The auditorium at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago will be named after Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, as part of an effort to honor “civil rights and social justice leaders whose significant contributions to society have advanced justice and equality in America,” the Obama Foundation has announced.

In 2009, Obama and Wiesel, accompanied by then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, visited the Buchenwald concentration camp, where Wiesel was imprisoned during the final months of the war. The two men shared a warm relationship, the foundation said.

Construction of the center, located in Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side, began in August 2021.                                                                                                           — Chicago Architecture Center photo