How could anyone steal from Elie Wiesel?

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By Lauren | March 6, 2009

When the stories concerning Bernie Madoff’s alleged Ponzi scheme first broke, there was less sympathy for Madoff’s victims than there probably should have been. After all, Madoff’s investors were among the richest of the rich, only able to gain access to Madoff because they had many millions of dollars to put on the table. If those super-wealthy folks were greedy enough to try to make even more money than they already had, they deserved to get ripped off, right?

Not exactly.

As the Madoff story emerges, it appears that he may have defrauded not only a lot of very rich people, but a lot of very worthy charities as well. It’s particularly appalling that Nobel Peace Prize-winning author Elie Weisel and his Foundation for Humanity were allegedly swindled out of everything they had. Wiesel, perhaps the most famous living survivor of the Holocaust, became a wealthy man as honestly as anyone possibly could, writing and speaking out against ignorance and hatred from his personal experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. This remarkable man, now eighty years old, has dedicated his life to honoring the lives of Holocaust victims and speaking out so that such atrocities never happen again. Wiesel’s foundation sponsors international conferences on peace and coveted awards to humanitarians and young ethicists - or at least it did, until it invested with Madoff.

Wiesel says that he only invested his personal funds with Madoff at first but, after receiving reports showing phenomenal returns, decided that he should invest his foundation’s money as well. “Everybody we know in the field of finances, they told us, come on, you can do much more, more projects because of Mr. Madoff the savior.” It’s hard to imagine a more honorable reason to look for a great return on an investment.

Elie Wiesel is nothing if not a survivor. He survived internment in four different concentration camps. Two years ago, he survived an assault by a Holocaust denier in a San Francisco hotel. Now, it seems, he’ll have to survive the loss not only of his personal fortune, but of his foundation’s resources as well. No matter how you look at it, that’s just plain wrong.

Wiesel has suggested an interesting punishment for Madoff. “I would like him to be in a solitary cell with a screen, and on that screen … every day and night there should be pictures of his victims, one after the other after the other, always saying, ‘Look, look what you have done.’ … He should not be able to avoid those faces, for years to come.” If Madoff is found guilty, that’s not a bad idea.

To learn more about the Foundation for Humanity, go to www.eliewieselfoundation.org.

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