Nobel Prize for Elie Wiesel

The life and work of Elie Wiesel, are a testament to the persistance of the human spirit in the midst of the enormities perpetrated in the 20th Century. As no one else, he has told the story of the horrors visited upon his own people, the Jewish people.

Yet his concerns are not limited by ethnic, religious or national boundaries. For Wiesel knows, whereas the rest of us can only imagine, that the unthinkable can happen, and that behind the mask of progress is the face of death. In the age of nuclear weapons, this means that the whole world can become a crematorium.

We talked of such matters two years ago, when, together with Harold Willens, I visited him in his New York home. He lived, he said, with the constant dread of a nuclear catastrophe, and therefore welcomed the opportunity to be a part of the endeavor to reverse the nuclear arms race.

LEONARD I. BEERMAN

Los Angeles