NEW YORK CITY (AP) — Mourners attending a private service for Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel say his death is also a great loss because there’s one less Holocaust survivor in the world.
Rabbi Perry Berkowitz called Wiesel’s death a “double tragedy,” since the world lost someone so “rare and unusual” and that Holocaust survivors are dying out.
Berkowitz, the president of the American Jewish Heritage Organization, had known Wiesel for more than 40 years and worked with him very closely in the 1970s as his assistant.
Friends and family were attending a private service for the “Night” author at Fifth Avenue Synagogue in New York City on Sunday morning.
Wiesel’s death was announced Saturday. He was 87.