Nobel laureate and Holocaust memoirist Elie Wiesel will receive an honorary doctorate from the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow.

The university Senate voted unanimously last week to honor Wiesel for his involvement in the fight for the defense of human dignity; for efforts to deepen public understanding of the crimes of the Holocaust; for reminding Poles about Jan Karski, and for stigmatizing the crimes of genocide, anti-Semitism, intolerance, indifference and xenophobia.

“Achievements justifying this distinction for Elie Wiesel include his full commitment to the struggle for the defense of human dignity as a source of rights and freedoms,” wrote Prof. Andrzej Zoll in reviewing the decision to present an honorary doctorate to Wiesel.

It is not yet known when or where the ceremony to award Wiesel with the honorary doctorate will take place.

Wiesel was born in 1928 in the town of Sighet in Romania. In 1944, his family was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp. Later, he was sent to Buchenwald.

After the war, he studied literature, psychology and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1986 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

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