Today (28.12), Limmud FSU launched an exhibit dedicated to the life and work of Nobel prize laureate, Elie Wiesel, at Limmud UK 2016 conference that is taking place in Birmingham this week.
Among the participants in the launching event were the founder of Limmud FSU and initiator of the exhibit, Chaim Chesler; Chair of Limmud UK David Hoffman, CEO of Limmud UK Eli Ovits, Limmud FSU Executive Director Roman Kogan, UJIA CEO Michael Wegier, Limmud FSU Europe chairman Semyon Dovzhik, Executive Director of Limmud France Ruth Ouazana, President of Board of Deputies Jonatan Arkush, Israeli historian and Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, MP Luciana Berger, President and CEO of Energiya Global Capital Yosef Abramowitz and more.
Chaim Chesler said, “This exhibition is in effect, the last will and testament of Elie Wiesel. He wanted to open it in Moscow a year before at the annual Limmud FSU conference in that city, but as he neared his end he told me that he did not have the strength, but that he wanted it to be opened nevertheless and then travel around the world so that people would understand the importance of Holocaust remembrance and the fight for the freedom of the Jews of the USSR – causes to which he had devoted his whole life.”
“There is a great deal of symbolism behind the fact that the exhibition is now being shown in the Begin Center,” said Dr. Joel Rappel, curator of the exhibition and former director of the Elie Wiesel archives in Boston. “In 1977, when President Jimmy Carter was preparing for a meeting with Prime Minister Menachem Begin, he was told that he needed to read the books of Elie Wiesel because they deal with issues that deeply concern the prime minister. When Carter decided to set up the Presidential Commission on the Holocaust, he asked his advisors who should be appointed to head it, and Arthur Goldberg, America’s ambassador to the United Nations, recommended that it be Wiesel. The letter of appointment can be seen here in the exhibition.” Rappel added, “Three and a half years later, Begin sent a letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee recommending Elie Wiesel, and he received the award five years later.”
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