A new House bill would honor the late holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winning author Elie Wiesel by authorizing the placement of a statue in his likeness in the Capitol.
Wiesel, who died July 2, was born in Romania in 1928 and was sent to Auschwitz at the age of 15. After surviving the concentration camp, he moved to America and became a writer and political activist.
“Elie Wiesel was one of the greatest moral forces in the world. He was brilliant, pure, honest, and courageous,” Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who sponsored the bill, said last week on the House floor.
In the wake of Wiesel’s death, some have argued that the activist did more harm than good. Max Blumenthal, son of Hillary Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, said Wiesel was a “war criminal” because of his support for Israel.
Cohen defended Wiesel’s legacy, and urged his colleagues to pass the bipartisan bill.
“He spent his life as a vocal witness against both the evil that gave rise to the Holocaust and man’s inhumanity against his fellow man,” he said. “His purpose was to speak the truth in the face of power and to clearly and repeatedly say ‘Never Again.'”
Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and was called “the single most important Jew in America” by scholar Michael Berenbaum.
