, an organization made to fight injustice mostly through youth programs that promote peaceful relationships and dialogue between people of diverse backgrounds and nationalities. In addition, he led the construction of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Wiesel advocated not only for victims of the Holocaust but for those who suffered all over the world, including Israelis, Soviets, South African Victims of apartheid, and those affected by genocide in Bosnia and Nicaragua.

Wiesel was a very accomplished man who survived one of the darkest periods of world history, and used those experiences to advocate for safety and justice for others who were suffering. Through his writing and speaking career, he demonstrated not only the incredible resilience of hope, but the ability to turn an awful tragedy into a springboard for good. We could all learn something from him.