Sir Ben Kingsley on Elie Wiesel

Great Lives

Actor Sir Ben Kingsley tells Matthew Parris why he regards Elie Wiesel as his great life.

A writer, a Nobel laureate, a holocaust survivor, Elie had to endure the worst horrors of mankind and survive the darkest of crimes.

In the Holocaust he lost his mother, his father and his youngest sister. He once said: “To forget the dead would be to akin to killing them again a second time”.

Sir Ben Kingsley regards Wiesel as was one the great voices of the holocaust and says he should never be forgotten. This was a promise he made to Wiesel.

To help tell Elie’s story, the expert witness is Robert Eaglestone, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought and an expert in Holocaust Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Producer: Perminder Khatkar

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2016.