WIESEL RETURNS ROMANIAN AWARD

Wiesel returns Romania star
Elie Wiesel returned Romania’s highest honor after learning that it also had been awarded to anti-Semites.

Wiesel, an author who is probably America’s best known Holocaust survivor, accepted his native Romania’s National Star years ago, at a time when the country’s leadership was seen as reconciling itself to the collaboration of its Holocaust-era regime with the Nazis.

President Ion Iliescu — who awarded Wiesel the star in 2002 — awarded it this week to two leaders of the Greater Romania Party, Cornelia Vadim Tudor and Gheorge Buzatu. Tudor, Buzatu and their ultra-nationalist party have published anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

“I hope you will understand that I cannot belong to any group of which Vadim Tudor is a member,” Wiesel said. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Anti-Defamation League lauded Wiesel’s move.