Eliezer Wiesel (born September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania — now part of Romania) is a Holocaust survivor, a world–renowned author, and a political activist. He is the author of over 40 books, the most famous of which, Night, describes his experiences during the Holocaust. In 1986, Elie Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.^[1] The Norwegian Nobel Committee called Wiesel a "messenger to mankind", noting that through his struggle to come to terms with "his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler's death camps", as well as his "practical work in the cause of peace", Wiesel has delivered a powerful message "of peace, atonement and human dignity" to humanity. Wiesel lives in the United States, teaches at Boston University and serves as the Chairman of The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.^[2] He was the first to use the term "Holocaust".

Early life and experiences during The Holocaust

Wiesel was born in Sighet (now Sighetu Marmaţiei), Romania, to Shlomo and Sarah Wiesel, Orthodox Jews of Hungarian descent who owned a grocery store. He had three sisters. Elie was devoutly religious as a child and he spent much of his young life studying religious texts. Wiesel was particularly interested in the traditions and folklore of Hasidic Judaism, but he also studied secular topics.

The town of Sighet became part of German ally Hungary in 1940, and in 1944 the Nazis deported the Jewish community in Sighet to Auschwitz–Birkenau. While at Auschwitz the number A-7713 was cut into his left arm. Wiesel was separated from his mother and younger sister, who were murdered at Auschwitz. Elie and his father were sent to the attached work camp Auschwitz III Monowitz. He managed to remain with his father for a year as they were forced to work under appalling conditions and shuffled between concentration camps in the closing days of the war. In January 1945, as the two were being marched to Buchenwald, Wiesel's father died of dysentery, starvation, exhaustion, and exposure.

After the War

After the War, Wiesel was placed in a French orphanage where he learned the French language and accidentally found two older sisters who had also survived the war. In 1948, Wiesel began studying philosophy at the Sorbonne. He taught Hebrew and worked as a choirmaster before becoming a professional journalist. As a journalist he wrote for Israeli and French newspapers, including the French newspaper, L'arche. However, for ten years after the war, Wiesel refused to write about or discuss his experiences during the Holocaust. Like many survivors, Wiesel couldn't find the words to describe his experiences. However, a meeting with François Mauriac, the 1952 Nobel laureate in Literature, who eventually became Wiesel's close friend, persuaded him to write about his Holocaust experiences.

Wiesel wrote a 800 page book on his experiences in Yiddish (although he usually writes in French). The work was originally published in Buenos Aires. Wiesel compressed and rewrote that book in French, and it was published as the 127 page novel La Nuit, published in English as Night. Even with Mauriac's support Wiesel had trouble finding a publisher for his book, and initially it sold poorly.

Life in the United States

In 1955, Wiesel moved to New York, where he worked as a foreign correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth. The next year he was struck by a taxi and was confined to a wheelchair for over a year. Classified as a stateless person, he applied for and became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1963.

In the United States, Wiesel wrote over forty books, both fiction and non-fiction, and won many literary prizes.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for speaking out against violence, repression and racism. He has received many other prizes and honors for his work, including the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor in 1985 and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996. Wiesel published his memoirs in 1995.

Wiesel and his wife, Marion, started the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. He served as chairman for the Presidential Commission on the Holocaust (later renamed U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council) from 1978 to 1986, spearheading the building of the Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

Wiesel is particularly fond of teaching and holds the position of Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Boston University. From 1972 to 1976, Wiesel was a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York. In 1982 he served as the first Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University.

Wiesel has become a popular speaker on the subject of the Holocaust. As a political activist, he has advocated for many causes, including Israel, the plight of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, the victims of apartheid in South Africa, Argentina's Desaparecidos, Bosnian victims of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians and the Kurds.

Criticism

Noam Chomsky, the Jewish linguist and left-wing critic, has accused Wiesel of hypocrisy for failing to speak out on behalf of the Palestinians.

Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry, has accused Wiesel of inappropriately turning his work on the Holocaust into a business and of charging excessive lecture fees. Finkelstein has also criticized Wiesel's support of the State of Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Books

ISBN numbers maybe of reissues or reprints. Most are paperback.

• ISBN 0374521409 includes the following 3 books:
  • Night (Hill and Wang 1960; Bantam) ISBN 0553272535
  • Dawn (Hill and Wang 1961; Bantam) ISBN 0553225367
  • The Accident (Le Jour) (Hill and Wang 1962; Bantam) ISBN 0553581708
• The Town Beyond the Wall (Atheneum 1964)
• The Gates of the Forest (Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1966)
• The Jews of Silence (Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1966) ISBN 0935613013
• Legends of our Time (Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1968)
• A Beggar in Jerusalem (Random House 1970)
• One Generation After (Random House 1970)
• Souls on Fire (Random House 1972) ISBN 067144171X
• Night Trilogy (Hill and Wang 1972)
• The Oath (Random House 1973) ISBN 0935613110
• Ani Maamin (Random House 1973)
• Zalmen, or the Madness of God (Random House 1974)
• Messengers of God (Random House 1976) ISBN 067154134X
• A Jew Today (Random House 1978) ISBN 0935613153
• Four Hasidic Masters (University of Notre Dame Press 1978)
• Images from the Bible (The Overlook Press 1980)
• The Trial of God (Random House 1979)
• The Testament (Summit 1981)
• Five Biblical Portraits (University of Notre Dame Press 1981)
• Somewhere a Master (Summit 1982)
• The Golem (Summit 1983) ISBN 0671496247
• The Fifth Son (Summit 1985)
• Against Silence (Holocaust Library 1985)
• Twilight (Summit 1988)
• The Six Days of Destruction (Paulist Press 1988)
• A Journey of Faith (Donald I. Fine 1990)
• From the Kingdom of Memory (Summit 1990)
• Evil and Exile (University of Notre Dame Press 1990)
• Sages and Dreamers (Summit 1991)
• The Forgotten (Summit 1992) ISBN 0805210199
• A Passover Haggadah (Simon and Schuster 1993) ISBN 0671735411
• All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs, Vol. I, 1928-1969 (Knopf 1995) ISBN 0805210288
• Memoir in Two Voices, with François Mitterrand (Arcade 1996)
• And the Sea is Never Full: Memoirs Vol. II, 1969 (Knopf 1999) ISBN 0805210296
• King Solomon and his Magic (Greenwillow 1999)
• Conversations with Elie Wiesel (Schocken 2001)
• The Judges (Knopf 2002)
• Wise Men and Their Tales (Schocken 2003) ISBN 0805241736
• The Time of the Uprooted (Knopf 2005) ISBN 1400041724

Movies

• Schindler's List (Universal Pictures)

Sources

1. ^ 1986 Nobel Peace Prize
2. ^ The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity

External links

• Elie Wiesel: First Person Singular PBS Special on Elie Wiesel
• Academy of Achievement: Elie Wiesel (Profile, biography and interview)
• 1988 Audio Interview with Elie Wiesel by Don Swaim, RealAudio
• Christopher Hitchens criticizes Elie Wiesel in the Nation Magazine
• Text and audio of Elie Wiesel's famous speech on "The Perils of Indifference"
• Audio interview with Elie Wiesel by Don Swaim, RealAudio