Eliezer Wiesel was a Romanian-born American novelist, political activist, and Holocaust survivor of Hungarian Jewish descent. He was the author of over 57 books, the best known of which is Night, a memoir that describes his experiences during the Holocaust and his imprisonment in several concentration camps.

Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. On November 30, 2006, he received an honorary knighthood in London, England, in recognition of his work toward raising Holocaust education in the United Kingdom.

In his political activities, Wiesel became a regular speaker on the subject of the Holocaust and remained a strong defender of human rights throughout his lifetime. He advocated for many causes including the state of Israel, and against Hamas, and victims of oppression including Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, South African apartheid, the Bosnian genocide, Sudan, the Kurds, the Armenian genocide, Argentina's Desaparecidos, and Nicaragua's Miskito people.

He was a professor of the humanities at Boston University, which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. Wiesel was involved in Jewish causes and human rights initiatives and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.