People: Dec. 22, 1986

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A half-century ago, the coveted award was given in absentia to German Pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, a writer and opponent of Nazism who died shortly after being released from a concentration camp. Last week the son of a Jewish holocaust victim, himself a survivor of the death camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, accepted the same Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo for his work as witness and human rights champion. Before he began his speech, Author- Philosopher Elie Wiesel recited a Jewish prayer of gratitude, but the awful echoes of the occasion all but overwhelmed him. Accompanied to the podium by his 14-year-old son Shlomo Elisha, the Nobel laureate had to pause to regain his composure before addressing the audience of dignitaries. "Do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished?" asked Wiesel. "Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? I do not. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions. And yet, I sense their presence. I always do -- and at this moment more than ever." Afterward, Wiesel explained why his usual eloquence had briefly failed him. "I saw my words become visible," he said. "I had written the speech for my father; I saw him in the hall. My words had physical shape. Is it then anything to wonder about that I had difficulties speaking?"