Fighting Indifference

Medals commemorating Elie Wiesel’s 1986 Nobel Peace Prize are available through the Coin & Currency Institute. The silver medal includes Wiesel’s portrait on the obverse, with his name and the legend AUTHOR AND HUMANITARIAN along the rim. The reverse features the legend HONOURED WITH THE NOBEL PEACE PRICE 1986 in the center, surrounded by olive branches. The Royal Norwegian Mint issued the medal in 1999, and it was approved by the Norwegian Nobel Institute. The commemorative has a mintage of 25,000 and comes in a colored, six-panel folder describing Wiesel’s life and the history of the Nobel Peace Prize. The medal can be ordered through the Coin & Currency Institute’s website.

Elie Wiesel

Born on September 30, 1928, in Sighet, Romania, Elie Wiesel was a Jewish author, philosopher, humanist, and Holocaust survivor.

After German forces invaded Hungary in 1944, the Wiesel family was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Upon their arrival, Elie’s mother and sister were killed in a gas chamber, and Elie and his father were selected for hard labor. In early 1945, the two were forced to walk on a death march to Buchenwald concentration camp, where Elie’s father died on January 29. Elie Wiesel survived, and Allied soldiers liberated Buchenwald on April 11. 

After Wiesel was liberated, he made it his life’s mission to bear witness to the Holocaust and became the world’s leading spokesman on the tragedy. He also made it his goal to fight indifference—he viewed the struggle against apathy as a struggle for peace. In his words, “The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.” Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his efforts. Additionally, he was a driving force behind the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was also a founding board member of the Human Rights Foundation, created in 2005. He died in New York City on July 2, 2016, at the age of 87.