Elie Wiesel to Speak in OKC
Nobel Peace Prize recipient and world-renowned human rights activist Elie Wiesel will speak at Oklahoma City University, Wednesday, April 20, at 8 pm, in the Freede Wellness Center, NW 27th and Florida. There is no admission fee, and seating is first come first served. Wiesel’s address is sponsored by the OCU Distinguished Speaker Series.
Wiesel was fifteen years old when he and his family were deported to Auschwitz by the Nazis. There, his mother and younger sister perished, his two older sisters survived. Elie and his father were later transported to Buchenwald, where his father died just before the camp was liberated in April, 1945.
President Jimmy Carter appointed Elie Wiesel Chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust in 1978. He has received over 100 honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning.
For his literary and human rights activities, he has received numerous awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal and the Medal of Liberty Award, and the rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honor. In 1986, Elie Wiesel won the Nobel Prize for Peace. A few months later, Marion and Elie Wiesel established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.