Author Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Boston University professor, was accosted by a Holocaust denier in a San Francisco hotel Feb. 1, according to the San Francisco Police Department.
The man dragged Wiesel from one of the Argent Hotel’s elevators after asking the Nobel Peace Laureate for an interview, according to reports.
When Wiesel agreed to an interview in the hotel lobby, the attacker dragged the 78-year-old humanitarian from the elevator. The attacker ran away after Wiesel screamed for help, according to reports. Police have not identified a suspect in the case.
The SFPD Special Investigation Hate Crimes Unit is handling the case, said SFPD officer Dan O’Shea.
Wiesel had spoken earlier that day at the RockRose Institute World Forum, a conference aimed at dealing with violence through conflict resolution, said Forum spokesman Kenny Wardell.
Wiesel is the author of Night, a 1958 memoir of his time in Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration camp in Germany. The book has been translated into more than 30 languages.
The human rights activist spoke in front of the United Nations Security Council on Sept. 14 and urged for more humanitarian aid to Darfur, a Sudanese region where more than 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million made homeless since the conflict started in 2003. The British government knighted him in November 2006.
Wiesel, the author of more than 40 books, has taught at BU since 1976. He hosts the annual “Three Encounters with Elie Wiesel” lecture series in the George Sherman Union’s Metcalf Hall.
Phone calls to the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies and the Elie Wiesel Foundation to Humanity were not immediately returned yesterday.
Please read tomorrow’s Daily Free Press for more information about the incident.
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