‘To See My Father’s Face on a Stamp Is a Gift,’ Elisha Wiesel Says at USPS Event

NEW YORK (JNS) – The U.S. Postal Service dedicated a new, two-ounce stamp honoring Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, during a first-day-of-issue ceremony on Tuesday at the 92nd Street Y on New York City’s Upper East Side.

The 18th which the Postal Service has issued in its distinguished Americans series, the stamp features a black-and-white portrait of Wiesel. It will serve as a permanent rate stamp for two-ounce mail.

The half-hour ceremony drew about 100 people, including Postal Service officials, New York City police officers and philatelists. Wiesel’s desk, where he taught for many years at the 92nd Street Y, was placed on stage. 

Collectors purchased stamps before and after the ceremony and lined up afterward for a signing session, receiving autographed programs and commemorative pins featuring the stamp image.

Lee Goldberg, meteorologist at WABC-TV, served as master of ceremonies. “Elie was a living reminder that silence in the face of injustice is complicity,” he said.

“Wiesel embodied the Jewish values we all believe in,” Pinsky said. “Over 180 evenings, he brought Jewish culture and memory vividly to life. The most important word in the Bible is ‘remember,’ and through this stamp, we hope more people will remember.”

Ronald Stroman, vice chairman of the USPS board of governors, dedicated the stamp. 

The U.S. Postal Service honors Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) with the 18th stamp of its Distinguished Americans series. Wiesel was a survivor of Nazi concentration camps whose life and writing on the Holocaust are a testament to moral courage and the resilience of the human spirit.… pic.twitter.com/63Xwj5sfuQ

— U.S. Postal Service (@USPS) September 17, 2025

“There are times when a single voice rises beyond darkness with moral clarity and the unmistakable belief in light: Elie Wiesel was such a strong voice,” he said. “He chose to remember, to bear witness, not just for himself but for all of us. Today, as we confront hatred and division, we would do well to remember him.”

Rabbi David Ingber, founding rabbi of Romemu, a renewal synagogue, reflected on Wiesel’s ties to the venue, noting that the writer once referred to the 92nd Street Y as “my little yeshivah.”

“Our sages teach that the seal of the Holy One is truth, and that is powerful as we approach Yom Kippur, as we hope to be sealed by God’s stamp,” the rabbi said. “A stamp is small, but once affixed, it carries words through generations, people and places.”

Wiesel’s son, Elisha Wiesel, closed the program. 

“To see my father’s face on a stamp is a gift for which my family and I are very grateful,” he said. 

He recalled his father’s admiration for America. “He loved what the United States made possible: the ability to question,” he said. “He had never before seen a force for good as strong as this country.”

Elisha also noted his father’s affinity for letters. 

“The pace of a written letter suited my father, and I think it could suit us again. Without the messenger, the message is lost,” he said.

He ended his remarks by leading the audience in singing the Jewish song Acheinu (“our brothers”) in solidarity with “the soldiers, civilians and hostages” amid the war in Gaza.

Elisha Wiesel told JNS that his father “treasured being an American.”

“He was a proud citizen. Having his likeness appear on a USPS stamp is appropriate given that he was a man of words, of letters,” he told JNS. “He was known for responding to each student who wrote to him.”

Wiesel added that he hopes that “those who treasure American values will feel inspired by the stamp to use their voices.”

“For those who harbor antisemitism, they must reckon with seeing a Jewish face honored as a distinguished American by the U.S. Postal Service,” he told JNS.

Elisha Wiesel told JNS of the Oct. 7 terror attacks that “antisemitism in the court of world opinion has become a fact of life, and the power of words must be used to oppose this violence, ignorance and injustice.”

“This stamp honors that teaching, and its message is needed now more than ever to oppose Hamas’s violence and ignorance and injustice everywhere,” he said.

Ethel Kessler, the USPS art director who oversaw the stamp project and who also designed a stamp honoring the late Supreme Court associate justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, told JNS that she lobbied to design the Wiesel stamp. 

“I stood up when everyone else was sitting down, so that I could get the project,” she said. “I read his books, belong to a synagogue that reveres him, watched the new documentary about him. I looked at every photo ever taken of him.”

“This photo we selected is the one that resonates, because he’s looking right at you,” she told JNS. “He looks into your soul.”

The stamp image had to be black and white, “because the Holocaust resonates in black and white,” she said. And Wiesel’s book Night “resonates in black and white,” she said.

Dave Rosenthal, 71, a retired bus company worker from Pennsylvania, was among the collectors present. 

“My interest is in the programs they give out, because the stamp is history and the ceremonies are about learning about people and places,” he told JNS. “The process involves getting autographs, so you meet all sorts of people.” 

A third-generation collector, Rosenthal said he owns hundreds of stamps and often publishes photographs from such events in Linn’s Stamp News.

John Anthony Lewis, a 19-year-old from Long Island, told JNS that he attended after discovering the event online while purchasing stamps. 

“This was my first event of this kind,” he said. “I’m not Jewish and didn’t even know who Elie Wiesel is, but he seemed like a great person, and attending the event made me want to know more about him.”