Arts & Lectures
2001-2002 Season Lecture Series News Release
For Immediate Release

March 19, 2002
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@sa.ucsb.edu

UCSB presents human rights activist Elie Wiesel in An Evening with the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate at the Arlington Theatre

Summary Facts:

UCSB’s Arthur N. Rupe Distinguished Dialogue Series presents An Evening with Elie Wiesel, the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, on Wednesday, April 24 at 8 pm in the Arlington Theatre, 1317 State Street. Elie Wiesel has worked on behalf of oppressed people for much of his adult life. As a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, his personal experience of the Holocaust has led him to use his talents as an author, teacher and storyteller to defend human rights and promote peace throughout the world. His efforts have earned him numerous laurels including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian award, and the rank of Grand Officer in the French Legion of Honor. Upon naming Wiesel the Peace Prize winner in 1986, the Nobel committee stated, “Elie Wiesel has emerged as one of the most important spiritual leaders and guides in an age when violence, repression and racism continue to characterize the world. Wiesel is a messenger to mankind; his message is one of peace, atonement and human dignity.”

Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in the town of Sighet, now part of Romania. During World War II his family and other Jews from the area were deported to the German concentration and extermination camps, where his parents and younger sister perished. Wiesel and his two older sisters survived. Liberated from Buchenwald in 1945, he was taken to Paris where he studied at the Sorbonne and worked as a journalist.

In 1958, he published his first book, The Night (La Nuit), a memoir of his experiences in the concentration camps. An international classic, the book has been translated into 25 languages and sold millions of copies. He has since authored over 40 books that have won numerous awards including the Prix Médicis for A Beggar in Jerusalem, the Prix Livre Inter for The Testament and the Grand Prize for Literature from the City of Paris for The Fifth Son. He has published two volumes of memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea and And the Sea Is Never Full. He is a professor in the Humanities at Boston University.

In his many lectures Wiesel has concerned himself with the situation of the Jews and other groups who have suffered persecution because of their religion, race or national origin. He has been outspoken on the plight of Soviet Jewry, on Ethiopian Jewry, on behalf of the State of Israel and on the behalf of victims in Kosovo and Bosnia. Immediately after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Elie and his wife Marion established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Its mission is to advance the cause of human rights and peace throughout the world by creating a new forum for the discussion of urgent ethical issues confronting humanity.

The Arthur N. Rupe Foundation has made a major grant to UCSB to establish a series of dialogues that will bring great minds from a variety of fields to the Santa Barbara community. The Rupe Distinguished Dialogue Series explores contemporary societal issues of national and international significance through the presentation of eminent people who hold divergent viewpoints. The series is presented by the College of Letters & Science, UCSB Arts & Lectures and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

This event is co-sponsored by the Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies, the Anti-Defamation League and is presented in partnership with the Santa Barbara Jewish Federation. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, books by Elie Wiesel will be available for purchase and signing.

All tickets are $5. Tickets are on sale now and may be purchased at the door, if available, beginning at 7 pm.

For tickets or more information,
call the UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535 or
the Arlington Ticket Agency at 963-4408

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.

©2002 UCSB Arts & Lectures, University of California, Santa Barbara