Wiesel Rebuilds, With Unsolicited Help

In the weeks since Elie Wiesel told a Condé Nast Portfolio panel that he lost more than $7 million of his personal fortune in the Madoff scandal, and that his charitable foundation had lost $15.2 million, donors have been stepping up to help.

So far, the The Wiesel Foundation for Humanity has received a total of $400,000; some of which was donated directly to Wiesel and his wife, Marion, but which the couple turned over to the foundation.

Wiesel first disclosed his personal losses at a breakfast discussion hosted by Condé Nast Portfolio in New York on February 26. News of that revelation led directly to $74,000 in contributions from around the country.

"At any moment it would have been an amazing outpouring of generosity," Marion Wiesel says. "Specifically, in these times, it's so amazing, and it continues. People have sent money [to us], strangers, and we have given it to the foundation. ... We're fine. It was a very bad blow, but we're okay."

In early March, two alumni of Boston University, where Wiesel has been a professor for over 30 years, launched an email campaign that they hope will spur one million people to donate $6 each, in honor of the six million Jews who died during the Holocaust.

Barbara Neuerman, one of the founders, said she was inspired to take on the email project after discussing the news of Wiesel's financial losses with her father. A college friend, Larry Grubman, soon joined the project.

Grubman said he felt especially compelled to help as a lawyer who works in the same as building Madoff's firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. They pair do not know how much they've raised as of yet, but they have told the foundation to be on the lookout for donations of $6.

At the panel, Wiesel said of Madoff, "We gave him everything, we thought he was God, we trusted everything in his hands."

Wiesel said he could never forgive Madoff, who has since been jailed awaiting sentencing for his massive Ponzi scheme. Wiesel and that he "would like him to be in a solitary cell with a screen, and on that screen, for at least five years of his life, every day and every night there should be pictures of his victims."

Since the scandal, Mrs. Wiesel said that in addition to two $100,000 gifts from long-time donors, the foundation has received one donation of $10,000, a few $5,000 donations, and the rest between $5 and $500. Marion Wiesel said that all the small donations have come from "people we don't know, in places we've never been to."

"From Washington State and South Dakota, places I now want to go to see," she said. "It's been very wonderful and reassuring in a way."

Several other fundraising groups have also formed since the news of the loss in December. Columbia student Daniel Heyman has gathered a group of college students to form the Young Friends of the Elie Wiesel Foundation, which is holding a benefit on April 16.

Barrett Wissman, chairman of talent-management agency IMG Artists, called the Wiesels shortly after reading about their Madoff losses and offered to enlist some of IMG's clients pro bono in a fundraising event. Wissman hopes that the May 26 concert at Alice Tully Hall in New York will clear $1 million in donations for the foundation through ticket sales, underwriting, and a dinner.

The Wiesel foundation supports projects such as after-school centers in Israel, international conferences, a humanitarian award, and an annual essay prize in ethics for college students.

Events honoring Oprah Winfrey in 2007 and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in 2008 raised a total of $10 million. These funds were the bulk of what was lost in the $15.2 million Madoff investment. The money was meant to go towards starting other projects, said Leslie Meyers, the foundation's program coordinator, but these have since been put on the backburner.

by Jocelyn Hanamirian

Photograph by Bill Davila/StartraksPhoto