Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, was roughed up at a peace conference in San Francisco last week, and his apparent assailant boasted of the attack on an anti-Semitic Web site in Australia, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

Mr. Wiesel, 78, is a university professor of religion and philosophy at Boston University, which houses the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

According to the police, the man approached Mr. Wiesel in an elevator at the Argent Hotel and asked to interview him. Mr. Wiesel agreed to talk to the man in the hotel lobby, but the man insisted the interview take place in a hotel room, and he dragged the renowned Holocaust scholar from the elevator on the sixth floor. Mr. Wiesel, who was not injured, began to scream, and the attacker fled. The police are seeking a white man in his 20s.

According to the Mercury News, the incident came to light after the blogger wrote that he had stalked Wiesel for weeks and that he had planned to get “a cornered Wiesel” to renounce the Holocaust on video.

Mr. Wiesel was at the conference to speak at a forum on conflict resolution.