I am deeply saddened by the loss of this great leader of the Jewish people and the world.

I speak from an interesting perspective. Elie Wiesel was a personal friend of my saintly father Rabbi I. C. Avigdor. They corresponded for many years regularly by letter.

Eli Wiesel was incarcerated in Buchenwald with my revered grandfather, Rabbi Jacob Avigdor, who acted as his rabbi in the dark night and gloom of the concentration camp. They prayed together as my grandfather led Jewish services for the masses without prayer books or scrolls.

They prayed with the one commodity the Nazis could neither steal nor destroy: the Jewish mind.

May his memory be for a blessing.

Rabbi David Avigdor, New Haven