Nobel Peace laureate and Holocaust scholar Eli Wiesel was dragged from an elevator and roughed up by a Holocaust denier.
The incident took place during a peace conference at a San Francisco hotel last week.
A man approached Wiesel and requested an interview with the acclaimed author.
When Wiesel consented to talk in the hotel's lobby, the man insisted it be done in a hotel room and dragged the 78-year-old off the elevator on the sixth floor.
The assailant fled after Wiesel began to scream, and Wiesel went to the lobby and called police.
Police say they are aware of a posting at an anti-Semitic Web site in which a man claimed responsibility for the attack