The U.S. Postal Service recently announced a new series of stamps honoring Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.
Wiesel, who died in 2016 at the age of 87, is the 18th person to be honored in the USPS’s “Distinguished Americans” stamp series.
“The 18th stamp in the Distinguished Americans series honors humanitarian Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), a survivor of Nazi concentration camps whose dozens of works bore witness to the Holocaust and whose resilience and compassion continue to be a source of inspiration,” a description for the stamp on the USPS website reads.
As a teenager, Wiesel, who was born in the northwestern Romanian town of Sighet, was sent with his father, Shlomo, to the Buna Werke labor camp in the Auschwitz complex.
He went on to become an international human rights advocate, publishing several books, essays and educational projects, including “Night,” a landmark 1960 memoir about his experiences during the Holocaust.
Wiesel was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, the National Humanities Medal and the Medal of Liberty in the United States.
Wiesel joins several other notable Jews featured in the Distinguished Americans series, including Dr. Jonas Salk, who developed the first influenza and polio vaccines, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright Edna Ferber and Albert Sabin, who developed the oral polio vaccine.
Jewish author and illustrator Shel Silverstein and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have also been featured on stamps, and the Postal Service has issued several stamps marking Chanukkah.
The Wiesel stamp — which is set to be released on Sept. 17 — features a 1999 black-and-white photo of Wiesel by Sergey Bermeniev, along with his name and the word “Humanitarian.”
It will be used for a less common category of mail, two-ounce mail, and will always be valid for the rate printed on it, according to the USPS. A sheet of 20 stamps is available for pre-order for $21.40.
A former college campus activist, Veksler will speak at Chizuk Amuno on June 8 at the Ruth and Jay Lenrow Visiting Scholar-in-Residence for Combating Antisemitism.
The Orioles' weak defense plays a major role in the nightly carnage, writes Michael Olesker.
Educators, ethicists and Jewish leaders are debating the question as content mills slop on.