The Life of Elie Wiesel Author of Night

The Life of Elie Wiesel Author of “Night”

Early Life • Born in Sighet, Romania on September 30, 1928. • Lived with his family – Father • Schlomo – Mother • Feig – 3 sisters • Hilda • Bea • Tzipora Sighet

Early Life • Began religious Hebrew studies at an early age • Also encouraged to concentrate on secular studies by his father • Grew up speaking Yiddish at home, Hungarian, Romanian, and German in the community

After the War • Lived in an orphanage until 1948 • Faced with a pivotal choice • Studied at preparatory schools for a few years in France • Studied literature, philosophy, and psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris.

After the War • Author of more than forty books – Night – A Beggar in Jerusalem • Winner of the Prix Médicis – Dawn – The Accident – The Town Behind the Wall

After the War • 1976 – Appointed Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council • 1985 – Congressional Medal of Freedom • 1986 – Nobel Peace Prize • Professor of Huanities at Boston University since 1976

1944 -1945 • Family removed from Sighet in 1944 – Deported by Nazis – Elie was 15 • Shoved like “cattle’ into a train

Auschwitz-Birkenau • First camp the Wiezel’s were moved to • Feig and Tzipora gassed on the first night • At least 1, 200, 000 -4, 000 executed from 1940 -1945 • Up to 20, 000 gassed and cremated each day

Auschwitz-Birkenau • Survivors in 1945 • One of the mass graves at Auschwitz

Buchenwald • Elie and his father moved there in 1945 • Father died days before liberation • Liberated April 11, 1945 • 904 children rescued including Elie • 56, 545 dead

Buchenwald

Holocaust • Concentration, Labor, and Extermination camps set up by the Nazis • Deaths of Jews, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, along with slave laborers, gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabled, and political opponents • 9, 000 – 11, 000 dead

Holocaust