Shortly after winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, Elie Wiesel began visiting the Tampa Bay community as a part of his life’s mission to keep the Holocaust fresh in our nation’s collective memory and prevent new atrocities.
February 3, 1987
Elie Wiesel visits Eckerd College for the first time as part of an authors’ speaker series. He urges audience members in the packed Eckerd gymnasium to “remember the horrors of the past” during a lecture titled “Building a Moral Society.” Read “Remember horrors of the past, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel urges” in the Tampa Bay Times.May 7, 1987
After establishing relationships with Jewish communities around the state, Wiesel is invited to Tallahassee to speak to the Florida Legislature.October 1, 1987
Wiesel speaks at a benefit in Clearwater and urges the community to not “discard the elderly. … We live in a society that extols the virtues of beauty and the beauty of the young. We are a youth-oriented society. Whatever is good must be young and whatever is young must be good. Somehow we are afraid of the word ‘old.’” Read “Nobel Prize winner Wiesel warns of discarding the elderly” in the Tampa Bay Times.February 4, 1990
The Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach, a 42-foot bronze hand with small figures of people climbing it, is dedicated by Wiesel and other Holocaust survivors.November 21, 1991
Wiesel returns to Eckerd College’s McArthur Gymnasium to give his second public lecture titled “An Evening With Elie Wiesel.”January 1993
Wiesel teaches his first Winter Term at Eckerd College. Along with team-teaching the course Remembering and Forgetting: Personal and Political Transformation with Professor Carolyn Johnston, he gave a public lecture and held a press conference on campus. Read “Holocaust writer is at Eckerd” in the Tampa Bay Times.April 1993
Wiesel returns to Washington, D.C., to shepherd the opening of the National Holocaust Museum.January 1994
Wiesel returns to Eckerd for his second Winter Term following the hopeful campaign of former Eckerd College President Peter Armacost.February 9, 1994
To close his second Winter Term, Wiesel holds a public lecture titled “On the Threshold of the 21st Century” for a capacity crowd in the College gymnasium with a message against violence. “Fifty-five million people were killed in the 20th century,” he told the audience. “I am not speaking about hunger or disease. I’m speaking about violence.” Read “World must leave behind its hateful past” in the Tampa Bay Times.March 23, 1995
“Longing” becomes the subject of Wiesel’s fourth public lecture at Eckerd College.March 4, 1996
A fundraiser for the Tampa Jewish Foundation Youth Leadership Division brings Wiesel back to the Tampa Bay area as the keynote speaker.March 12, 1996
Following his fourth Winter Term, Wiesel speaks to the community about “Telling the Tale—Memoirs.” Read“Elie Wiesel pleads for Jewish unity” in the Tampa Bay Times.
