Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and noted author and lecturer, was awarded an honorary British knighthood by England's Queen Elizabeth II this week for his contribution to Holocaust education.

Wiesel is patron of Britain's Holocaust Educational Trust, which was established in 1988 in an effort to educate young people from every ethnic background about the Holocaust and its lessons for the present.

Wiesel, whose best-known works include Night and Dawn, received the KBE, or Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, from British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett on Thursday.

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"As a world figure, his influence and his interest extends far beyond the Jewish Diaspora," said Beckett. "He has always been clear that all Jews were victims of the Holocaust. But his actions have also been shaped by his knowledge that not all victims of the Holocaust were Jewish. He has, in short, done more than any other person to ensure that British children learn about and learn the lessons of the Holocaust."

Wiesel was born in 1928 in Romania and survived the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.