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Wiesel Center holds inaugural event
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| Chancellor John Silber talks with Elie Wiesel and Aharon Appelfeld (from left) at a reception at the School of Management after Appelfeld’s address. Photo by Fred Sway |
A capacity crowd filled the 525-seat Tsai Performance Center
on Thursday, October 10, for an event officially inaugurating the Boston
University Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies. Aharon Appelfeld, an
acclaimed Jerusalem author, who, like Wiesel, is a Holocaust survivor,
was the featured speaker.
Born in Czernowitz, Romania, Appelfeld was deported to a Nazi concentration
camp at the age of eight, escaped within a year, and hid for three years
in the Ukrainian woods before joining the Russian army as a junior cook.
After time in an Italian refugee camp, he made his way to Israel.
“In dozens of novels, collections of essays, and memoirs, he has
recalled how Eastern European Jews listened as the German language of
the Habsburg realm, a language of assimilation, became the horrid language
of Nazi terror,” BU Chancellor John Silber said as he introduced
Appelfeld. “Educated in the culture of Vienna, Mr. Appelfeld struggled
instead to write in Hebrew to tell of all he had seen. His mastery of
Hebrew ranks as a literary achievement with Joseph Conrad’s mastery
of English.”
Directed by Steven Katz, a CAS professor of religion, the Center for Judaic
Studies was established two decades ago. Under its new name honoring Wiesel,
the center will continue to coordinate and support all academic programs
relating to Jewish studies at BU. It also supports the University teaching
program in Hebrew language study. In addition, it sponsors relevant lectures,
conferences, and publications in Jewish studies, and cultural programs
featuring films, theater, and music.
Wiesel (Hon.’74), a 1986 Nobel laureate for peace, BU’s Andrew
W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, and a UNI professor of philosophy
and religion, has taught at the University since 1976. A recipient of
110 honorary degrees and more than 120 other honors, Wiesel has also received
many awards for his writings, which include such nonfiction works as the
autobiographical Night (1960), The Jews of Silence (1966), and Souls on
Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters (1972). He has been outspoken
on the plight of Soviet Jewry, on Ethiopian Jewry, and on behalf of Israel,
and also has been an advocate for victims in Bosnia and Kosovo.
18
October 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations