Elie Wiesel began his day on Dec. 10, 1986, the same way he started every day: with morning prayers.

At the time a reporter for The Day, I had been invited to join Wiesel at his room at The Grand Hotel in Oslo, Norway – the only journalist in a group of men wearing skullcaps and prayer shawls. Wiesel’s good friend, Sigmund Strochlitz of New London, a fellow concentration camp survivor who moved in powerful circles among such dignitaries as Henry Kissinger, had persuaded my editors to send a reporter to Oslo.

Wiesel’s deep-set, haunted eyes scanned the gathering and I sensed something troubled him. He leaned over and whispered to an aide, who began counting the number of people in the darkened room.

A moment later he shook his head and mouthed the word, “Nine.”

Jewish tradition requires the presence of 10 men to form a “minyan,” or quorum, for group prayer.

Strochlitz tugged at my arm and announced, “Here is our 10th man.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Wiesel nodded and began reciting in Hebrew, “Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha`olam... (“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe...”).

Less than an hour later we left the room and proceeded to Oslo City Hall, where Wiesel stepped onto a podium beneath Edvard Munch’s painting, “The Scream,” and formally received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Wiesel, the Romanian-born author, political activist and Holocaust survivor who died July 2 at age 87, is remembered as a passionate voice who demanded that the world never forget atrocities committed against Jews during the World War II era. President Barack Obama, a fellow Nobel laureate, called him “one of the great moral voices of our time, and in many ways, the conscience of the world.”

In Wiesel’s acceptance speech on that cold day in Norway 30 years ago he said the award both frightened and pleased him.

“It frightens me because I wonder: do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? ... I do not. That would be presumptuous. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions. It pleases me because I may say that this honor belongs to all the survivors and their children, and through us, to the Jewish people with whose destiny I have always identified.”

Immediately afterward, again with Strochlitz’s intercession, I was granted a private interview with Wiesel back in his hotel room, and we discussed issues still relevant today: growing anti-Semitism in Europe; the role of Israel in the Middle East and evolving attitudes among Americans to fighting oppression abroad. A day later I also was part of an entourage that followed Wiesel to Stockholm, Sweden, for the Peace Parade, a Nobel tradition.

During our interview in Oslo I asked him, “The Holocaust is moving from living memory to written history. As one who has recorded both versions, what concerns do you have about how the world will remember it?”

Wiesel brushed back a long lock of hair that always seemed to fall over his forehead and replied, “Embellishment and distortion. Embellishment in the media – docu-dramas, cheap spectacles – and trivialization for all kinds of purposes. Political, economic – even literary.”

Wiesel had waited nearly a decade after his 1945 liberation from Auschwitz and Buchenwald to write “Night,” a seminal memoir that described the horrors and helplessness of those who perished, including his father. He later became one of the world’s most outspoken critics of human rights abuses in South Africa, Nicaragua, the Sudan and other repressive governments.

Strochlitz, a Polish-born Jew who survived more than 15 months in Auschwitz, moved to America after his liberation and established a successful New London car dealership, Whaling City Ford. He worked with Wiesel to establish the National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and behind the scenes lobbied members of the Nobel committee to promote his longtime friend for the Peace Prize. When Strochlitz died in 2006, Wiesel came to New London to deliver the eulogy at his funeral.

Now with Wiesel’s death we move further from living memory to written history. I will never forget that morning prayer in his hotel room, his speech beneath the Munch painting and the sadness in his eyes amid so much celebration.

True to his imprecation, he never forgot.

Steve Fagin of Ledyard is a semi-retired writer and editor.