Elie Wiesel exhibition opens in Moscow

A photo exhibition showcasing the life of Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel has opened in Moscow, and will run until the end of September.

Launching this week, the exhibition at the Israeli Cultural Center in the Russian capital shows his life in pictures, from his youth before and during the Holocaust to his work as a novelist, journalist, Jewish leader and Nobel Prize winner.

Romanian-born Wiesel, who died in July aged 87, survived Auschwitz and later became a leading supporter of the movement to free Soviet Jewry, writing ‘The Jews of Silence,’ a highly influential book on the struggle, in 1966.

“It is fitting that Elie Wiesel was honoured in Moscow by the very people he helped free 50 years after writing his book,” said Chaim Chesler, the founder of the Russian-speaking Limmud FSU, which has helped organise the exhibition. “His memory will serve as an inspiration and a symbol of our triumph.”

Curator Yoel Rappel, director of the Elie Wiesel Archive at Boston University, curated the exhibition, said: “When I asked Wiesel how the struggle for Soviet Jewry is more important than the struggle for Holocaust awareness, he replied that the Jews of Europe were exterminated physically by the Nazis; the Jews of the Soviet Union were being destroyed spiritually. The first we were unable to avoid, but we must prevent the second from succeeding.”