Mourners bid farewell to Elie Wiesel in New York

Family and friends embrace each other during a private service for the late Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in New York on Sunday. (Photo: AFP)

Mourners gathered in New York on Sunday to bid farewell to Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel peace laureate hailed for his life’s work of keeping alive the memory of Jews slaughtered during World War II.

Wiesel, who died in New York on Saturday at age 87, was honoured at private services at a synagogue, as tributes poured in from around the world to the man who warned that “to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” His wife Marion, in a wheelchair, was among those who arrived in a stream of black cars on the Upper East Side neighbourhood of Manhattan. The hour-long service ended around 12 pm (1600 GMT).

The burial was set to take place in the afternoon in the Jewish sector of a cemetery in Westchester County further upstate, a source close to funeral organisers said. “It was extremely moving, especially when Elie Wiesel’s son and grandson spoke,” film producer and critic Annette Insdorf said after the funeral. “It made very personal the loss of a man with such huge public stature.” Beatrice Malovany, wife of Fifth Avenue Synagogue cantor Joseph Malovany, praised the “very dignified service.”

“They really brought out the true character of Elie,” she said. “He was an absolutely decent human being. He respected humanity. He respected people. No matter what situation they were in.”