TORONTO — Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust chronicler Elie Wiesel, left, visited Toronto last week at the invitation of Ve’ahavta, the Toronto-based, non-profit Jewish humanitarian organization.
Wiesel was the inaugural guest speaker for Ve’ahavta’s Starry
Knights: First Annual Tikun Olam Award Ceremony, held in the city’s
Sheraton Centre Hotel grand ballroom.
An estimated 700 guests
turned out for the dinner/reception to hear Wiesel and fete the night’s
five award recipients for their humanitarian efforts in 2007.
Tickets for the main gala sold for $500, while tickets to a special VIP reception with the Nobel laureate before dinner were priced at $1,800 per guest.
Avrum Rosensweig, the non-profit’s co-director, told The CJN that the event was one of Ve’ahavta’s “main forms of revenue” and would help “bring in about $300,000” to help finance its various outreach programs both locally and around the globe.
The evening was hosted by CBC journalist Evan Solomon, and a silent auction was held during the event to raise additional funds for Ve’ahavta.
Referring to Wiesel and the memories of the Holocaust he has seared into the world’s consciousness through his writings, Solomon said he was honoured to host a ceremony that featured a man who “never let his Jewish identity restrict his empathy” and who was “emblematic of the quintessential event of the last century.”
Breaking with the announced schedule and to the delight of the audience, Solomon brought Wiesel up to the stage early on in the proceedings, to personally present each honoree with their award.
Holocaust survivors and noted public speakers about the Shoah, Max Eisen and Gerda Frieberg received, respectively, the 2007 Tikun Olam Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Education and Remembrance.
Eisen, the first award recipient of the night, kept his acceptance speech brief, telling the assembled that when confronted by crises and genocide in our world today, “we must reach out, open our eyes. We cannot walk away and be bystanders.”
Up next, a soft-spoken Frieberg stated that she will always “speak about [the Holocaust] as long as I live. We were never liberated, [only] our bodies were liberated,” she said of her rescue from the concentration camps. “I do all I can to honour those [who perished].”
Dr. Roy Rowsell, who has spent decades bringing and dispensing medical supplies to Guyana and treating thousands of Guyanese in partnership with Ve’ahavta, received the award for outstanding Achievement in medicine.
Prof. Daphne Schiff, an octogenarian pilot for Paris-based Air Solidarité who flies supplies in to impoverished West African villages, received the award for outstanding achievement in humanitarian Aid.
Ben Fine, co-founder of Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND), a national student organization dedicated to promoting student activism and advocacy about Darfur, received the award for outstanding achievement in student affairs.
He exhorted the audience to “make a difference for the people of Darfur” by participating in STAND’s new telephone campaign, 1-800-GENOCID(E), at which callers can leave voice mail about their concerns for the people of Darfur for federal MPs and the prime minister.
Finally, to a thunderous standing ovation, Wiesel, looking slightly uncomfortable with the adulation, took his turn on the stage to speak.
Talking assuredly and with great intellect, the man who penned Night – one of the seminal survivor’s perspective books on the Shoah – praised Ve’ahavta on its years of humanitarian work.
Wiesel spoke about his deep connection to Judaism and how it influences all he does.
“The only way for a Jew to be universal… to help others, is as a Jew,” he said, referencing the Jewish value of tikkun olam.
He also imparted a moral lesson gleaned from his years of monitoring the human condition.
“The person who is indifferent to others, becomes indifferent to himself,” he stated. “What does this teach us? That your life cannot, must not be worthy, unless we say that any other person’s life has the same value as yours.”
Invoking Darfur, Wiesel speculated that the reason that crisis has become such a “romantic adventure” for the West is due to its lingering guilt over having done nothing to prevent the Rwandan genocide in the early 1990s.
Wiesel then called upon his audience to remember the Holocaust and all past and present horrors.
“One thing I do know,” he said. “If we forget, the forgetting will be as tragic as the event itself. In remembering, it’s not too late for the children.”
In closing, Wiesel remarked upon the ability of mankind to do good in the world and left the listeners with some parting words of wisdom and a warning.
“Unless we are ready to be swallowed by despair and death, and I refuse that option… then I believe hope exists,” he said. “Only another person can move me to despair. And only another… human face can turn despair into hope. That face is yours.”
TORONTO — Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust chronicler Elie Wiesel, left, visited Toronto last week at the invitation of Ve’ahavta, the Toronto-based, non-profit Jewish humanitarian organization. 
