The stone carving of Elie Wiesel at the Washington National Cathedral. Photo: Washington National Cathedral

The Washington National Cathedral held a dedication ceremony on Tuesday for its new stone carving of the late Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel. 

The carving was completed in April 2021 and is located inside the Cathedral’s Human Rights Porch, which features carvings of historical defenders of human rights. Wiesel is the first person from the modern-day Jewish community to be featured in the cathedral.

“I think my father would have been surprised and would have wrestled with it,” Wiesel’s son, Elisha Wiesel, told The Algemeiner on Thursday, about the Nobel laureate receiving the honor. “I can’t say for sure whether he would have accepted the idea if it were proposed in his lifetime. I think he would have felt a great responsibility to make sure that the world knew that his moral values and actions which earned him the honor were deeply rooted in who he was as a Jew.”

Tuesday’s event was held in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

Elisha Wiesel, a board member of the Wiesel Foundation, spoke at the ceremony in the form of a letter to his father, who survived the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps and detailed the horrors of the Holocaust in his autobiographical novel “Night.” Elisha began by describing his father as an observant Jew defined by his faith, “who prayed with intent without fail every single day.”

He told the crowd assembled, “What’s hardest for me is seeing those who read your books, cry for the dead Jews, quote your protest against injustice, and then condemn the 6 million Jews living in Israel who refuse to ever again depend on the world to rescue them. No longer stateless and defenseless, these Jews face difficult circumstances and sometimes impossible choices. For this they are held to a different standard than any other nation on earth by America’s elite.”

Addressing his father, Elisha asked, “How do I remind the world that you also supported Israel and defended her right to exist in peace and security? You understood too well what it meant to live in a world without a Jewish state … How do I tell them that you can be pro-Palestinian without being anti-Israel? How do I get well-intentioned people to recognize that if they find themselves in any movement that tolerates lies and hatred toward the world’s only Jewish state, unless they can challenge and remove the antisemitic poison, that place is not their place?”

He recalled the Christian allies that Jews had in his father’s generation, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and wondered whether  “perhaps our next generation of allies will come from those who walk through the doors of the national cathedral, look up to your likeness and are inspired to ask questions about your presence in this church.”

Elisha told The Algemeiner he believes his father would want visitors to the cathedral to look at his stone carving and reflect on the late Holocaust survivor’s Jewish identity as well as “the complex history of Christianity’s treatment of the Jewish people,” and the suffering endured by those in the Holocaust.

“I think he would want them to feel the hope he conveyed through becoming not just a survivor but also a witness, a teacher, a husband, and a father,” Elisha explained. “I think he would want visitors to feel the sacred responsibility we all have to make sure that people of all faiths, nationalities and identities are treated with respect and humanity — and that the Jewish people, here, in Israel, and throughout the world deserve inclusion in that as well.”

The dedication ceremony on Tuesday included a panel discussion with individuals who were inspired by how Wiesel’s personal experiences impacted his teachings and activism. Featured speakers included Jon Meacham, canon historian of Washington National Cathedral; Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith, dean of Washington National Cathedral; and Sara J. Bloomfield, director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.