About

 
 

Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)

Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, not far from Hungary. His parents encouraged him to read literature and Torah and instilled in him a strong sense of humanism. He had three sisters, two of whom survived the ear.

In 1940, Romania ceded a large portion of land, including the area of Sighet to Hungary, which did not require large scale deportations of Jews until the Nazi occupation in 1944. In May 1944 at age 15, Elie and his entire family were deported to Auschwitz where his mother and younger sister were immediately murdered. Elie was tattooed “A-7713.” He and his father were later part of a death march to Buchenwald in Germany. His father did not survive.

After liberation in 1945, Elie was one of 1,000 child survivors sent to a rehabilitation center in France where he was reunited in an orphanage with his two sisters who had survived.

By age 19, he was living in Paris writing for French and Israeli newspapers. For ten years, Wiesel refused to write about his experiences in the Holocaust until a French colleague convinced him to end his silence, and in 1958, he wrote La Nuit (Night). Since its publication, Night has been translated into 30 languages. Ten million copies have been sold in the United States alone, and millions more in other countries.

In Night, Wiesel describes his experiences at the hands of the Nazis - the roundup of his family and neighbors in his Romanian town; deportation by cattle car to Auschwitz-Birkenau; the division of his family forever in the selection process; the mental anguish and physical abuse he and his fellow prisoners experienced; and the death march from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Buchenwald.

During his life, Wiesel strove to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and to speak for all oppressed people of the world.

  • Survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald

  • Founding Chair of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

  • Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986

  • Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985

  • Author of over 40 books, written in several languages and translated into over thirty languages.

  • Co-founder of the magazine Moment with writer Leonard Fein.

  • Co-founder in 1986, with his wife Marion, of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.