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It isn’t often one can refer to a person as a moral giant, but the late Elie Wiesel surely fit the bill. With his death last week at the age of 87, the world lost one of its greatest champions of decency.

The Romanian-born Holocaust survivor is best known as an author — he wrote 47 books, including his seminal Holocaust memoir, “Night,” first published in English in 1960. That book and Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl” are read in classrooms around the world and have taught the hard lessons of the Holocaust to new generations.

Unlike Anne Frank, Wiesel survived the war, although he witnessed the slaughter of much of his family at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. He stood for six decades as a unique beacon, speaking truth to power and making sure the words “Never again” meant something in the modern world.

For his efforts, Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and countless other honors. He was a friend to presidents, prime ministers and kings, but always held them accountable when they strayed toward the morally indefensible. One of his finest moments came in 1985 when President Ronald Reagan agreed to a request from German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to speak at a military cemetery in Bitburg, a place where Nazi-era Waffen-SS soldiers lay buried.

Wiesel told Reagan to his face that Bitburg “is not your place.” Though Reagan went through with the visit, he added a trip to a concentration camp — and Wiesel’s courage in standing firm for what he believed in is what we remember.

Throughout his life, Wiesel championed the weak and the oppressed, using his own horrific experience as a moral gauge. He urged the world to remember the particular atrocity of the Holocaust against the Jews, even as he teased out its universal lessons for the rest of humanity, standing up again and again both for Israel and for minorities in danger elsewhere. He never conflated the two, and that gave his words the strength that comes with integrity. Wiesel chose his words carefully, and that is why we listened.

We are at a time in history when we are rapidly losing survivors. Not too many years from now, the last of them will be gone. But, thankfully, so many left behind their testimonies, and no one bore witness more powerfully than Elie Wiesel. He is gone, but his message remains.

May his memory be a blessing.